Western Resistance

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January 17, 2006

US: Anti-Muslim Bloggers Against Hate? A Response

We have recently been featured in an article by Sara Rosenbaum at St Petersburg Times, entitled "Are Bloggers Against Hate, Or Just Feeding It?". Also featured in the article are Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch and Joe Kaufman of Americans Against Hate.

We have published our response to the article below. This written by Mr Diaz, who was briefly mentioned as saying "We want to wake up the people of the Western world to the dangers of Islam."

We came out the least compromised by Ms Rosenbaum's article. Robert Spencer has already published a response to the St Petersburg Times article, in which he decries the techniques of the reporter:

If I did speak to them (Muslim acquantances from college), I would tell them that I am combatting the jihad ideology that means to institutionalize oppression of women and religious minorities, and invite them to join me. It is a pity that somebody like Rosenbaum, with her bully pulpit, is too paralyzed by multiculturalism and political correctness to do so, or even to be able to see the larger issues involved.

A long conversation with the reporter had been distilled down to a selective quotation, which gave the false impression of someone who was carried away with his own importance.

But the biggest casualty of Ms Rosenbaum's barbs is Joe Kaufmann. The main subject of "Are Bloggers Against Hate Or Feeding It?", Mr Kaufmann is pinpointed as being responsible for causing hosts of a seminar on Islam, due to be held at Cedarkirk Camp in Lithia, Florida, being placed in a situation where "death threats poured in to the Presbyterian camp hosting the event".

We wrote on January 1 of this seminar, organised by the Tampa chapter of the Muslim American Society (MAS), which would have been held at the center in the Florida countryside. Mr Kaufman raised an alarm because one of the speakers at the event was Mazen Mokhtar of New Jersey (pictured above). Mokhtar has been accused of supporting terrorism, and has hosted a website called Azzam.com, run by Babar Ahmad, currently the subject of a US extradition request from Britain, for "supporting terrorism, conspiring to kill Americans, and maintaining a website used to fund terrorists." Mazen Mokhtar has praised anti-Israeli terrorism, and has used the slogan "Hamas has no victims, it only has legitimate targets" as his email signature.

Joe Kaufman had written on this event, in an article entitled "A New Year's Jihad Retreat". His website also contains a mirror of Mokhtar's website minnah.com, which contains a portal to Hamas.

What had drawn our attention to the affair was a report from the St Petersburg Times, from Jan 1, entitled "Blogs, threats force Muslim meeting to relocate". This article was written by S.I. Rosenbaum, and blamed blogs such as those by Mr Kaufman for writing negatively about the event and its speakers.

But after bloggers alleged that the event was a thinly veiled terrorist indoctrination, anonymous callers bombarded the Muslim American Society of Tampa with death threats and curses.

Ms Rosenbaum cited Mr Kaufman calling the MAS event "a jihad retreat for children," and quoted Ace of Trump who wrote "You gotta start your kids on the road to martyrdom early, or there'll be no one left to murder."

The issue was also taken up by Associated Press in The Ledger, which focused on the blog Ace of Trump, which wrote: "Nothing rings in the new year like bringing your kids to hang out with a bunch of terrorists". Associated Press acknowledged that the source of their information came from the St Petersburg Times.

It should be noted that it seems the sticky fingers of CAIR have already been stroking this issue. In Ms Rosenbaum's most recent attack on bloggers as vessels of anti-Islamic vitriol, she quotes Ahmed Bedier of CAIR, the man who managed to have Christian and Jewish holidays briefly suspended from the school calendar at Hillsborough County, Florida in October.

CAIR assume the mantle of civil rights organisation, but they are also punitive in their methods. Now in Ms Rosenbaum's second article, Western Resistance gets mentioned. We did not cover the issue of Mazzen Mokhtar and the Cedarkirk "death threats" until January 1 after Ms Rosenbaum's first piece was published. However, we have published articles which ridicule CAIR, which warn against CAIR, which inform of and expose CAIR.

Is that why Ms Rosenbaum has mentioned our humble blog, which had nothing to do with the Cedarkirk incident, but which has not been too flattering to CAIR? She writes that we (Jihadwatch, Americans Against Hate, ourselves and, presumably, others) are "dedicated to the surveillance of American Muslims." Mr Bedier has been in contact with Ms Rosenbaum, as we know.

Muslims say the blogs breed hate.

"He's spreading lies, slandering individuals," said Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for the Tampa Bay chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "These are vigilantes."

Kaufman and other bloggers say their work is vital to the country's safety.

The only American Muslims we have any interest in describing negatively are those who spread disinformation and those who threaten the peace and stability of America and all free nations.

Ms Rosenbaum's introductory email to us was this:

Hello,

My name is S. I. Rosenbaum; I'm a reporter for the St . Petersburg
Times in Florida. I'm working on an article about online sites that
watch Muslim activity in the U.S. in the interest of preventing
terrorist attacks. I've visited your sites, and I would be very
interested in talking with you about your experience. Please feel free
to call me at (813) 661 2442 ASAP.

best,
S.I. Rosenbaum
Reporter
St. Petersburg Times

By implication, any reader of her article would assume that we had actively campaigned against MAS and the Cedarkirk retreat. Like Robert Spencer, we feel our time was wasted in a distraction from our usual duty. But we were not savaged as completely as Joe Kaufman.

On his website today, he has published his own rejoinder to Ms Rosenbaum's hatchet-job (jobs). It is powerful. This is an extract:

Following my complaint, the writer of the articles, Sara Rosenbaum, sent me an e-mail saying that she wanted to do a piece on me. I agreed, understanding that, given the past two, it was probably going to be biased against me, and unfortunately, I was correct. In 'Are bloggers against hate, or feeding it?' dated January 16th, once again, Rosenbaum insinuated that I had caused the threats. She went as far as to say that images placed on my group's website had been responsible for death threats "pouring [sic] in to the Tampa Muslim American Society." No mention was made of the material found on MAS-Tampa's website discussing the murder of Jews or about the waging of holy war against Christians and Jews.

It appears that Ms Rosenbaum has been engaged in a smear campaign, and by using ad hominem attack and insinuation, has tried to disguise the issues which were raised by Mr Kaufman in the first instance as an act of public citizenship. Joe Kaufman has tried to raise an alarm about a valid issue which does impinge on what is considered "ethical" and "American". He should be thanked for his vigilance, not vilified nor slandered.

PLEASE READ JOE KAUFMAN'S LETTER - S. I. ROSENBAUM - BIASED AND IRRESPONSIBLE.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 17, 2006 10:39 PM

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