Natanya terror attack.
Muslim terror attack in Natanya, Israel by Islamic Jihad Dec. 5, 2005 killed five girls at a shopping mall.

Walid Shoebat Versus the Bristol Herald Courier

Lewis Loflin


The Bristol Herald Courier (11-2-2009) published an article titled Self-proclaimed Former Terrorist Belittles Islamic Faith. In this story a Walid Shoebat claimed to be a former Palestinian terrorist that converted to Christianity. He appeared at the Antioch Baptist Church in Bristol, Virginia and proclaimed, "Islam is the essence of evil" and basically said Islam was out to get us. Reporter Tom Netherland did a good job and simply reported the facts of what went on at the Antioch Baptist Church. That's what got him in trouble with the PC police.

Shoebat's website is at www.shoebat.com and he has written such books as God's War of Terror and claims his grandfather was a friend of the notorious Arab-Nazi Haj-Ameen Al-Husseni the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and friend of Adolf Hitler. Husseni oversaw the murder of 900,000 Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies in Yugoslavia during World War 2 and was indicted there for war crimes. (1)

The British who attempted to install him in power in Palestine protected him from Yugoslav authorities. Husseni was a relative (uncle?) of Yasser Arafat an Egyptian Arab and arch terrorist. Shoebat's basic story is he left this terrorist culture, became a Christian because his wife was Catholic, and now they want to kill him for his activities "exposing" Islam and leaving the faith.

My interest here is neither this Shoebat character nor his detractors such as the New York Times that refers to terrorists as "militants." The problem is the reaction of the Bristol Herald Courier.

Bewildering Apologist

By December 8 Editor J. Todd foster was in full political correctness damage control mode. To quote Mr. Foster,

It's easy for a newspaper in an almost all-white, conservative, Christian region to get away with a front-page article that denounces all of Islam.

Mr. Foster seems to consider the "almost all-white, conservative, Christian" somehow in contempt as his newspaper constantly proclaims the virtues of racist "diversity" dogma at every turn. He has nothing to say about Islam as if they are somehow innocent victims in all of this. To continue with Mr. Foster,

Two readers - shockingly, there were only two - complained that we gave a bombastic apostle a platform for hate speech. Those readers were right.

The writer of this story did a great job covering Walid Shoebat's appearance in Bristol, where he spoke to a pair of gatherings at a Baptist church. Shoebat is a mesmerizing speaker, I'm told, and served up plenty of red meat to evangelical Christians.

The problem is that we allowed Shoebat (pronounced Showy-bat) to equate all of the Muslim religion to evil. It's tantamount to a former Baptist going to Saudi Arabia and equating all Baptists with abortion-doctor killers. There is no question that Shoebat's appearance was newsworthy. It should have been covered. But we also should have tried harder and earlier to find Muslim officials to offer counterpoints...

Counterpoints? This statement comes from a newspaper that prints a constant barrage of one-sided hysterics on global warming and markets Green theology and Green lifestyle to the point of proselytizing. First of all the writer did do a great job and the article wasn't hate speech because it stated only factual information.

Attaching the word "hate" to everything by the Progressive Left is merely an attempt to censor free speech. This must be resisted if the press wants to retain any semblance of respectability. I don't know or trust this Shoebat person, but it's easy to checkout his statements on Islam.

That is not what Mr. Foster did. He ran to questionable sources such as the New York Times and Wikipedia to simply find negative material in Shoebat, but Mr. Foster did nothing to check the claims on Islam itself. This seems to be more about covering his rear-end from bosses at Media General who take similar positions to the New York Times.

Muslims are Nazis
In this example Islamic fundamentalism
has combined with Nazism as shown by this
Nazi salute by Hezbollah (party of Allah) in Lebanon.

It should be also noted that the article never suggested all Muslims themselves were evil, but that Islam and many of its institutions are evil. Modern terrorism aside, there are many facets of Islam that are evil to include the murder of religious dissenters and apostates, the horrific treatment of women and girls, and child rape are institutional parts of Islam supported by most of its clerics and widely practiced in the Muslim world. This is easy to verify if Mr. Foster would bother to check it out, which he is forbidden to do by political correctness.

And for the record I proclaim Allah (simply the Arabic word for God) as my God and my core theological beliefs are nearly identical with Islam. I reject the authority of it's clerics, medieval Sharia Law, and the Prophet Mohammed the man.

I have no problem with the Five Pillars of Islam anymore than I do with Christmas or Hanukkah. Don't try the racism tactic with me, Islam is not a race. Also note that much of the terrorist tactics used by Islamists came from Muslims often radicalized in western universities, not the Koran. None the less, we must deal with Islam of today a fragmented faith at war with itself and the world.

To further quote Mr. Foster,

We all know the evils of radical Islamists. We also know the evils of serial killers, and people like Timothy McVeigh and a host of other criminals who are not Muslim. As a society, we often are too quick to paint with a broad brush. Radical Islam does not define the Islamic religion any more than McVeigh, the executed Oklahoma City bomber, defines the U.S. Army, which he served with distinction in the Gulf War and was awarded the Bronze Star for valor.

If we had thousands of former US Army veterans murdering civilians and raping little girls while nobody else does, then there has to something wrong with the institutions they claim to represent. But what does define Islam Mr. Foster?

He seems to have defined this region as racist and bigoted, but has completely avoided Islam and the thousands of terrorist attacks across the globe that has killed thousands. He equates this with a single act of terrorism by Tim McVeigh. As is typical for political correctness, Mr. Foster ignores proportion in numbers. This is why political correctness is a lie, its censorship, and sometimes is racist and bigoted. Mainly, political correctness is irrational.

Mr. Foster also forgets that while McVeigh acted mostly alone, Islamic terrorism is often state-sponsored. This isn't his fault as the government has refused to clearly define what we are fighting and it is a broad cross-section of Islam. Not all Muslims by any means, but a sizable minority. To again quote Mr. Foster as he quoted some liberal Christian from Coeburn, Virginia that e-mailed him:

"I was surprised and disappointed to read it and to see the prominence you gave it on the front page. I am not a Muslim, nor am I of the Islamic faith but I was offended by the ignorance shown by the speaker and by lack of actual reporting done by the author of the piece.

I hope that people from the faith communities in the region take offense at this kind of reporting. The church[es] who sponsored this program should also apologize for hosting such ignorance. Your paper and Mr[.] Shoebat insult both Islamic and Christians faiths in his witness to both of them. His behavior and words, if accurately reported, appear to be far from Christian."

What does the Herald Courier have to apologize for other than factual reporting of the events at the Antioch Baptist Church? Just because this woman is offended isn't a hate crime.

Why isn't she offended that not a single Christian church can be constructed in any Muslim country? It's this irrational self-hatred of western society that blinds people such as this woman. To finish off Mr. Foster's apology and bewilderment:

Another coalfields reader faxed the article to the Richmond law firm that represents our parent company, Media General, and accused us of promoting hate speech. It would have been simpler and made more sense to have faxed his objection to me, and his failure to do that is bewildering.

Readers bewilder me a lot. A Bristol woman recently mailed one of my columns to corporate headquarters in Richmond in an attempt to get me fired. The woman wrote that my column, about the first day of school, was a platform to promote my two young sons.

And here's the bewildering part: I get more compliments on the columns I write about fatherhood and my boys than anything else I write about. The moral to the story is that while publishing hate speech is wrong, I guess love speech is, too - at least to some readers.

But you didn't publish hate speech Mr. Foster so what are you apologizing for? The last thing I want is to see is Mr. Foster being fired and believe both he and the Herald Courier are above reproach. J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at jfoster@bristolnews.com or (276) 645-2513. His article is no longer available.

A New Low for the Bristol Herald Courier

For the Bristol Herald Courier political correctness is now in full glorious bloom. On Nov. 12 they published an article titled Retired Israeli officers push conspiracy theories at prayer breakfast. They are not reporting the news, but condemned the participants as nut cakes without research or documentation to prove it. There were 200 people attending a Veteran's Day prayer breakfast to hear the guests that included Israeli Maj. Jacob Goldstein, a fighter pilot during the Yom Kippur War, a Christian convert.

To quote retired Brig. Gen. James Hutchens:

"We need to recognize this is an enemy that's pervasive in this country. [Fort Hood] was an act of terrorism. We need to recognize that's what it was."

Not so says Taneem Aziz, president of the Muslim Community of Northeast Tennessee who claims 500 Muslims live in Tri-Cities. His website is at www.mcnetonline.com To quote,

"There are 6 million to 7 million Muslims in this country who live as patriotic Americans, just like other Americans. We're a proud and productive part of this society. But, unfortunately, it's become customary for some so-called 'experts' to vilify Muslims as enemies.

It's sad. And I'm afraid this kind of inflammatory talk can easily escalate to other things." "What happened in Fort Hood was a criminal act," Aziz said. "It was the act of an individual, not a people."

Mr. Aziz is typical in denying Islam has anything to do with terrorism and extremism. It seems from reading his statements in other news reports he proclaims the typical victim mentality and believes it's a hate crime just because someone doesn't love Islam and him.

I will state for the record that Islam prior to the 20th Century while brutal to non-believers, never advocated the terrorism supported by a sizable minority today. Besides his false claim of 6-7 million Muslims he got from Islamist' groups such as CAIR (there's about 3 million including the racist Nation of Islam cult), the attack at Ft. Hood was a terrorist attack by any definition:

Hasan was a Muslim and murdered in the name of Islam for Islam as he saw it;

He was in contact with other Muslims that advocated Muslim terrorism;

He was open about it, but everybody refused to act out of fear of retaliation due to political correctness.

But I'm sure the press will find some Christian white guy to compare him to for "balance" and to excuse the act as not having anything to do with a protected minority group and religion. None of this does Mr. Aziz or decent Muslims any good in the end.

This constant denial and refusing to address the problem of Islamic extremism leads to more suspicion and distrust of Muslims in general. I don't want to see that, but under the circumstances it's a rational reaction and it's the fault of Mr. Aziz and the press in general including the Bristol Herald Courier.

Did the Herald Courier press Mr. Aziz on his positions? No they didn't. I've tried, but he refuses to answer. And this article did not simply report facts, but took a bigoted position without presenting proof. Has the Herald Courier proven any of the remarks made at the event really constitute "a conspiracy theory" or are they too fearful of public reaction if they really looked into the claims?

The Herald Courier made no effort to confirm anything here because the participants were, as Mr. Foster says, "an almost all-white, conservative, Christian" group and that makes them automatic racists and conspiracy nuts. Some of them are, but let's look at the claims themselves.

To their credit the Bristol Herald Courier published a half page response (Dec. 9) from the Pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in relation to Islam. See Bristol Pastor Speaks Out on the Walid Shoebat Affair

Defining Evil

Do the claims of Walid Shoebat have any basis in reality? Let's look closely at the claims and use only "mainstream" news reports. To quote the Herald Courier, "He is the most wanted man in the Muslim world," local resident Lonnie Whitley said of Shoebat. "There is a $10 million bounty on his head."

I don't know about the $10 million, but the rest is correct of Islam in general. Ask Salman Rushdie (an atheist) about his death threats. Under Islamic Law it's a death penalty to leave Islam and convert to any other faith. It's OK for a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman, but a death penalty for a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim. Why doesn't the Herald Courier ask Mr. Aziz about that one?

Abdul Rahman on trial
Abdul Rahman on trial.

Here is an example that caused the United States all kinds of problems in Afghanistan. Rahman, a 41-year old former medical aid worker, faces the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for becoming a Christian.

Clerics Call for Christian Convert's Death Despite Western Outrage (Fox News March 23, 2006) concerns the trial of Abdul Rahman being sentenced to death for conversion to Christianity. This isn't an internet site but to quote, Senior Muslim clerics said Thursday that an Afghan man who converted from Islam to Christianity must be executed and if the government caves into Western pressure and frees him they will incite people to "pull him into pieces."

And these are the "moderate Muslims" that's costing America billions of dollars and thousands of dead and wounded? Women are still treated like animals and live in fear of Muslim Law every day. This was easy see during the recent botched elections on the evening news as fearful women poll workers quickly covered their faces on camera or face beatings for having their face seen by people other than relatives. That is Islam and that is documented.

What is a "moderate Muslim" versus what the New York Times calls a "militant" Muslim? Moderate Muslims are the ones we can buy off while the "militant" Muslims can't be bought off. Otherwise there's no difference other than degree of brutality. What about Mr. Aziz on this? In the Johnson City Press (July 28, 2008),

For example, Aziz's teenage daughter, who wears a traditional head scarf, a hijab, was shopping at J.C. Penney recently when a woman she didn't know approached her. "You need to take that thing off," she told the girl. When Aziz's daughter replied that this is a free country, the woman brusquely turned and walked away. It was a brief but telling moment.

"People shout from cars," Aziz reported. "It happened to me as I was coming out of Lowe's one day: 'Go back to Iraq!' or something to that effect. For me it's not a big thing. I'm just a person of color. But for women who wear the hijab, it's more than that."

First of all he plays the race card, which tells me what I need to know about him. Islam is not a race and Mr. Aziz and his daughter was not confronted for race. If I lived in a Muslim country I would be forced to conform to them, but Mr. Aziz got bent out of shape because people here expect him to conform to our culture. Under Muslim Law if this was a Muslim country such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Afghanistan and his Muslim daughter wasn't wearing a hijab, she would be beaten or possibly raped.

Under Muslim Law a woman that has been raped is condemned to prison, sometimes death. Other times she is often the victim of honor killings by relatives. (Google that.) In the end Aziz laments,

"Some people think (all Muslims) are somehow involved in terrorism. I can't seem to say often enough that we condemned the 9/11 attacks and that targeting civilians is against Islamic law."

Excuse me Mr. Aziz, isn't killing people over religious liberty or beating a women over a hijab not a form of terrorism? Why doesn't the Herald Courier get his positions on these issues?

In the end Rahman was spared due to foreign pressure, but the fact he was placed on trial at all is the problem. Even Mr. Aziz admits there have been no attacks on any Muslim in Tri-Cities and Muslims have been well treated here.

Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,188903,00.html

Need I remind the Bristol Herald Courier what happened with the Danish Cartoon Jihad that led to riots across the Muslim world and hundreds of deaths? When I asked the Herald Courier to print some of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in defence of freedom of the press, political correctness rules again. Is the claim of a Muslim conspiracy unfounded as the Herald Courier was so quick to imply? Let's quote the Weekly Standard 2-20-2006:

IT IS NOW ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that the recent murderous protests over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September were anything but spontaneous. The actions of Islamist agitators and financiers have deliberately drummed up rage among far-flung extremists otherwise ignorant of the Danish press.

The usual suspects--the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran--have profited from the spread of the disorders, and even the likes of tiny Kuwait has reportedly offered funds to spur demonstrations throughout France.

More important, however, and perhaps less widely understood, the cartoon jihad is tailor-made to advance the Muslim Brotherhood's long-term worldwide strategy for establishing Islamic supremacy in the West...

(A)ccording to the Moroccan daily Le Matin, the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim American Society (MAS), called on Muslims everywhere to use their economic power to punish European countries where the cartoons were published.

After French and German newspapers reprinted the controversial cartoons, MAS executive director Mahdi Bray commented, "Denmark has already paid an economic price for disrespecting Islam. If France and Germany want to be next, then so beit."

Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/704xewyj.asp

Now wait a minute, I thought all of this terrorism was just the acts of a few lone criminals and wasn't part of the Islamic mainstream? Perhaps the Herald Courier should inform Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. about that one. The MAS is not just another blog site, but a well-funded hate and propaganda machine. What's Mr. Aziz' position on freedom of the press when critical questions are involved? Does he renounce the Muslim Brotherhood and MAS?

At a blog known as QUR'AN AND JIVE ( http://quranandjive.blogspot.com/2009/01/reading-schedule.html) I quote,

Also, I recommend The Story of the Qur'an: Its History and Place in Muslim Life by Ingrid Mattson. Dr. Mattson, who is president of the Islamic Society of North America led one of the prayers at the inauguration. Both of these books are recommended by Taneem Aziz who is president of the Muslim Community of Northeast Tennessee...

According to National Review Online September 11, 2008:

Ingrid Mattson, a 45-year-old Canadian-born convert to Islam, caused an uproar in the blogosphere after she was invited by the Democratic party...The commotion stemmed from the fact that Mattson is the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was labeled last year by the U.S. Justice Department as an un-indicted co-conspirator in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas terrorism financing case.

Link: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDUyYTRhMmE5ZmQxYzU1NjM0MDBjMDM4MjM0ZWZhYmQ=

See Islamists at the Democratic Convention Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) represented Islam at the Democratic Convention. She like other groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in regards to loyalty to their nation, "People of faith have a certain kind of solidarity with others of their faith community that transcends the basic rights and duties of citizenship."

I've read Mattson's garbage and don't know if her ideas are from radical Islam or her far-left politics. Her husband is an open supporter of Muslim terrorism. It's hard to separate the far-left influence from Islamic fascism because both are working towards identical goals. I'm not accusing Mr. Aziz of anything improper, but his apparent support of Mattson raises troubling questions.

Mr. Aziz and others must renounce the Islamist cause itself, not the methods being used to achieve it. To do less simply makes condemnation of the acts empty words. He and others must separate Islamic fascism (political Islam and Sharia Law) from Islam the faith or suffer the consequences. This problem of infiltration of Islamic fascism into so many Muslim organizations that to continue to ignore this fact will hurt all Muslims.

Is Islam evil? The answer to this is in the Washington Times December 24, 2009 in a pathetic story titled Yemen still wedded to child marriages. This is the story of Sally al-Sabahi a thirteen-year-old child forced to marry a 23-year-old cousin. Like most Muslim nations she is treated as property and denied even basic human rights such as going to school. Yet to quote,

Arranged marriages for girls as young as 9 are common in many parts of Yemen. About half the women in the country are married before they are 18, according to Ahmed al-Quareshi, the head of the Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children.

The Yemeni parliament has been debating for almost a year a law that would make 17 the minimum age for marriage, but the measure is fiercely contested and has been blocked by hard-line religious leaders. "It's a part of their social structure," Mr. al-Quareshi said. "It's a tradition to allow marriage at an early age."

In fact it's an integral part of Islam and even in many countries where this is supposed to be illegal is not enforced. This has been part of Islam since Mohammed took a child as his bride and rapped her. Yes this is evil.

A religion that condones the murder of apostates, abuses women, and rapes nine-year-old girls is evil and needs to be called what it is. Islam is in need of a reformation.

In this case Sally is trying to get a divorce and yes that animal raped her. She has been on hunger strikes and threatened to kill herself to escape this horror. This is not an isolated case.

This comes from none other than that bastion of right-wing hate National Public Radio. To quote,

A photo essay featuring Afghan men and their young brides will appear in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Photographer Stephanie Sinclair, who captured the stunning images of the men with brides as young as 11 years old...

In Afghanistan, it is not uncommon for parents to give their daughters over to marriage to settle debts or resolve family or clan disputes...the practice is also deeply entrenched in Afghan culture.

Link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5541006

Again one must ask why are we in that useless country while ignoring how evil that culture is? What does Mr. Aziz think of this? Will he renounce this practice of child rape as evil? Will the Bristol Herald Courier carry a story such as this?

Unless we deal with Muslim culture and theology all the pandering in the world will change nothing. When is the press going to be that "lynch pin" of democracy they brag about and not a propaganda mill for Progressive causes sugar-coated with political correctness?


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