SNICKERSNEE
To the Public Editor and Executive Editor, New York Times:
Dear Sirs:
Dear Sirs:
There are many liberal Americans for whom the issue of Islamic terrorism is quite marginal compared to the nonviolent daily expressions of hate and suppression of free speech indulged in by Muslims and their organizations. Let me be specific:
--in Oregon, a woman who half jokingly proposed an internet Mohammed cartoon conteSt received so many death threats that she now lives anonymously;
--the creators of South Park received many similar death threats for minor mocking of Islam;
--the former Israel ambassador to the USA, Michael Oren, was shouted down and driven from the podium of a Univ. of California-Irvine lecture last year by the Muslim Students' Association, a known affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood.
--Nonie Darwish, a noted Muslim author, was prevented from speaking at Rutgers University by Muslim students and with the accession of the college administration;
--secular and former Muslims in this country live and write under pseudonyms because of death threats spurred by the Koran mandate of death for apostates;
--a San Francisco rally a few years back featured anti- Semitic shouts of "Jews are our dogs" but the media never reported it; chants of "Death to the Jews" are rife at rallies around the world;
--honor killings that have taken place in this country are rarely if ever publicized even though they stem directly from Muslim practices;
--in the Muslim world, Christians are subjugated, prohibited from building churches, often assassinated, and in Egypt Christian Copt churches are being burned;
--all major newspapers and publishers in this country, save one, refused to publish the Danish cartoons; the one that did (Free Inquiry) was pulled from the stands by Borders Books; Yale University Press forced the author of a book on the Mohammed cartoons to remove them from the book before publication;
--numerous reports on the stoning and/or live burial of women in Pakistan and forcedchild marriages and elsewhere are ignored by the media even though they are routine in the Muslim world;
--a concerted organized effort to conduct "Lawfare", spearheaded by CAIR and other groups in this country, is aimed at using the law as a weapon of war to explicitly UNDERMINE laws protecting freedom of expression and promote indefensible international policies such as the UN Human Rights Council resolution to ban any and all criticism of Islam; the Lawfare Project in NYC has held several conferences with prominent respected lawyers, diplomats,former government officials, and international political researchers giving the details on this ongoing campaign. Yet not one newspaper has seen fit to discuss their important work.
These are the tip of an ugly, growing iceberg in this country. Abroad in the Arab and Muslim world, anti-Semitism is broadcast and published as official government and mosque doctrine. These are well documented, as are the connections of many American mosques to the Muslim Brotherhood and in some cases to Hamas,as documented by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Walid Phares, ex-terroristTawfik Hamid, and others; pro-Palestinian groups such as Code Pink, supporters of Hamas, sponsor "Israel Apartheid Week" and compare Israel to Nazi Germany, as detailed by feminist Phyllis Chesler in her recent blog.
On the other side, not one Muslim American has been able to demonstrate that Muslims have been personally slandered or threatened, or that they have been deprived of their civil liberties and civil rights, including their right to worship, speak and assemble. NOT ONE. Aside from one attack on a mosque, there have been no attempts to silence or threaten them individually or as a body. They receive more protections and rights in this country than in their countries of origin. Unike ex-Muslims, they live freely while baselessly complaining of "Islamophobia" whenever their religious tenets are criticized. Notably, despite the numerous media exposes of Catholic pedophile priests, no Catholic has complained that these reports constitute a hatred of Catholics.
To the contrary, Muslims continue to seek special treatment and exemption from civil law based on their religion, privileges not granted to other religions. They demand halal food in schools, have refused to take passengers in their taxis because they possessed alcohol or a dog, demand footbaths at universities, and demand special women-only swimming days. They continue to insist on the right of women to cover their faces in courtrooms and are now seeking exemptions from airport security X-rays or pat-downs if they refuse these.
There are many of us, liberals, leftists, centrists, etc. who are concerned at the single minded focus on the possibility of terrorist acts, a focus of some groups but also of our own government. We believe that the more serious threats are those from "stealthjihad", the attempts by Muslims to overturn or exempt themselves from civil laws and break down the barrier between religion and state.
While nonMuslims here and in Europe are blamed, falsely, for alienating Muslims, in fact it is the self-isolation of Muslims and their refusal to assimilate or accept the laws of their new country that is the problem. This was underlined recently by Turkey's president Erdogan in a visit toGermany, home of many Turks, where he urged them NOT to assimilate and to learn Turkish before they learn German. There is a serious and reasonable question as to whether observant Muslims place the Koran and sharia law above the US Constitution and civil society laws. Someone needs to question them about this more closely, especially in view of the refusal of some Muslim soldiers to participate in actions that could involve invading Muslim countries or killing Muslims. The case of Col. Hasan and his killing of American soldiers was without a doubt related to this. The fact is that the Koran is regarded as the supreme law for all Muslims, superseding all others.
Your newspaper continues to be delinquent in reporting the real threats to ourConstitution and civil liberties, especially those to freedom of expression. Most of us do not care whether Muslim women cover their heads or whether Muslims pray five times a day or eat halal food or make apilgrimage to Mecca. We DO care when they intimidate universities to silence dissent, try to deprive us of OUR freedom of speech and the laws of our secular democracy, continue to regard women as inferior and unequal to men, and when they disseminate hateful anti-Semitic ideas while demanding the right to issue hate speech themselves against Jews.
You owe it to democracy, freedom and the integrity of your publication to open your eyes and tell the truth about what is really going on instead of publishing incomplete yellow journalism about a few loud groups like Act for America.
Sincerely,
Lorna Salzman
Brooklyn NY