On Friday, August 26, I saw a report online about the "creators" of Islamophobia in the mainstream media. The report was entitled "Fear, Inc.: the Roots of Islamophobia Network in America". It is a well-written and to-the-point document penned by Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and Faiz Shakir, a group of erudite researchers.
There are, the report states, several (seven) charitable groups who provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009.
• Donors Capital Fund
• Richard Mellon Scaife foundations
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust
• Russell Berrie Foundation
• Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund
• Fairbrook Foundation
Due in part to the relentless efforts of this small group of individuals and organizations, Islam is now the most negatively viewed religion in America. Only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Islam: the lowest favorability rating since 2001, according to a 2010 ABC News/Washington Post poll. According to a 2010 Time magazine poll, 28 percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and nearly one-third of the country thinks followers of Islam should be barred from running for president.
(Alex Altman, “Time Poll: Majority Oppose Mosque, Many Distrust Muslims,” Time magazine, August 19, 2010), available at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2011799,00.htm
For example, Middle East Forum can be seen as a grant recipient in a list published by Donors Capital Fund, who granted $2,300,000 to MEF. The Forum also gets $5,963,246 in sum from six different foundations. https://www.donorstrust.org/dcf/home.html?x=6
These groups generously contributed to the fear-mongering websites and interestingly enough, an article published on Goose Network website many months ago actually was talking about the same thing. Let us read an excerpt from this article:
Online advertisements. Below you clearly see that Meforum (Middle East Forum) currently runs 329 different ads on Google. As webmasters say, on average one spends at least $500-600 per month for an ad. Multiply 500 by 329 and you get $164,500 per month !! Even if you say they spend $100 per add, it ends up to $32,900 per month! Whatever the real number is, it raises concerns of why someone would spend this much on racist and hate oriented ads.
Online ads against Fethullah Gulen from Middle East Forum. Click here to see all their ads.
As I have explained earlier, Meforum is the mother-ship website for the vicious bloggers of Goose Network. Those bloggers spread MEforum’s links all over the web creating havoc in the cyberspace.
As I have explained earlier, Meforum is the mother-ship website for the vicious bloggers of Goose Network. Those bloggers spread MEforum’s links all over the web creating havoc in the cyberspace.
When I talked about the serious stances of the fear-mongering and xenophobic websites, I was actually pointing out those people and their websites operating behind the curtain. People like Donna Garner are basing their arguments on those alarmist websites. That is why, I have been trying to show the silly labeling of those attackers when they coin a new concept such as Gulen Charter Schools. Talking about, for example, Harmony Science Academy and changing the name of the school into Gulen Charter School is not something favorable. Just showing some empathy with the attacked people will suffice.
Besides, there is an interesting point in the report about so-called Gulen Charter Schools: "At its 2011 Eagle Forum conference in St. Louis, Missouri, for example, Gabriel, Gaffney, and others in the network revealed a new supposed threat: Muslim Gulen schools, which they claim would educate children through the lens of Islam and teach them to “hate Americans.” Worse, the speakers alleged that President Obama’s support for charter school reforms was a back-door strategy for using taxpayer money to fund the schools. Of course, Gulen schools are nothing of the sort. They are the product of moderate Turkish Muslim educators who want “a blend of religious faith and largely western curriculum.”"
Besides, there is an interesting point in the report about so-called Gulen Charter Schools: "At its 2011 Eagle Forum conference in St. Louis, Missouri, for example, Gabriel, Gaffney, and others in the network revealed a new supposed threat: Muslim Gulen schools, which they claim would educate children through the lens of Islam and teach them to “hate Americans.” Worse, the speakers alleged that President Obama’s support for charter school reforms was a back-door strategy for using taxpayer money to fund the schools. Of course, Gulen schools are nothing of the sort. They are the product of moderate Turkish Muslim educators who want “a blend of religious faith and largely western curriculum.”"
Anyway you can download the report, so I will not go into detail for now, but this report is clearly the evidence of the ill-intentioned people's ignorant attacks on innocent people.
Let me finish with this quotation from the authors of the report:
"Breivik’s manifesto contains numerous footnotes and in-text citations to American bloggers and pundits, quoting them as experts on Islam’s “war against the West.” This small group of anti-Muslim organizations and individuals in our nation is obscure to most Americans but wields great influence in shaping the national and international political debate. Their names are heralded within communities that are actively organizing against Islam and targeting Muslims in the United States.
Breivik, for example, cited Robert Spencer, one of the anti-Muslim misinformation scholars we profile in this report, and his blog, Jihad Watch, 162 times in his manifesto. Spencer’s website, which “tracks the attempts of radical Islam to subvert Western culture,” boasts another member of this Islamophobia network in America, David Horowitz, on his Freedom Center website. Pamela Geller, Spencer’s frequent collaborator, and her blog, Atlas Shrugs, was mentioned 12 times."
