Gilroyan refutes connections made by readers and columnist
There has been quite an exchange of opinion in the local newspapers lately with regards to the proposed new Islamic Cordoba Center in San Martin. People have expressed their views both for and against this center in a public dialogue that is a hallmark of our free and healthy democratic society. Although there have been some spiteful comments toward Muslims as part of this discourse, none have been so laced in malice and so far from the truth as the two recent columns by Cynthia Walker.
Ms. Walker’s deep contempt for Muslims permeates her every sentence in what amounts to a repugnant campaign to denigrate and defame American Muslims.
Ms. Walker’s revulsion for Muslims is rooted so deep in her psyche that even our obvious good deeds are met with suspicion. She accuses Muslims of not speaking out against terrorism, yet at the same time she sets out on a crusade to discredit and defame those Muslim organizations that openly speak out against injustice and terrorism. It is sad to see Ms. Walker resort to shoddy tactics in her quest to distort the truth and negatively influence opinions of the local residents. She makes no distinction between facts and opinions, presenting her opinions and those of others as a matter of fact. Her investigative work has largely been limited to visiting well known anti-Muslim and Islamophobic web sites on the Internet and extracting sound bites to be used as “news” in her own column. When presenting information Ms. Walker offers no clue to the source of that information (for obvious reasons) and where she occasionally does offer credit that information is insidiously presented out of context. Let’s examine her claims for a minute:
In her Sept. 8 column, Ms. Walker claims that American Muslim Alliance has provided funds to the terrorist organization Hamas. Is that your own personal opinion, Ms. Walker, or is it a matter of fact? If opinion, what is your basis for that statement and if fact, what is the source of that information?
In the same column Ms. Walker states that the American Muslim Council’s leadership has openly supported terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. She also quoted an Associated Press article dated 1/9/02 in support of her statement. However what Ms. Walker didn’t tell us is the fact that those remarks were made long before Hamas and Hezbollah were considered terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department. Accusing the leadership of American Muslim Council of sponsoring terror on the basis of those remarks, presented out of context, would be akin to declaring the U.S. government as a terror sponsor because it has aided and abetted many organizations and countries that it later labeled as terrorists.
Remember Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous visit with Saddam Hussein and our administration’s support of Iraq with chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction? Does that make Mr. Rumsfeld a terrorist and the U.S. government a terror sponsor? Many other similar instances come to mind but I think my point is quite clear.
In the same column Ms. Walker states that the founders of the Muslim American Society are also on the board of directors of the Muslim Brotherhood, which she labels “a terror sponsoring group.” I spent quite a bit of time searching the web sites that had any discernable association with the Muslim Brotherhood organization but I could not find any evidence of the founders of Muslim American Society to be on the board of directors of the Muslim Brotherhood. A little perplexed, I then went on to the U.S. State Department’s web page that lists all the terrorist and terror sponsoring organizations and guess what? I could not find Muslim Brotherhood on any of their lists. So much for Ms. Walker’s “terror sponsoring group!”
Unfortunately Ms. Walker could not find any dirt on another of her targeted organization, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, so she grudgingly labeled it a “propaganda mill.” I have to give her credit for identifying that remark as her personal opinion.
Ms. Walker’s misinformation and smear campaign against the American Muslims continued in a following column. She starts her column by trying to soften her inherent anti-Muslim sentiments by mentioning her Muslim brother-in-law from Syria whom she likes because he is not a devout, practicing Muslim. She then goes on to praise the Al Hurra broadcast network.
Considering her biased views on Muslims and Arabs, I was surprised to see her admiration of an Arabic language TV Network. To understand this inconsistency, I researched the Al Hurra network that earned Ms. Walker’s praise. What I found didn’t surprise me. Al Hurra, behind its private ownership veil, is a right wing U.S. government sponsored and funded TV channel based outside Washington D.C. It’s a mouthpiece for the neo-conservative perspective (read propaganda) on world events. So much for the sponsorship of free speech … !
In the same column Ms. Walker mentions a self-proclaimed counter-terrorism expert, Laura Mansfield, who allegedly attended two lectures at a “local mosque” where she found the English lecture to be conciliatory and about promoting peace while the Arabic lecture was as incitement to kill infidels. Being a Muslim and one who has lived in the Bay Area for 17 years, I have visited many mosques in the area. American Muslims are a very diverse group and a vast majority of us (about 75 percent) do not speak Arabic.
Virtually all public lectures in the mosques are given in English, being the language of the land, in order to reach the greater audience. So it struck me as a bit odd that someone would actually deliver a lecture in Arabic at any substantive gathering.
Nonetheless, I decided to find out more about these lectures. After several days of calling and talking to Imams at various mosques around the Bay Area as well as checking the local news sources, I came up empty. I could not substantiate that any such lecture(s) ever occurred in the Bay Area. However, in poking around for news, I did come across a column (dated 4/4/06) by Laura Mansfield in the California Republic in which she tries to link Islamic extremists with the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal building.
Wow … and here I was thinking that case was already investigated by the federal authorities and convictions handed down to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, both associated with an anti-government militia. But then again I and the millions of other Americans could be wrong – perhaps McVeigh and Nichols were Al-Qaeda operatives disguised as militia!
Finally there is a crown jewel in Ms. Walker’s delusory expedition: Ms. Walker states that “the 61 percent of Dispatch web poll respondents who would reject the plans for the mosque because of its Muslim affiliation have legitimate cause for concern.” I have some bad news for Ms. Walker and some good news for those who cherish tolerance and pluralism. The Dispatch web poll of 6/1/07 shows that nearly 70 percent of the respondents had NO cause of concern regarding the mosque’s Muslim affiliation. In fact the same web poll run on 6/7/07 by the Morgan Hill Times resulted in an even larger 78 percent of the respondents that rejected the idea of denying the mosque based on its Muslim affiliation. These stats can been checked on the Dispatch and Morgan Hill Times web archives.
I hope that Ms. Walker would understand that the right of free speech also comes with its rules and responsibilities. Using that right to wage a belligerent campaign of slander, hate and fear toward fellow citizens in not only an abuse of free speech privileges, but also makes a travesty of our values.
Columnist Ben Anderson, in one of his recent columns, made a very poignant observation that “nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.” To that end, I hope that Ms. Walker would make an effort to attend the Mosque Open House, an event open to the public and hosted by the South Valley Islamic Community, on the eve of Sept. 29 at the Lions Club in San Martin. That will be an excellent opportunity for her to investigate her concerns and learn more about the people she despises so much yet knows so little about.
Guest columnist Sal Akhter is a Gilroy resident. Anyone interested in writing a guest column may contact Editor Mark Derry at ed****@****ic.com
