Day: April 10, 2010

Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) supports our universal human rights of freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and freedom of worship for ALL people — without exception.

We are concerned by the transatlantic effort by a European-based group to promote anti-Islam hatred in America.  While R.E.A.L. challenges religious extremist views that defy human rights, we reject those who seek to promote hatred of religious identity groups.  Last September 2009, R.E.A.L. reported on the efforts of American group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) that was founded based on a European group Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE), whose motto is “Islamophobia is the highest form of common sense.”

R.E.A.L. reported on the original SIOA efforts included documenting the plans by the American branch SIOA, led by Daniel (“DL”) and Kendra Adams, had announced efforts to seek to disrupt a Muslim public prayer session in Washington DC on Capitol Hill on September 25, 2009,with animals.

But FOX News reported that it held an event at the Rayburn Congressional Office building instead.   FOX News reported: “There was also no denying that the day of prayer attracted some individuals and groups fanatical in their hatred of Muslims. At a separate event, held simultaneously in a conference room at the Rayburn House Office Building, a group calling itself Stop Islamization of America warned about the supposedly hateful, violent, and anti-Western teachings of the Koran.”   The SIOA is in the process of changing websites and the old SIOA leaders have been deleting posts there, so our link to their announcement to their September 25, 2009 SIOA event is from another group.  Another FOX News report on the Muslim prayer session stated “the most organized pushback so far is from a new organization of a nativist bent called Stop Islamization of America, or SIOA.”   The FOX News report said that “SIOA is using Friday’s event, ‘Islam on Capitol Hill,’ as a launchpad for the group and to stage a counterprotest.”  (Update: screen shot added of SIOA event invitation).

INN reported that the original SIOA plans to disrupt Muslim prayer on Capitol Hill on the SIOA website stated “every protest of this takiya-jihad-dawa event… [to] include some component of donkey, dog, and women.”  INN also reported “The reason for this unusual suggestion is made clear on the SIOA site as well: Muslim doctrine, according to the SIOA, says that ‘Islamic prayer is nullified if a dog, a woman, or a donkey are present.'”

However, thankfully for America tolerance and religious freedoms, the SIOA plans to use their protest against Muslim prayer in Washington DC did not constitute a launchpad for the organization.

The European group Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE) seeks to revive the SIOA, however, by appointing new leaders and creating a new website and Facebook page to help the reorganization of the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) group.

The SIOE group stated: “On April 2, 2010, the Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) group leader Anders Gravers reported “We have now formed a new board for SIOA. The new board of SIOA is: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Stephen Gash and Anders Gravers. The leaders of SIOA are Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. Stephen and I have discussed for quite some time the fact that SIOA has not developed in the direction we wanted. There are groups enough who just write about the danger of Islam, but very few groups that actually do something to try to stop the Islamisation of the Western civilization. SIOA was meant to be a group that should take action, staging demonstrations, happenings and events against the Islamisation of the U.S. The way Stephen and I see it, we need to make SIOA more active. And in order to do that, we have now — after working for a long time to persuade them to take this on — gotten a yes from both Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer to become the leaders of SIOA. We think they are the right people to bring SIOA to the forefront in the fight against the Islamisation of the U.S.”

(Update: screen shot of SIOE posting on new SIOA leaders included).

In Europe and the United Kingdom, the Europe SIOE group has lead anti-Islam protests against mosques.

In the United Kingdom, the SIOE has had two protests in front of Harrow Central Mosque in September 2009 and December 2009. In the September 2009 SIOE protests at the Harrow mosque, there was violence between supporters and counter protesters, as SIOE protest supporters went to the mosque chanting “Muslims out” while anti-SIOE opponents shouted back. In the December 2009 SIOE protest at the Harrow mosque, the SIOE reportedly refused the opportunity to dialogue with leaders of the Harrow mosque.

Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) has repeatedly stated our opposition to the SIOA and to the SIOE.  (Update: For the record, R.E.A.L. has reached out to these two new leaders of the SIOA and urged them NOT to get involved with the anti-Islam political activist SIOA group, as we can only see this as a source of significant division in America, as we have seen in Europe.)

R.E.A.L. rejects the SIOE’s protests against houses of worship, and we reject protests and attempts to intimidate worshipers at any house of worship.

Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) has made its position clear on those who promote “Islamophobia” as the parent group of the SIOA, Stop Islamization of Europe does. We are not afraid. While we challenge those religious extremist of ANY religion that seek to deny our universal human rights, we will not attack or demonize any religion or any identity group.

R.E.A.L. has also made its position clear on those who seek to only promote “Western civilization” as SIOA states that it does. R.E.A.L. supports our universal human rights for all people, everywhere, including our freedom of religion and freedom from religion for all.

On the previous SIOA website, a leader and attendee at a European SIOE event stated that “multiculturalism, tolerance, and ‘niceness’ are destroying the foundations of our cultures,” but that misses the point. In fact, our iberties are based not on individual “cultures,” but on our universal human rights of equality and liberty.

Our challenge to groups and ideologies that defy such universal human rights are not because we reject diverse cultures, not because we reject tolerance, and not because we reject “niceness.” Our challenge to groups and ideologies that defy such universal human rights is because we consistently support universal human rights as being Responsible for Equality And Liberty.

That includes challenging those who promote “Islamophobia.”

We urge all to be Responsible for Equality And Liberty.