SPLC takes down their “Field Guide” to
anti-Muslim extremists, by Ann Corcoran 4/20/18
Possibly
getting wind of an upcoming lawsuit the Southern Poverty Law Center has apparently blinked
and removed their October 2016 “Field
Guide,” that included yours truly, from their website.
The SPLC listed Nawaz as an anti-Muslim
extremist and he is reportedly planning to sue them.
The Field Guide was
meant to let the media know who they were supposed to shun when seeking comment
on anything to do with Islam.
If
you visit my post on the ‘honor’ here you
will see that the link to the news no longer works.
However,
as pointed out by National Review writer Jack Crowe, the pdf version is
still available. Download it now for further reference!
The
list of “extremists” besides me, included: Steve Emerson, Brigitte Gabriel,
Frank Gaffney, Pamela Geller, John Guandolo, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, David Horowitz,
Ryan Mauro, Robert Muise, Maajid Nawas, Daniel Pipes, Walid Shoebat, Robert
Spencer, and David Yerushalmi.
As
I said previously,
I don’t really belong in such an august group. My real ‘sin’ is that I
was getting under the skin of the Hebrew
Immigrant Aid Society, one of the nine major federal
refugee contractors and a close ally of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
On
learning of the honor, I said this: By the
way, it was a study by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, here in 2013, that
directed the SPLC to focus on my work. I wrote about it here. Inclusion on the list meant that I must have really hit a nerve at
HIAS.
Below
is what Crowe reported yesterday at National Review (hat tip: Judy): The Southern Poverty Law Center has removed the “Field Guide to
Anti-Muslim Extremists” from their website after attorneys for Maajid Nawaz, a
practicing Muslim and prominent Islamic reformer, threatened legal action over
his inclusion on the list.
The guide was meant to be a handy
reference for lazy biased ‘journalists.’
The report, which had been active on the SPLC’s website since it was
published in December 2016, was intended to serve as a resource for journalists
to identify promoters of hateful propaganda; but it included a number of
liberal reformers such as Nawaz, a former Islamic extremist who has since
dedicated his life to combating the hateful ideology.
“A
shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news
programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they
routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make
Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining
American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go
uncontested,” the report, which still exists in PDF form, reads.
Nawaz,
who founded the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam, said during a Wednesday
night appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, a popular podcast hosted by
comedian Joe Rogan, that the
report was removed from the SPLC website under legal threat sometime in the
last two days.
“We
have retained Clare Loch, they are writing to the Southern Poverty Law Center
as we speak. I think
they’ve got wind of it, the Southern Poverty Law Center and as of yesterday, or
the day before, they’ve removed the entire list that’s been up there for two
years,” Nawaz said on the podcast.
Nawaz
— informed by his experience as a former member of a global terror organization
and a political prisoner in Egypt, routinely criticizes the fundamentalist
interpretation of Islam that gives rise to terrorism. As a result of that work,
the SPLC and a coalition of partner organizations that helped create the list
accused him of “savaging Islam.”
Ayaan
Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born liberal feminist who fled her home country amid civil
war and now works at the Hoover Institution, was also branded an “anti-Muslim
extremist” by the SPLC.
Go here for
more of the National
Review report and to follow links.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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