Hundreds of French nationalists have demonstrated in Paris against Islamist extremism, chanting the French anthem and saying the religion has no place in the country.

Protester Romain Cyiril says, "France was always a welcoming country, but for the first time we have to deal with a religion which can’t and doesn't want to integrate itself."

Three weeks ago, dozens of far-right French activists stormed an unfinished mosque to protest immigration policies that have made France home to Western Europe's largest population of Muslims. There are an estimated 5 million or more Muslims in this nation of 65 million, although under French law the government does not track religion.

Saturday's protest was organized by a nationalist group called the Republican Resistance.

Associated Press, 10 November 2012

Résistance Républicaine is a front organisation for Riposte Laïque, a rabidly Islamophobic website that was founded by an ex-Trotskyist named Pierre Cassen. Cassen and another Riposte Laïque contributor received heavy fines in March this year after being convicted of inciting hatred against Muslims.

Despite the leftist origins of some of its leading members, Riposte Laïque is notorious for working with sections of the far right on the basis of a common hatred of Islam. In July, Cassen was a featured speaker at the International Civil Liberties Alliance conference at the European Parliament, along with Stephen Lennon of the English Defence League.

Among the organisations participating in the Résistance Républicaine demonstration were the MNR and the Union des Français juifs, which supported Marine Le Pen's candidacy in the presidential election.

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U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., was named Thursday to the citizens advisory board of an Ann Arbor-based legal center that fights for conservative Christian causes.

The appointment of Bachmann, who dropped out of the presidential primary in January, brings another high-profile conservative to the Thomas More Law Center, which increasingly has focused on Islam in recent years. In May, the center named U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., whose views also have sparked controversy, to the advisory board.

"I am pleased to join forces with the Thomas More Law Center," Bachmann said Thursday. "They are in the courts aggressively fighting the internal threat to America posed by radical Islam."

Richard Thompson, the center's president and chief counsel, said that Bachmann "puts country before politics."

"She understands the threat of radical Islam," Thompson said. "We share her concerns regarding the stealth jihad that's being perpetrated against the United States."

Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that Bachmann is a "perfect fit" for the board. "Since Michigan has been a target of nationwide of anti-Islam campaigns, it makes sense that Bachmann would join a Michigan-based group ... openly hostile to the Islamic faith."

Detroit Free Press, 4 August 2012

The Thomas More Law Center has acted on behalf of mad Pamela Geller and Qur'an-burning pastor Terry Jones, whose loopy views it entirely shares.

In an interview with WorldNetDaily earlier this year Richard Thompson stated: "Islam is more than a religion. It is a political ideology that regulates every aspect of human existence and calls for the Islamic domination of the world. Since radical Muslims know they can never defeat our military on the battlefield, they devised the strategy of internal subversion."

He added: "Like the ancient Trojan Horse welcomed within the city's gates, Islam has entered America disguised as a religion. But its ultimate objective is political: Destroy America and establish an Islamic nation under Shariah law. So while America sleeps, they are awake and subverting our government, as well as our public schools and universities. And we will not be deterred from our efforts to stop them."

See also Alex Seitz-Wald, "Keith Ellison slams Bachmann's 'galling' witch hunt", Salon, 4 August 2012

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The Islamophobic blogosphere continues to set new standards in craziness. This poses some problems for those of us dedicated to combating it. The traditional reference to Melanie Phillips as "Mad Mel" now seems outdated since, compared with Pamela Geller, Phillips appears almost balanced and rational. And Geller, in turn, is outbid in the competition for sheer lunacy by Bonni Benstock-Intall of Bare Naked Islam. As quick scroll through her blog will confirm, "Bonkers Bonni" doesn't even begin to cover it.

A couple of weeks back the Maniac Muslim website posted a spoof article titled "IKEA Sponsors Masjid". Anyone with half a brain could spot that it was satirical. But that obviously excludes Bonni Benstock-Intall. In a post at The American Muslim ("The Maniac Muslim, Masjid IKEA, and Bare Naked Islamophobia") Sheila Musaji draws our attention to a truly demented post at Bare Naked Islam in which Benstock-Intall swallowed whole the story about the IKEA-sponsored masjid. ("Well, IKEA IS Swedish and we know how happy the Swedes are about the dramatic spike in rapes of Swedish women by Muslim men.")

"At this point", Shelia Musaji wrote yesterday, "her article has 33 comments from her devoted readers – all of them fitting this profile – I'll never shop at IKEA again, Florida Family Association should set up a boycott, corporations like this are 'betraying' America and are 'vile freedom-HATERS who are joining other corporations to DESTROY our freedom and human rights'."

Benstock-Intall did subsequently add a warning to her readers that "as I have not been able to verify this story, it may be a satire" (well, duh, yes – just possibly) followed by an announcement that comments were closed. The entire post has now been deleted. However, it can still be found over at a site rejoicing in the name of the Infidel News Network and screenshots of the original post at Bare Naked Islam, along with the comments it provoked, can be viewed here.

As Sheila Musaji points out, it is revealing that "even something as ludicrous as this stirs up the Islamophobic base to a hysterical pitch". These people really have taken leave of their senses.

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Tea party and anti-Muslim activists are taking aim at a recent hire by the administration of Gov. Bill Haslam, targeting one of its top economic development officers based on her religion and past work experience.

The Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C., organization that has frequently attacked Muslims for perceived ties to Islamist groups, and the 8th District Tea Party Coalition, an umbrella organization of West Tennessee tea party groups, have urged their members to pressure Haslam and Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty to dump Samar Ali, an attorney appointed last month as the department's new international director.

The groups depict Ali as an Islamic fundamentalist with close ties to President Barack Obama. The claims are spurious and ECD has no intention of firing Ali, said Clint Brewer, a department spokesman. "She's eminently qualified to do the job," Brewer said. "We are lucky to be able to have her."

The pressure campaign, which began last Thursday with a posting on a Center for Security Policy blog, does not appear to have been effective. Brewer said ECD has received fewer than two dozen emails and phone calls. David Smith, a spokesman for Haslam, said his office had received 18 emails and 13 calls, all of them before Tuesday.

The Center for Security Policy has frequently involved itself in Tennessee politics in recent years. Its head, Frank Gaffney, testified in litigation seeking to stop construction of a Rutherford County mosque. An attorney associated with the organization drafted legislation that would have let Tennessee officials label as terrorist any organization that follows Shariah, a loosely defined set of rules and religious laws.

Tea party and anti-Muslim activists have zeroed in on one aspect of Ali's resume: experience as a corporate lawyer in helping Muslim-owned companies structure deals so they fit Islam's ban on collecting interest and comply with other religious rules. In their calls to action, opponents portray her as working, now and in the past, with "financial jihadists" who "seek to embed Shariah law into America's financial system."

Ali's duties have nothing to do with Shariah law – or even finance – Brewer said. As international director, Ali oversees the department's TNTrade program, an effort to boost the state's exports. She also supervises the department's four branch offices, in Canada, China, Germany and Japan.

The Tennessean, 13 June 2012

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Germany's Salafist Muslims are back in the spotlight. Since early May, hardly a week has gone by without another regional or national politician in the country proposing new ways to counter the group's extremist version of Islam or a major German newspaper publishing yet another exposé on the group's insular isolation from the mainstream. Just on Friday, interior ministers from Germany's 16 states, at a regularly scheduled conference with federal Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, resolved to be increasingly firm in their dealings with the Salafists.

Such hand-wringing in Germany about its Muslim population, extremist or otherwise, is not uncommon. This one, however, is different. Far from being an accidental upheaval of angst resulting from the publication of a book by the likes of the anti-immigration treatise by Germany's provocateur-in-chief Thilo Sarrazin or comments from the country's top politicians, its timing and nature was determined far from the country's conventional opinion makers. It is a particularly unique case of the tail wagging the dog – and in this case, the tail is the tiny, Islamophobic political party Pro-NRW.

Spiegel Online, 1 June 2012

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Gaffney and GellerIncreasing anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. has shown enormous growth in the past two years, leading the Southern Poverty Law Center to mention three notorious Islamophobes on their list of "30 new activists heading up the radical right."

The SPLC finds that "[a]n anti-Muslim movement, almost entirely ginned up by political opportunists and hard-line Islamophobes, has grown enormously since taking off in 2010, when reported anti-Muslim hate crimes went up by 50%."

The anti-Muslim activists, who all play a prominent role in the Center for American Progress' report, "Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America," play pivotal roles as misinformation experts and online activists, stirring up Islamophobic fears across the country.

Think Progress, 24 May 2012

The three notorious Islamophobes are Frank Gaffney, Pamela Geller and David Yerushalmi.

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The mayor of  Molenbeek, Philippe Moureaux (Parti Socialiste), has made some very harsh remarks about the RTBF [Radio Télévision Belge Francophone] journalists who made the "Questions à la Une" programme broadcast last Wednesday and titled "Should we fear Islam?", speaking of "manipulation of information" and going so far as to characterise the authors as "racists" and "Islamophobes".

"This is a totally outrageous programme", he said in a telephone interview broadcast on Maghreb TV, saying that he was "absolutely furious" that his contribution has been censored, "in order to maliciously show only unpleasant images and provide a platform for well-known Islamophobes".

"Not a single positive image was chosen", added the mayor of Molenbeek, the town where a large part of the programme was filmed. "To present that [the fact that some women wear the veil in the town despite a long-established ban] as an image that shows the rise of Islamism is straightforward manipulation", he continued.

Molenbeek has some 94,000 inhabitants, of whom a large part are of North African origin. "It is a community who deserve the greatest respect. And just because there are some people whose behaviour we don't like that is no reason to condemn the whole community."

"Antisemitism once achieved success by these sort of methods. This is also how Goebbels tried to attack Jews, just as some people now attack Muslims," the senator-mayor declared. "I realise that I have only served as a foil to racists and Islamophobes", M. Moureaux concluded in the interview which was posted on YouTube on Thursday.

Le Vif, 17 April 2012

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