Radical Anti-Muslim Site FrontPageMag's Hate Affair

It’s hardly breaking news: the far-right Anti-Muslim website FrontPageMag today did what it was created to do: lie about Muslims. A piece entitled “Illinois State Government’s Muslim Brotherhood Love Affair,” written by Ray Mauro and published earlier today on the far-right website Frontpagemag, chides Governor of Illinois Pat Quinn for supposedly appointing the “Muslim Brotherhood” to his newly created Muslim Advisory Council.

The article like the website is hogwash and fraught with lies.

CAIR-Chicago, which is an independently registered 501C3 in the State of Illinois, was never designated as an unindicted Co-Conspirator.

The designation of CAIR (DC) as an unindicted Co-Conspirator was a political move by an overzealous prosecutor in the Bush Administration, it is not a finding of a court of law, it is not even a claim that can be tested in a court of law. In short it is an untested prosecutorial whim whose leaking represented a meaningless smear and a wanton violation of prosecutorial conduct, one that was severely criticized by an Appellate judge. This smear is repeated only by the far-right hacks who have no regard to the American tradition of due process. More HERE.

CAIR-Chicago is not in any way affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, or any foreign or local religious or political group. The same is true of CAIR National in DC and ISNA.

Neither Ahmed Rehab nor Safaa Zarzour are members of the Muslim Brotherhood nor ever have been. Lies about Zarzour are addressed HERE.

In fact, the opposite is true.

Rehab  has been an active participant in the Egyptian Revolution since January where he is politically aligned against the Muslim Brotherhood; he recently held a speaking tour in Egypt advocating for a liberal, secular democratic government that respected its citizens’ freedom of religion. One of the panels featured American Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison.

“Frontpagemag is a joke,” said Ahmed Rehab. “No one I know takes it seriously. It’s a tool of David Horowitz, the Grand Wizard of Islamophobia, the purveyor of other anti-Muslim platforms as the notorious JihadWatch run by his minion, Robert Spencer.

Frontpagemag is basically an echo chamber for bitter, old, extremist conservatives who hate anything that does not look or think like they do. It does not get anything right on Islam and Muslims because the people behind it are charged ideologues, not objective fact finders. They actively avoid the truth.

Like anything David Horowitz, Frontpagemag is good for one thing, comic relief. It’s not just the website’s design that’s shockingly mediocre, it’s the journalism as well – if you could call it that. I have never heard of this Ray Mauro guy, and yet he purports to profess my religious and political beliefs on my behalf. What so-called journalist writes conclusively about a subject he has never contacted? Obviously, the site does not employ professional journalists but third-rate propagandists. In this case it’s beyond propaganda, it’s flat out lies.

First of all, let me say that I am free to identity with the Muslim Brotherhood if I wanted to. And that if I did, I would be proud to declare whatever it is that I am. Anyone who knows me knows I am proud and unapologetic about my beliefs.

But that simply isn’t the case.

While I respect the right of all registered political parties in Egypt to participate in the democratic process,  I am opposed to religious political parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood. I have advocated that it is not only government that needs protection from the possibility of influence by overzealous religious despots, but also religion that needs protection from interference by an overzealous despotic government. Society is entitled to religious activity, but government is not the right tool to regulate religious life, apart from ensuring freedom of faith.

Just yesterday I voted for Amr Hamzawy, the Muslim Brotherhood’s liberal rival in the district of Heliopolis. I am comfortable revealing that because I am not just a voter but an advocate of political liberalism.

The real question to be asked is why do the radical Islamophobes so desperately wish for us to be Muslim Brotherhood?

Those who are bitter about our success and hope to curb it by spreading lies should prepare to be disappointed."