Since I wrote my last post about Fox News’ attack on Democratic Congressman Andre Carson, at least two more smear segments have been run against him, each with the obvious aim of making him look like some kind of radical and/or Muslim extremist. Mind you, none of the shows presented any actual research to report on just what kind of Congressman he truly he is. Instead, we got inflammatory sound bites and incendiary accusations.
The genesis of this particular spate of attacks was a clip from a speech Carson, a Muslim, gave to a Muslim group. In that speech, he said the United States needs to be “looking at” the madrassa model of education for innovation and ingenuity.
America will never win the war against terrorism without help from the Muslim community. America will never tap into educational innovation and ingenuity without looking at the model that we have in our madrassas, in our schools, where innovation is encouraged, where the foundation is the Koran. And that model that we are pushing in some of our schools meets the multiple needs of students. …I have found that we need an educational model that is current, that meets the needs of our students. America must understand that she needs Muslims.
Last Thursday, conspiracy-theorist extraordinaire Monica Crowley, guest hosting the Hannity show, wasted no time using that quote to suggest Carson is in cahoots with the Muslim Brotherhood working “to undermine America from within, to install sharia and so on… This is not some crazy guy on a box standing on Fifth Avenue advocating this. This is a U.S. member of Congress… Doesn’t this raise concerns about the kind of infiltration that we have been talking about?” She made absolutely no effort to report on whether or not Carson is in fact aligned with the group or what his actual views are on the role of Islam in America. Instead, she deliberately piled on the hate mongering by saying, that he “throw(s) firebombs from his perch in the U.S. Congress all the time.”
The next night, Laura Ingraham, guest hosting The O’Reilly Factor acknowledged a statement from Carson saying otherwise but she repeated the Fox News meme that Carson wants the U.S. to model schools after Muslim schools. In fact, she took it one step further by saying, “It should be noted that many of the Taliban were educated in madrassas in Pakistan, of course, hotbeds of recruiting for terrorism around the world.”
So now Ingraham was suggesting, without a single fact to support it, that Carson wants to enable the Taliban. It’s the old “Cavuto mark” but taken to extremes. And in the “no spin zone” no less. She did host a Muslim guest to offer his “reaction” and his take - which was also my take - was that Carson was not advocating radical Islam for America but saying that the U.S. could benefit from some of the practices of Muslim schools. “That statement in and of itself is not controversial,” guest Harris Zafar said.
And Ingraham even seemed to acknowledge that Zafar’s interpretation sounded reasonable. She said that Carson went to Catholic school and had “an interesting background.” She steered the discussion into the supposed “hypocrisy” of the left which would have theoretically attacked Carson had he said the same thing about a Judeo-Christian education.
Last night, Sean Hannity revisited this topic on his show – and still there wasn’t a single bit more reporting. “This is just one more outrageous statement that came from the Congressman,” Hannity said. Coincidentally, this is one more attack on an African American from Hannity. For further demonization of Carson, Hannity immediately followed up his last statement with, “Meanwhile, a top Muslim Brotherhood official in Egypt is again calling for jihad against Israel.” Once again, there was a suggestion of a connection without bothering to offer any facts to show it as so.
If Fox News really believes that Carson is somehow working to institute sharia law or inculcate radical Muslims into the American educational system, that would be a huge story worth investigating. And yet, like the “unvetted Obama” meme often heard on Fox News, the network has not come up with a thing beyond a provocative sound bite and some agitating innuendo.
If there really was some substance behind the implication, wouldn’t Fox have come up with it already? Don’t they owe it to their viewers to inform them of all the facts surrounding such a frightening possibility? The glaring lack of investigation strongly points to a likelihood that there is nothing to report and Fox knows it.
These segments may not ultimately reveal very much about Congressman Carson but they do reveal something very clearly about Fox: that it is an organization that is more interested in maligning an outspoken, African American, Muslim member of Congress than in informing about him.
Have you lectured the brave Muslims who poisoned 150 school girls for getting an education? Just can’t scare off those uppity females, can they?
“The veil is a sign of liberation”? What planet are you from? Have you told that to the millions of abused women treated as mere possessions in dar Islam?
And where is the source?
Quran 4:34 Allah made men superior to women. Men are told to beat them if they only SUSPECT / FEAR disobedience. Note this is a pre-emptive strike; if you merely FEAR !
Quran 2:282 A woman’s legal testimony is worth only one half of a man’s.
etc etc etc. Get real.
But when stating facts, however embarrassing and hard to admit they may be, is ridiculed by self-imposed moral watchdogs like yourself, our country is in bad shape.
When you find Amish schools starting to train kamikaze pilots, when Methodists publish manuals on amputation punishment, when Lutheran hit squads track down and execute apostates, when Catholic canonic law begins to preach it is the Word of God that a woman cannot prove rape unless there are four MALE eyewitnesses…. and when you can point to nearly 20,000 deadly terrorist attacks committed by non Muslims after 9/11 – then we can talk.
Until then all you are doing is trying to non-judgementalize and multi-culturalize these unpleasant facts away.
Right, well so much for the separation of church and state…
Innovation? Really? Does he mean not treating male and female equally? Forbidding women to take classes together with men? Is this the big breakthrough American education has been waiting for?
Critical thinking? Hmnn… let’s see. When was the last time you saw any practicing Muslim question any verse of the “perfect” Quran? The last time any Muslim organization worked to stop beheadings, stonings, misogyny, amputations, death to apostates etc etc etc. Is it any wonder the world of Islam is in such a backward, pathetic shape because of their unquestioning allegiance to this cult?
Oh, let’s not forget all the incredible contributions to music, dance, painting, sculpture that Islam is noted for… NOT.
Statistics show in the ENTIRE history of Islam of over 1400 years, less foreign books were translated than in a single year in Spain. Will this help our students expand their minds?
There are two parts to madrassa education. The first part consists of memorizing the entire Quran in the original Old Arabic. But, on second thought maybe there is one benefit for us here….
If all our students were forced to memorize the entire Declaration of Independence and Constitution, they would be quick to point out the absurdity of the monkey-memorization houses throughout the Islamic world.
