A Tennessee County Commissioner doesn’t see anything wrong with a Facebook post he put up that led to Muslims feeling threatened.

The photo was posted to Coffee County commissioner Barry West‘s Facebook page, drawing consternation from Muslim groups who came across the image. In the photo, seen at the right, a double-barreled shotgun is pointed at the viewer with the caption “HOW TO WINK AT A MUSLIM.” The image soon went viral, causing West to take down the original post from his page.

The Tennessean reached out to West and the commissioner not only isn’t sorry about posting the picture, he doesn’t believe he deserves to be singled out:

West, who lives in Manchester, removed it about an hour later. He did not apologize, instead questioning how his tweet had become the focus of attention.

West responded with this email: “No I did not Twitter this … no I did not create this picture … yes I shared it … so why am I being singled out?”

“I’m prejudiced against anyone who’s trying to tear down this country, Muslims, Mexicans, anybody,” he said in an interview with the local Tullahoma News, adding, “If you come into this country illegally or harm us or take away benefits, I’m against it.” West also claimed in that the post was meant to be funny, and that he doesn’t hold anything against Muslims “per se, but if you’re trying to tear down this country, find somewhere else to go.”

West’s post was taken quite seriously among the Muslims who viewed it, particularly those in Tennessee who have faced down Islamophobia over the past several years. A mosque in Murfreesboro, TN, gained widespread attention when residents attempted to block its construction, going so far as to set the site on fire. The mosque only managed to complete construction and opened after a federal judge ordered residents to stand aside. The Murfreesburo site was just one of several Islamic centers in Tennessee subjected to arson and vandalism over the past five years.

In the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings, Islamophobia has seen a resurgence in the United States. A Northern Virginia cab driver was allegedly assaulted on Friday because he shared the same religion as the suspects in the Boston attack. At least two other Muslims have been the targets of such violence in recent weeks.

During an appearance on Meet The Press Sunday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) repeated his call for profiling Muslims in the name of public safety, stating that although most Muslims are “outstanding people,” the threat of terrorism still stems from “the Muslim community.” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), America’s first Muslim congressman, quickly shot down that line of thinking, arguing that blanket profiling doesn’t serve the needs of law enforcement and actually undermines effective investigations by unnecessarily straining public resources.

Ellison detailed the shortcomings of King’s approach, stressing that individual behavior and actionable evidence should form the basis of terrorism investigations. He also compared King’s strategy to the similarly misguided policies that the American government adopted towards Japanese Americans during World War II.

Watch it:

King also asked why law enforcement hadn’t made interrogations of the Boston bombers’ mosque a higher priority, prompting host David Gregory to ask what, exactly, investigators could have asked before the bombings had occurred. King responded by repeating that such interrogations had not occurred due to “political correctness” concerning the treatment of Muslims in America.

King’s calls for profiling against Muslims is certainly nothing new. The New York congressman has been using the Boston bombings as justification for increasing surveillance of American Muslim communities, and he previously led a series of infamous congressional hearings into the potential radicalization of Muslims in America. The NYPD’s enhanced surveillance of Muslim communities, made public by an Associated Press investigative series in 2012, found that the department’s actions had “a severe chilling effect on speech, religious activity, and community life” while failing to yield a single piece of actionable intelligence.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) during a hearing on Friday said that he believes that Islam as a whole is a threat to the United States, labeling it as a religion that will “motivate people to murder children.”

During a hearing he chaired on “Islamist Extremism in Chechnya: A Threat to the U.S. Homeland?” Rohrabacher continually referred to the 2004 Beslan hostage situation — in which Chechen extremists took control of a school in Russia resulting in the death of more than 180 children — as an example of the threat that Islam poses.

At one point, the California Republican sought to clarify that he wasn’t opposed to any religious group gaining power within a region — only Islam. “What we need to worry about is if it happens to be a religion that convinces people that part of their faith is to go off and murder other people’s children,” he said, referring to Islam broadly. Later in the hearing, Rohrabacher was more clear:

ROHRABACHER: At the end of the Cold War, I was the Soviet Union’s worst enemy, nemesis, because I believe that free people need to determine who their number one enemies are and work to try to defeat them. And that doesn’t mean that the people you work with are perfect, et cetera. We did bring down the Soviet Union and we worked with a lot of people who had a lot of faults. Today radical Islam and China appear to be the main adversaries, the main threat to the free world. I hope we all work together against a religion that will motivate people to murder children and other threats to us as a civilization.

Watch his statements here:

Islamophobia has seen a resurgence in the aftermath of the Boston attacks, with Fox News leading the charge in promoting a new wave of fear towards Muslims. Rohrabacher is no stranger himself to controversy surrounding Islam. In 2012, he accused President Obama of “pandering to radical Islamic forces” in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly chose on Tuesday night to slam President Obama for failing to condemn Islam in the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombings and claimed that American Muslims aren’t doing enough to stand up against jihad.

During his “Talking Point Commentary” segment, O’Reilly called the President “seriously wrong” for urging the country on Friday to not to jump to conclusions about the bombing suspects’ motivations.

“It’s all about motivation and it’s all about a specific group of people,” O’Reilly declared, referring to Muslims. He then went on to say that suspected Dzhokar Tsarnaev and his deceased brother Tamerlan were definitively jihadists, stating that “only radical Islam allows terror murder.”

What O’Reilly failed to mention is that Obama’s Friday statement was made before anything was known about the brothers or what led them to place explosives at the Boston Marathon. The FBI didn’t release the two suspects’ pictures until Thursday afternoon, kicking off a massive manhunt. While on Friday morning the media learned that the two were ethnic Chechens, that information alone provided no further knowledge of the motivation behind the attack. Only after questioning alleged bomber Dzohkar Tsarnaev in custody did authorities learn that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan provided at least part of the impetus for the bombing.

While attacking Obama for not speaking out against radical Islam, O’Reilly begrudgingly acknowledged that there are Muslim countries that are our allies, particularly those that utilize “secret police” to combat terrorism. He was disappointed, however, that more Muslims — including Muslim-Americans — aren’t doing their part to help combat radicalism. “Most Muslims on this Earth are good people, but they are not helping to neutralize the jihad,” he said. “They are not standing up against it in any numbers. And that includes American Muslims. They largely remain silent.”

Watch O’Reilly’s statements here:

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who appeared on the program, shared O’Reilly’s views that Obama isn’t doing enough to speak out about the threat that Muslims pose. Despite their worries, it was Muslim-Americans who found themselves the targets during the media’s excessively flawed coverage of the attacks. At least one Muslim woman was attacked based on the media’s shoddy reporting.

Counter to O’Reilly’s claims, there are many instances of Muslim communities standing up against radicalism in their ranks. Just this week, a Toronto imam was lauded for reporting suspicious behavior to the Canadian authorities, leading to a possible major terrorist plot being foiled. Leaders of the Muslim-American community also reiterated their opposition to terrorism at a press conference held on Friday.

A terror plot originating in Canada may not have been prevented, were it not for the intervention of Toronto’s Muslim community flagging a suspect to law enforcement officials.

News broke on Monday that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials — had foiled a plot targeting a railway between Toronto and New York. According to the RCMP, there was never an imminent danger from the plot, but the alleged perpetrators did have the desire and ability to follow through with their plans, which would target a passenger line between the two cities.

That plot, however, was only discovered thanks to a timely intervention from an imam based in Toronto. Worried that one of the suspects, Raed Jaser, was promoting extremist propaganda in his community, the imam — who remains anonymous — sounded an alarm with the Canadian Canadian Security Intelligence Service and RCMP over a year ago. That support did not go without thanks from Canadian law enforcement, the Globe and Mail reports:

The nation’s top counterterrorism police officials briefed reporters about the arrest Monday, but not before they made a point of summoning about 20 leaders of Toronto’s Islamic community to a meeting.

The message from authorities to the Muslim community? Thank you for a helping hand.

“The first comment they made, and they encouraged us to make it a talking point, is that, but for the Muslim community’s intervention, we may not have had the success we’ve had,” said Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer who was invited to the pre-briefing.

The two suspects are in custody in what is being called the first Canadian breakup of an allegedly al-Qaeda-connected terror plot. According to Canadian authorities, the two were receiving “support and guidance” from elements of Al Qaeda based in Iran. The Iranian government has denied any ties to the group and Canadian officials made clear there was no evidence of state-support for the plot.

Canadian law enforcement’s relationship with the Muslim community is markedly different from the relationship seen in the United States. The ACLU accused the FBI of using Muslim outreach as a cover for illegal information gathering, a charge that the civil liberties group say continues today. The New York Police Department hasn’t fared much better, with distrust arising out of its program to spy on Muslim communities including college student group.

Compounding the problem in the United States is the right wing’s ongoing suggestion that all Muslims as terrorists. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) in particular has a long history of focusing on Muslim communities as sources of terrorism, including once falsely claiming Muslims were responsible for 90 percent of all terrorism. King’s anti-Muslim hearings as chair of the House Homeland Security Committee were widely criticized as being discriminatory and drove a wedge between law enforcement and the Muslim communitiy.

An interfaith group is speaking out against Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) claim on Thursday that Americans need the Second Amendment’s protection in order to shield the nation from Sharia Law.

Speaking on a radio show called The Voice of Freedom, Gohmert insisted that “We’ve got some people who think Sharia Law should be the law of the land, forget the Constitution. But the guns are there… to make sure all of the rest of the Amendments are followed.” In response, Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance, has sent a letter to Gohmert, protesting his “continued demonization of Islam”:

I feel compelled to again remind you that the continued demonization of Islam and disenfranchisement of the American Muslim community is not only uncalled for, it is a dangerous affront to the religious freedom upon which this nation was founded and it must end. American Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom live peaceful, law-abiding lives — just like Americans from other religious groups — should not have to live in a country where their elected officials imply that they need to be kept at bay with firearms.

Furthermore, at a time when gun violence has wracked our nation with one unimaginable tragedy after another, I would hope that elected officials such as you would stay focused on real measures to prevent future needless deaths. I would hope that you would focus your attention on measures to truly balance the Second Amendment rights you so strongly defend, rather than derailing what should be a substantive policy discussion with misguided bigotry.

Gohmert has been in trouble before with the Interfaith Alliance, having also received a letter from them during his partnership with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to persecute Muslim-American government officials. Gorhmert has also during his time in Congress called for hearings on the dangers of Sharia and claimed that President Obama went to war in Libya to help Al Qaeda spread across the Middle East.

Rev. Gaddy also included with his letter a copy of a text titled “What is the Truth About American Muslims: Questions and Answers,” produced by Interfaith Alliance and the Religious Freedom Education Project of the First Amendment Center. Congressman Gohmert’s office did not immediately respond to an e-mailed question regarding whether or not he had read over, or plans to read, the resource.

The full text of the letter can be read after the break.

Read more

In a typical fair and balanced panel, Fox News warned on Wednesday that Al Jazeera is set to “infiltrate” the United States amid dire warnings about “sleeper cells” in the Muslim suburbs of Detroit.

Host Megyn Kelly began a segment about Al Jazeera’s expansion into the American television market by raising questions about the network’s “real anti-American bias.” Contributor Lisa Daftari agreed, veering into blatant Islamophobic fear-mongering in the process:

DAFTARI: The point is they want to differentiate themselves from their sister network, but at the same time, it’s the same thing. They’re having the same type of coverage. They’re apparently expanding to eight cities, including Detroit, Michigan. Detroit, Michigan is a large ex-pat community of Muslim-Americans and sleeper cells have been detected. You can Google this, you can find out all this information. So if you’re trying to set yourself apart the Qatari petro-dollars are backing this, you’re still developing in this area where the sleeper cells have been detected. They’re going to have do do much more to prove to me that they’re different from their sister network.

Watch it:

Daftari was referring to the suburbs of Detroit — like Dearborn, MI and others — which have high populations of refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority nations like Lebanon. Dearborn has been the target of hate speech and protests against Muslims for years now. As for the specific “sleeper cells” she was referring to, in 2008 a former Dearborn resident was convicted of “providing material support” to Hezbollah — hardly the makings of a widespread support for terrorism.

Conservatives have been concerned about the purchase of former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV by Qatar-based Al Jazeera since the deal was announced in January. Fox’s points about the difference in coverage between Al Jazeera English — which currently airs in millions of homes in the United States — and Al Jazeera Arabic — the original channel, which was the chosen distributor of Osama bin Laden’s video messages — would be accurate if they weren’t so hyperbolic and fearful of the encroaching Muslim threat. Also, Fox News’ concern about the presence of Middle Eastern oil money in U.S. media does not extend to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch’s deals with Saudi Arabia.

Alaska’s House Subcommittee Of The Select Committee on Legislative Ethics announced on Friday its ruling that a legislative aide for a Republican state representative “violated the Legislative Ethics Act” in her promotion of the anti-Islam group known as Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). The group, founded by noted Islamophobes Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, reportedly had an “operative” work inside a state office for “months.” The legislative aide, a woman named Karen Sawyer, gave David Heckert, the SIOA “operative,” significant access to state resources. Here’s a rundown as described by the Anchorage Daily News:

Sawyer let Heckert use her personal laptop and Internet card, and provided him a cellphone number under her family plan. She herself used state equipment to plan events for the group. She even gave Heckert her key to the Wasilla LIO so he could get in while she was out of town, the report said.

In 2011, Sawyer’s boss at the time, Alaskan state Rep. Carl Gatto (R), sponsored an “anti-Sharia” bill. Apparently, Sawyer’s preoccupation with Sharia became so intense that she reportedly said “my co-workers wonder if I’m getting obsessed with Sharia.” Indeed, she was obsessed. Beyond setting up events for the group, she also created a SIOA checking account and joined the group’s Alaska board. What’s more, the SIOA “operative” held a meeting at a state office.

While it may seem shocking that an anti-Islam group could gain such prominence inside a state office, it shouldn’t be. In 2011, CAP documented the troubling rise of anti-Islam groups like Stop Islamization of America.

Sawyer resigned shortly after the ruling was released. (HT: Alex Kane)