Not A “Rosie” Picture
Rosie O'Donnell might do well to remember - before declaring radical Christianity as threatening as radical Islam - that homosexuality is punishable by death under Islamic law, writes PJM editor Aaron Hanscom. Around the world, Moslem governments and individuals aren't just talking about physically harming gays. They're actually doing it.
For about a month last year I became a dedicated viewer of “The View.” It wasn’t by choice.
Forced into an unused classroom with two other substitute teachers to organize testing materials, I became dependent on ABC – the one station that came in clearly on the television – to relieve the daily tediousness with some background noise.
Warning: Don’t try to get any work done while listening to Rosie O’Donnell.
Most people are now familiar with the infamous line I heard the ex-host utter live on September 12. Of all her outlandish statements, this was the most controversial. It came after co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck mentioned the threat posed by radical Islam. O’Donnell, a lesbian, replied, “And just one second, radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.”
As my two co-workers nodded their heads in agreement, I wondered whether Christian fundamentalism really was as big a threat to the openly gay Rosie as Islamic extemism.
Now it’s true that most fundamentalist Christians oppose giving gays the right to marry or join the army. But a sampling of stories from across the world the last few years shows that far greater horrors await Western homosexuals if one day they are forced to live under Koranic law.
Don’t take my word for it. A better authority is Arshad Misbah, the leading imam in Manchester, England. In a conversation last year with Manchester psychotherapist John Casson, Misbah confirmed that the execution of sexually active gay men is justifed under Sharia law. Casson wanted to get the imam to clarify the Islamic position on the execution of gays in Iran, where thousands of men have been executed for being homosexuals since 1979. Amnesty International reports that at least three male homosexuals and two lesbians were publicly beheaded in Iran in January 1990.
On his blog, gay writer Bruce Bawer documented how he was unable to find any article about the Misbah interview in major British newspapers. Bawer also cited a story claiming that the BBC had admitted “to a marked bias against Christianity and a strong inclination to pro-Muslim reporting among the network’s executives and key anchors.”
It also reported that “the corporation is dominated by homosexuals.”
Bawer found that the BBC took two days to report on the Misbah story. When it finally got around to it, Casson was portrayed as someone who was intent on criticizing Muslims unjustly. Meanwhile, there was no mention of the anti-homosexual tenets of Sharia law or the homophobic statements of many Muslim leaders other than Misbah. Bawer wrote on his blog:
“If the BBC is in fact dominated by gays, I as a gay man am ashamed of and disgusted by every last one of them. What can they possibly think they’re accomplishing by whitewashing Islam in this fashion? It’s as if a Jewish media organization in the 1930s kept itself busy propagandizing for the Nazis and covering up plans for the Holocaust.”
“One in three homosexuals feared to walk hand-in-hand in the center of [Amsterdam]“.Perhaps more than anyone, Bawer understands the threats gays face from Islamists. In 1998, he moved from the United States to the famously tolerant Amsterdam, where he sought a better life as a gay man. As Bawer explains in his book %%AMAZON=0385514727 While Europe Slept%%, while he escaped the homophobia of some fundamentalist Christians, he found that Muslim immigrants exhibited a much more virulent strain of hatred.
An example of this came just last month, when six men of Moroccan, Surinamese and Turkish descent assaulted two gay men in Amsterdam. The attackers shouted homophobic comments and threatened to murder their victims. The assault occurred in Rembrandtplein, which Bawer calls “the heart of the part of Amsterdam where gay people used to feel safest.”
The former editor of the gay magazine Washington Blade, Chris Crain, was also attacked by a group of Islamists in Amsterdam in 2005. A survey commissioned at that time by the gay lobby group COC found that one in three homosexuals feared to walk hand-in-hand in the center of the city.
Even though Muslim immigrants don’t feel that kind of fear when they walk through European cities, Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Program at the Human Rights Watch responded to Crain’s attack by portraying the attackers as victims. He explained: “There’s still an extraordinary degree of racism in Dutch society. Gays often become the victims of this when immigrants retaliate for the inequities that they have to suffer.”
The desire to hide the reality of Islamic homophobia is spreading. Consider a recent story from Madrid, Spain, where two lesbians were viciously attacked at a shopping mall by young Moroccans. Commenting on Pajamas Media, Spanish blogger Manuel Delgado described a column about the attack written by Tulio Demicheli in the Spanish daily ABC:
“The columnist chose to remind readers that this attack could have been made by anyone, such as Catholics, Gypsies, Poles, Spaniards or Latin Americans. For this writer, the background of the attackers did not add any information to the event. Instead, he made his point on the defense of the teaching of multiculturalism in schools, through a new compulsory course called “Education for Citizenship”, where [progressive] and politically correct values are taught to children as young as 12.”
Progressives like Rosie O’Donnell would do well to remember that not only is homosexuality punishable by death under Islamic law, but children as young as 16 are candidates for honor killings.
Aaron Hanscom is a freelance writer in Los Angeles.
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34 Comments
1. Paul:This is something we also know in the city where I live, Brussels, Belgium.
A few months ago, it was reported on TV-Brussel, a local television broadcaster, that gays were often attacked in our subway, or in the area where they usually gather, close to the Halles St-Gery.
And indeed, the attackersare to be fond among young moroccans migrants.
But this we cannot tell. And we should not see.
I guess some would like us not even to care about what is going on.
Jul 12, 2007 - 4:19 am 2. Paul from Florida:Rosie gives blisters a bad name.
Jul 12, 2007 - 6:25 am 3. Somaya:This chunky windbag needs to be BLACKBALLED from any and all entertainment. At this juncture, while the world is in such turmoil NO ONE should have to be exposed to the non-stop ranting of an under-educated loudmouth whose motto in life is: “I bloviate therefore I am.” She IS the ugly American.
Jul 12, 2007 - 7:12 am 4. BMOON:The real question behind this phenomena and lurking in the shadows of the fogbound consciences of the extreme left is- WHY? Why the blatant bias and Goebellian propaganda against Christianity, and the fawning exculpatory love for Islam?
This goes much deeper than politics.
Jul 12, 2007 - 7:34 am 5. suzanne:I am so glad that we are finally recognizing and exposing the hypocrisy of this woman!
Jul 12, 2007 - 8:11 am 6. teplost:BMOON -I think you have raised the really important question. Why the bias and the corresponding fawning? I read somewhere (can’t remember where) that the left demands blind ideological loyalty, unquestioning “submission” to its dogma.
Jul 12, 2007 - 9:03 am 7. Vannek:BMOON: Yes, this is a good question. How can a gay be so blind about an ideology that is antagonistic toward gays? I’ve noticed this among other liberal groups: they protect and promote ideologies that go against their own self interest. Is it masochism? Some unspoken self-destructiveness?
Jul 12, 2007 - 9:15 am 8. Josh Poulson:Under Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 Christians and Jews *also* have the death penalty for homosexuality. In fact, the Islamic tradition may very well derive from these same verses. I think this sound bite response to Rosie is a non-starter.
Jul 12, 2007 - 12:51 pm 9. OmegaPaladin:RE: Josh
If you do not accept a given religion, its doctrine matters little. What matters is practice. What do they actually do? Let’s take an example. A robber might think he could rob an occupied Christian’s house, because the Christian doctrine is to turn the other cheek. Would you expect him to be successful?
Modern radical Christians tend to treat homosexuality as either a mental disorder and/or a conscious sin. Even the insane Westboro Baptists don’t engage in violence. This in a predominantly Christian nation, with a strong tradition of popular religiosity. The contrast with radical Islam should be apparent.
Jul 12, 2007 - 1:47 pm 10. gcblues:ok, then it is decided;
followers of christianity are insane and evil, followers of islam are insaner and eviler.
religion is the refuge of the irrational. that one is worse than another is a stupid debate. see rosie, what an idiot, therefore i am not an idiot.
reminds me of my little hippie friend that believes in fairies. she told me, gc, “if you do not believe in them you will never be able to see them.” poor me.
Jul 12, 2007 - 2:21 pm 11. Mike:As I already stated in my own blog, why is it that a godless, democratic, non-christian, (and now unemployed) lesbian is the opinion voice for a population where 99% of us don’t agree with her aforementioned life choices.
Jul 12, 2007 - 2:26 pm 12. Sheryl:I think we should dare Rosie to organize a gay cruise to Hezbollah’s southern Lebanon or to Saudi Arabia or to Hamas’ Gaza.
Rosie, I assume, didn’t feel threatened by cruising in the Bahamas, a predominantly Christian country. Let’s see if she is true to her words and will cruise in Muslim countries.
If she shrinks from the challenge well then she obviously is just blowing smoke. But if she does go, more power to her and I hope it brings more tolerance to areas that are in desperate need of tolerance of other lifestyles.
In fact, I think we should rally (dare) the whole American entertainment industry to infiltrate the countries mentioned above and then some.
Perhaps a “Live 8 Middle East” hug-fest can be arranged in Riyadh, Gaza City and Hezbollahland with singing and dancing. And in between the sets, let’s hear Madonna and Sheryl Crow, etc. nag those governments to improve their domestic and foreign policies.
I tell you I would pay big money to see Neil Young and Eddie Vedder sing “Keep on Rockin in the Free World” in Gaza!
Jul 12, 2007 - 4:01 pm 13. Marty:Rosie no longer has a pulpit to bloviate from. There is no longer an issue. The monster has had its head cut off
Jul 12, 2007 - 5:11 pm 14. Tom:I think Aaron has a good point here– why is the left so defensive about Muslim issues, when the (presumably) core issues of the left, such as separation of church and state, women’s rights, and gay rights, are to antithetical to Islam?
Jul 12, 2007 - 9:33 pm 15. Allison:And it doesn’t work to say “Christians and Jews do it, too” – when exactly was the last Christian stoning of an adulter?
Marty — Not for long. She’s just busy negotiating the deal for her own show…
Jul 12, 2007 - 10:32 pm 16. John:Josh,
You are probably atheist or agnostic and appear to be rather Judeo-Christianphobic (if mohammedans can invent a word to make people feel guilty for disliking their religion, then so can Jews and Christians), so here are some basics to try and correct your (wrong) moral equivalence:
Leviticus is the book of laws for (Orthodox) Jews. Jesus established a new covenant based on the law of “Love thy neighbor as you love yourself.”
Jesus did not say anything about homosexuality, although some of the Letters of the Apostles do advise against licentiousness etc. However, the Letters don’t say to do anything to people who are overly fixated on sexual pleasure besides avoiding them and maybe trying to get them to focus on more important things. To my knowledge, no Christians have said that God wants homosexuality to be punished by death.
And as for R O, she is an imbecile of the lowest order.
Jul 13, 2007 - 6:16 am 17. Wacky Hermit:I had a conversation once with a self-professed feminist which might shed some light on the subject at hand. We were talking about violence toward women, and she maintained that calling a boy a “sissy” was violence against women. I got her to clarify her position, to wit, that this was not just like violence, analogous to violence, or tantamount to violence, but actual violence itself.
If you can’t see the difference between stabbing a woman to death and calling a boy a name, then it naturally follows that Muslim stoning of homosexuals is the same thing as a Christian teenager idly saying “that’s so gay”.
Jul 13, 2007 - 7:29 am 18. melk:I don’t quite understand the astonishment. The Left sees the first world, primarily the US, as the great evil. George Bush is the Uberfuhrer and he is a Christian. To
Jul 13, 2007 - 7:49 am 19. tom scott:criticise Islam for any reason is to enter the camp of the neocons.
Reread Animal Farm.
As a longtime reader of Dhimmi Watch, Religion of Peace, etc, I’ve long been aware of this dichotomy. I appreciate you giving it a wider dissemination. I think the real story is the failure of the press to report honestly and to casually shift the blame to others. This comment being a prime example.
Jul 13, 2007 - 8:33 am 20. junyo:“Why the blatant bias and Goebellian propaganda against Christianity, and the fawning exculpatory love for Islam? ”
Everything is politics. Let’s not pretend that it’s the “Left” that hates Christianity. Most of the non-socially conservative right also regards Christians as soft headed idiots. Even this piece’s author grants that Christians are a threat, just not as big a threat as the Islamists. The difference is Christians are less politically useful to the Left, therefore they’re more free to display their contempt. Muslims, on the other hand, are either a)somewhere else, or b)not going to vote Republican, which makes the ROI on appeasement look attractive. It also has the social value of looking contrarian, multicultural and open minded.
Jul 13, 2007 - 11:03 am 21. Cynical prof:To the extent that I’d much rather Rosie would wear a burqa and be kept shut up at home, I prefer the ways of the Muslim fundamentalists to that of their Christian counterparts.
Jul 13, 2007 - 12:31 pm 22. Teplost:The reason celebrities attack Christianity as a greater danger to gays and women (and human rights in general) can be summarized in 3 little words: Theo van Gogh. They are terrified of personal retaliation if they dare publicly insult Islam. When the movie “The Da Vinci Code” came out, Borders had huge displays of the book and its spin-offs, but at the same time, they refused to sell an issue of a magazine containing the Danish Cartoons. The reason they gave? Fear of retaliation against store employees. Apparently they weren’t worried about rampaging irate Christians.
It’s easy to stand up to someone who won’t fight back, which is why the Rosies of this world are little more than schoolyard bullies. Unless they publicly accuse Islamic regimes with the same level of righteous indignation, they are only posturing.
Jul 13, 2007 - 1:05 pm 23. Jim C.:Scott Long said, “There’s still an extraordinary degree of racism in Dutch society. Gays often become the victims of this when immigrants retaliate for the inequities that they have to suffer.”
What’s extraordinary is how someone could actually come up with such a convoluted rationalization.
George Orwell wrote about people like this. “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”
Jul 13, 2007 - 1:23 pm 24. red:… Let’s not pretend that it’s the “Left” that hates Christianity. Most of the non-socially conservative right also regards Christians as soft headed idiots. Even this piece’s author grants that Christians are a threat, just not as big a threat as the Islamists….
That must be a comforting thought to you. But in the end denial is very psychologically damaging.
Can’t remember John Edwards hiring ‘Christofascist’ Amanda Marcotte? John Edwards, your thought leader, a lefty presidential candidate. Well I’m a ‘Christofascist’, and I am not making a mistake about who called me that, and who wants to behead me for it.
Jul 13, 2007 - 9:14 pm 25. Albert G.:Why do you think that Hamas went to all that trouble to throw people off the roof in Gaza?
Jul 13, 2007 - 10:03 pm 26. tony@comstockfilms.com:Neither Islam, nor the non-western world has a monopoly on barbarism:
http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/
Jul 14, 2007 - 5:36 am 27. K T Cat:Evan Sayet answers the question of “Why does the left do this?” better than anyone else. Essentially, all moral systems are imperfect, therefore all are equivalent. The more empirical data shows that moral systems are not equivalent, the more you must emphasize evil over good to show that they are.
Watch his YouTube video. It takes a while, but for me it’s the Universal String Theory of leftist thought.
Jul 14, 2007 - 5:38 am 28. Gerald Gibson:If it wasnt for the seperation of church and state in the USA Christianity would also put gays to death. Apparently none of you have read the history of Christianity. Radical RELIGION whatever its name is a danger to a free country. Christianity has been pacified. Once Islam is pacified under the rule of law it too will be more like Christianity is today. If Christianity is allowed to mold our laws in its image then we will once again see free people being put to death for exercising their freedom. This should not be seen as a knock against Christianity but rather a PROOF from history that radical religion and freedom do not mix.
Jul 14, 2007 - 8:14 am 29. Nicole:Tony,
You are wrong to the depths of your soul, if you think that kind of moral relativism will ever help the shackled, un-free people that live under the tyrannies of the pious, death loving Muslim theocrats and dictators.
While the site you link to is profoundly important for America to continue to cure, to learn from, and to strive so that murderous ideology is never accepted ever again. It isn’t very instructive here. In fact I think it makes the dialogue worse.
When is the liberal Western art community ever going to get a clue! The current fascism that is plaguing the world isn’t about us, it’s about them. These death-loving, women-hating male leaders of the Muslim world have their own history, their own idea of the future, and their own murderous ideologies that aren’t driven by us.
Yet the silence continues from Western art and artists on Islamic fascism. Shameful.
BTW, love your films, I own three, no four of them!
Jul 14, 2007 - 11:28 am 30. tony@comstockfilms.com:Nicole,
Thank you for your kind comments about our films.
I think you’ve misunderstood my reasons for posting a link to withoutsantuary.org, and you’ve most certaily misapprehended my politics.
Jul 15, 2007 - 1:23 pm 31. Karl:I see how this works. To make an evil digestable, you compare it to a greater evil. That way people won’t think your evil is so bad. Evil is evil, no matter how you slice it and dice it.
Jul 16, 2007 - 1:23 pm 32. Will:There are a lot of people who need to wake up and fast.Our morals are disapearing.
Jul 16, 2007 - 4:17 pm 33. Elizabeth Hassleback Is More Muslim than Obama | Things More Muslim Than Obama:[...] know most of you probably already knew that Whoopie Goldberg (Muslim sympathist Rosie O’Donnel’s replacement on The View) was more Muslim than Obama, but it turns out that Elizabeth Hassleback, [...]
Jul 2, 2008 - 7:16 pm 34. Pajamas Media » A Tale of Two (Unhinged) Rosies:[...] we all remember Rosie O’Donnell: how she mocked Chinese Americans, said 9/11 was a government conspiracy, repeatedly attacked [...]
Aug 22, 2008 - 8:31 am