The Ezraphile division of the moronosphere is ecstatic this morning. It appears that our self-proclaimed Free Speech Martyr has won a sympathetic ear from an organization calling itself “Muslims Against Sharia” - proof positive that REAL Muslims aren’t offended by Ezra’s attempt to spin hate into gold.

Well, you know me. Cynic that I am, I just had to check out these “Muslims Against Sharia”. Marsilio over at “The Politic” thinks they’re “fine folks”. Well. Let’s dig, shall we?

The first thing you find is their website. A few odd things strike you right away.

- The site exists in three versions - English, Swedish, and Russian. Hmm. No Arabic. No Urdu. No Punjabi. No Pashto, Persian, Uzbec, Turkmen, Malay…in other words, none of the languages spoken by the vast majority of the world’s Muslims. But this is a group that claims to be an international Islamic reform movement. Odd.
- The site’s blogger profile says that “Muslims Against Sharia” is from Afghanistan. Hmm. Lots of Swedish speakers in Afghanstan, are there? But wait…hey, that’s weird. the contact information on the site is a post office box in Omaha, Nebraska, that well known centre of Muslim culture and history.
- Curiously, the site contains absolutely NO membership or governance information at all. No indication of who created this organization, who its members are, who manages it, who governs it, who sets its policies and direction…nothing. Sort of odd for a non-profit advocacy group - especially one that’s fundraising.
- There is, however, a page that allows you to donate by Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, or Amex to “help fight Islamofascists”. And that page lists the donors. The first “donor” on the list, if you google it, turns out to be the Executive Director of the organization. The second “donor”, turns out to be a member of the organization who seems to spend most of his time posting anti-Muslim taunts on various blogs. At that point I stopped googling “donors”. Feel free to continue down the list - I’d be curious. There aren’t many of them.

Back to the home page, where the organization’s “Manifesto” is set out. And here again, one is struck by the uncanny similarity between the agenda of this allegedly “Muslim” group, and that of American and European neo-nazi sites that claim to support “moderate” Muslims while actually trashing anything Islamic.

Among the elements of this “Muslim” “Manifesto” are such popular right wing talking points as “the Crusades were not unprovoked acts of aggression, but rather attempts to recapture formerly Christian lands controlled by Muslims”, and “We must remove evil passages from Islamic religious texts, so that future generations of Muslims will not be confused by conflicting messages.”

Which leads to the next fascinating section of the site. “Muslims Against Sharia” has gone through the Koran and removed every verse that they don’t believe came from Allah, and propose to publish this New Koran, with donations from their readership. What a great idea. I thought translating the Bible into Lolcatz was a bit silly, but I could get behind an initiative to go through the Holy Book and remove all those references to stoning, slaughtering and enslaving enemies of Israel, sexual misconduct on the part of the Biblical elders, God’s murder of the children who taunted Ezekiel…all that stuff that we’ve left behind.

Sorry. Silly digression. But I can’t really imagine any Christian, Muslim, or Jew launching an anonymous, web-based edit job to bowdlerize their own sacred texts, and expecting to be taken seriously by anyone. So…WHO are these people?

One gets a bit closer to the heart of “Muslims Against Sharia” by perusing their “blog”.

The first item in the “blog”, “Top Ten Central Ohio Terrorism-Related Stories of 2007″ is sourced to the “Intelligence Summit”, a project of the International Holocaust Education Centre founded by John Loftus. For those who don’t know John Loftus, he’s an extreme former Fox News commentator fired for broadcasting the address of a “terrorist suspect” who had long since moved, resulting in the harrasment and vandalism of the building’s current occupants. The Summit’s Advisory Council includes Americal military, a former senior FBI official, a former senior Mossad officer, and the former Chair of British Joint Intelligence Committee. Also included are several members of the Iran Policy Committee. Hmm.

The next item in the “blog” is a press release from Joe Kaufman, of “Americans Against Hate”. You remember them? Founded by a Republican media specialist, they sponsored the nauseating “Gore-Sharpton” ads that Bill O’Reilly condemned.

Then comes the Ezra Levant Saga, posted by “Louise” of “Puddle Jumping Redneck”.

If you dig deeper into the “blog”, you’ll find lavish praise for Ann Coulter and George Bush, articles by a lot of Fox pundits like Bill Gertz, extensive condemnation of Islam in ALL its forms, of Democrats, and of every Muslim country on the planet. In an hour of searching, I didn’t find a single entry…not one…that said anything positive about Muslims. I did find this entry, which actually argues that “moderate Muslims” pose a greater threat to mankind that Jihadists. What a strange argument for a site called “Muslims Against Sharia” to make.

In fact, the articles posted on the blog are once again completely indistinguishable from the sort of URQ Muslim-hatred one expects from the likes of Shaidle, McMillan, Sentinel, and the emerging neo-Nazis.

So…who EXACTLY are Ezra’s new little friends, these “Muslims Against Sharia”? We’ve figured out that they really like Republicans, don’t like Democrats, are single handedly rewriting the Koran, seem to rely on an awful lot of extreme right wing sources for their blog content, and don’t really seem to have much actual Muslim input at all. It’s hard to tell, of course, because, as noted above, they carefully give us NO governance, Board, management, corporate or membership information whatsoever.

Going to the blogger profile, however, one discovers a list of the folks who contribute to “Muslims Against Sharia”. They include:
- “The Admiral”, male, from Minnesota, born in Winnipeg and grew up in Fargo. Also posts to an extreme right wing site, which brags “The Anti-Strib is written by a known “racist” that was voted the 5th worse person in MN politics 2007. The blog is generally despised by the moonbats at Drinking Liberally and has just recently been banned in China. Read at your own risk!?”
- “Atlas Shrugs“, (Pamela Geller), an extreme right wing blogger with a hate on for Islam that rivals Shaidle’s
- Ted Belman of Israpundit, whose masthead features two Israeli flags, and proclaims “THERE IS NO DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION: THERE IS ONLY A MILITARY SOLUTION.”

Well, well, well. So these are the “Muslims Against Sharia”.

The world evidently contains readers so stupid that they actually believed Ezra’s theatrics and marketing were about more than trying to save a dying magazine by selling hate. Maybe those folks will believe that “Muslims Against Sharia” is anything more than an exceptionally cheap, poorly organized propaganda site for the peddling the same old hatred in a new and exceptionally deceitful package.

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