US Air Force Academy Encourages Islamophobia?

THREE self-styled “ex-terrorists” – Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani were star speakers on February 5, 2008 at the 50th annual United States Air Force Academy political forum in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The three anti-Muslim fear-mongering bigots have spent the past couple of years on speaking tour across America but this is the first time that the trio has spoken at a military academy for which they picked up $ 13,000.

Shoebat urged his audience to resist “political correctness” and not to fear being labeled a “xenophobe, Islamophobe or American bigot.” “The problem with Islam is if you speak out against Islam, you are a racist,” Shoebat told a group of about 250 cadets and students.

Saleem said “if America is taken down and Sharia laws take over, there is no hope,” he said during a spirited talk, in which he shouted and stomped in driving home his points.

Anani called it a mistake to limit discussion about terrorism to “radical Islam.”  “There is no radical Islam; there is Islam itself,” he said. 

In the past events at campuses and TV appearances, they made similar bigoted and inaccurate statements about Islam and Muslims. They told one California university audience that Americans need to "wake up to the dangerous realities of the Islamic faith."

Walid Shoebat has built a lucrative speaking career by manipulating the fears and whipping up hatred between Jews and Muslims. He told Springfield News-Leader, a Missouri newspaper, on Sept. 24, 2007 that he sees "many parallels between the Antichrist and Islam" and "Islam is not the religion of God -- Islam is the devil."

Zachariah Anani, who claims to have killed 223 people in the name of Islam, says he is an advocate against what he calls "the violent doctrines of Islam." (Michiga Daily, Jan. 30, 2007)

Another prominent speaker at the Air Force Academy is Islamophobe and controversial "terrorism expert" Steven Emerson, whose apparent lifelong goal is to banish Muslim Americans from American civil life. Like all professional propagandists, Emerson aspires to be detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury.

It is an unfortunate consequence of the post 9/11 life in America, where fear-mongering is a reality, that notorious career Islamophobes, such as these individuals, are subjected to little scrutiny and virtually no credibility tests.

Who are they? Shoebat and Kamal Saleem, are U.S. citizens and Zachariah Anani, is a Canadian. Shoebat and Saleem say they are former members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, according to their Web site. Saleem converted to Christianity after being treated by a Christian doctor. The three are evangelical Christians who being are promoted by their publicists as "the former terrorists" who "practiced hatred against Christians, Jews and Americans" and were "part of sleeper cells in the USA." Not surprisingly, many civil right groups, academics and at least one Canadian expert on jihad have called the men fakes.

(Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine the American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com  e-mail: asghazali@gmail.com)