Right Wing Islamophobia

I live in New England and have recently spent 3 weeks in South Carolina. Being a Yankee, a somewhat progressive liberal, an immigrant and a Muslim, I have my biases. To try to open my mind, I decided to listen to a Fox News talk show with segments by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck while in the car down south. One of the first shows I listened to featured a guest who was an extreme right wing separatist Member of British Parliament. He spoke about the ills of the influx of immigrants from the Middle East. He gave a reasonable and eloquent speech about the desire for uniculturalism and the issues with multiculturalism and how Britain can accept immigrants but needs to insure it maintains its culture. (I will discuss this in the next blog.) In the segment the MP whose name I don’t recall, discussed the problem Muslim immigrants create in Norway, especially rape. He cited a statistic that indicated that 100% of rapes are perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. ( In fairness I don’t recall if he specified Rape with assault or not), referring to statistics released by the Oslo police. However, listening to the eloquent MP, I got the impression that rape is a large problem and all rapists are Muslim immigrants. I decided to see if I could find more information on the Oslo rapes. I started thinking about the reasonableness of that statistic, considering factors like the Nordic countries tendency to be more progressive on sex and thus there is no need to resort to rape whereas Muslims tend to be more puritanical with sex outside of marriage frowned on. But even with that, 100% seemed very unreasonable. I looked up “Oslo Rape Statistics” on the internet and found and article in Loonwatch.com by Farah Khaled about the claim that all rapes in Oslo were perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. Following quote is the first paragraph from Khaled’s article: Earlier this month, Arutz Sheva, an Israeli website popular with Kahanists, an outlawed movement that is gaining prominence with the rise of the extreme right in Israel published ‘Norwegian Minister Links Norwegian Rape Wave To Israel’ by Gil Ronen. The story purported to shed light upon a conspiracy involving a Norwegian minister who ordered the truth about an Oslo police report detailing rape statistics to be hushed up, otherwise Israel may use the report against Norway because the rapists were Muslims. Ronen offered no evidence for his claims except to cite an Israeli blogger who writes a Hebrew blog, one Yehuda Bello whom he claims understands Norwegian and has contacts in Norway. Ronen wrote: Bello reports that from January to late October, 48 rapes were confirmed to have been carried out in Oslo alone, 45 of them by Muslims. 48 rapes were confirmed to have been carried out in Oslo alone, 45 of them by Muslims The article went on explaining Norway’s reluctance, they being anti-Semitic and in the midst of quarrels with Israel, to openly blame the rapes on Muslims. The following is the result of Khaled’s inquiry: Shortly after Arutz Sheva published the Oslo rapes report in early December, I wrote to The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police asking them to verify Gil Ronen’s claims. I received the following reply from Elisabeth Lund a Senior Adviser to the Ministry: Statistics regarding assault rapists: The Oslo Police District has given a report of rapes in Oslo in 2010. The report shows that for all types of rape, except assault rape, European perpetrators are in the majority, and they are mostly Norwegian. Assault rapes covers only five identified unique person. These have all a foreign origin. The number is however, so low that it does not provide a basis for drawing conclusions with regard to country of origin. Two of them were very young (under 18) and two had severe psychiatric diagnoses and cannot be regarded as representative of their ethnic culture. It is highlighted in the report that generalizations like “Oslo’s rapists are foreigners”, which have been seen in media, are wrong. The report gives no statistics regarding religion of rapists.” Yours Sincerely, Grethe Kleivan Deputy Director General Granted, the article I refer to may also be a fabrication but at least it quotes a signed document (maybe false) with a name. On the internet these days who knows, anyone, including myself, can write anything. Sean Hannity did not question the guest and accepted, as I am sure his million like-minded listeners, this as further evidence of the evils of Islam and its practicioners. I continued listening to the radio station whenever in the car. I realized the right was promoting fear and Islamophobia but did not realize the vitriol and volume. It was a good but painful experience.