TIMELINE: Nine months of the right's anti-Muslim bigotry

[babylonsister]

TIMELINE: Nine months of the right's anti-Muslim bigotry

Cheered on by Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media, conservative activists spent the past year engaged in an anti-Muslim campaign that included efforts to block the planned Islamic center in lower Manhattan and demonize the imam spearheading the project. The bigotry has culminated in a Florida pastor's now-"suspended" plans to burn Qurans on September 11 -- plans that the pastor has explicitly linked to the controversy over the Islamic center.


December 2009

NY Times first reports on the Islamic cultural center. The New York Times first reported on the plans to build an Islamic cultural center in an abandoned Burlington Coat Factory building two blocks away from ground zero in a December 8, 2009, article. The Times emphasized the purpose of the center, which, according to project leader Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, was "to push back against the extremists." The article partially foreshadowed the controversy, reporting that Joan Brown Campbell, the director of the Chautauqua Institution religion department and "a supporter of Imam Feisal," "acknowledged the possibility of a backlash from those opposed to a Muslim presence at ground zero."

Geller writes first Atlas Shrugs post on the center. That same day in an Atlas Shrugs post, Pamela Geller reacted to the Times' article, writing: "I don't know what is more grotesque...jihad or the NY Times preening of it. The New York Times yet again misrepresents, obfuscates, and confuses infidels and kaffirs about Islam." In her post, Geller mostly discussed Sufism, the branch of Islam that Rauf and his followers belong to.

Ingraham tells Daisy Khan, "I like what you're trying to do." As noted by Salon.com's Justin Elliot, who created a timeline of the Islamic Center controversy in mid-August, the first known appearance of the story on Fox News occurred on December 21, 2009, when Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham, while filling in for Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor, hosted Daisy Khan, Rauf's wife and executive director of the project. During the interview, Ingraham criticized Rauf's statement that "it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima." She later added: "But I like what you're trying to do, and Ms. Khan, we appreciate it." Ingraham also stated during the interview, "I can't find many people who really have a problem" with the Islamic center, and told Kahn it's "fantastic" that "your group takes a moderate approach to Americanizing people, assimilating people, which I applaud."

Geller attacks Islamic center as "Islamic domination and expansionism." In a December 21, 2009, post titled, "Mosque at Ground Zero: Adding Insult to Agony," Geller called the center a "giant victory lap" and wrote: "Any decent American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn't dream of such an insult. It's a stab in eye of America. What's wrong with these people? Have they no heart? No soul?" Geller also claimed of the project: "This is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident."
January 2010-April 2010

The story goes into hiding. Following Geller's December 21, 2009, post, the story fell from public view. Even Geller did not post on the subject again until May 6, 2010. During this period, Fox News continued its long-standing campaign of anti-Muslim rhetoric, smearing individual Muslims as "terrorists," calling for racial profiling, and fearmongering about Islam in general.

lots more...

http://mediamatters.org/research/201009100042