An Alabama state senator plans to introduce a constitutional amendment that would ban state courts from looking to Islamic Shariah law in adjudicating cases, Hatewatch has learned.

Republican Senator Cam Ward pre-filed the “American and Alabama Laws for Alabama Courts Amendment” with the state Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 4.

The amendment’s language is clearly drawn from model legislation drafted by anti-Muslim lawyer David Yerushalmi, who equates Shariah with Islamic radicalism so totally that he advocates criminalizing virtually any personal practice that is compliant with Shariah. His “American Laws for American Courts” initiative enjoys support from Muslim-hating blogger Pam Geller, who plumbed new depths of foulness this week by expressing her “love” for the U.S. marines who were videotaped urinating on dead Taliban combatants. ( continue to full post… )

Pam Geller, the Muslim-hating propagandist behind the Atlas Shrugs website, is at it again. Even as U.S. officials recoil in horror, the woman whose blog once suggested that President Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X is celebrating a video that appears to show U.S. soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

“CAIR has whipped itself up into an Islamic frenzy because a video surfaced that appears to show US Marines [in] combat gear urinating on several dead jihadis,” Geller’s website said Wednesday, referring to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group. “Would anyone have CAIRed if Marines urinated on dead Nazi soldiers during WWII? (Anyone besides CAIR and Nazis, that is)?” ( continue to full post… )

Avoiding controversy was the stated aim when Lowe’s, the home improvement giant, bowed to pressure from a Florida evangelical group by pulling its ads from a TV reality show that makes Muslims look like ordinary Americans rather than terrorists.

But now the chain’s act of enabling bigots has boomeranged into a black-eye controversy, a PR nightmare: The company faces an accelerating deluge of attacks in social and traditional media, outrage from political and religious leaders, and on-site protests scheduled for at least one of its stores in a heavily Muslim community. ( continue to full post… )

Amid mounting criticism, home improvement giant Lowe’s Cos. Inc. is sticking by a decision to pull its ads from the TV reality show “All-American Muslim,” caving to pressure from the Florida Family Association, a conservative evangelical group that boasts it has persuaded more than 60 companies to cancel their ads too.

The weekly show on TLC depicts the lives of five Muslim families living in Dearborn, Mich. Show spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg says it has slightly over a million viewers per episode.

By depicting Muslims as ordinary Americans, the program “riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values,” the Florida Family Association (FFA) website says. The site was hacked into and shut down by Anonymous today. ( continue to full post… )

Even stopped clocks are right two times a day, so why can’t hate group leaders be half as accurate?

Internet evangelist Bill Keller, head of the anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-Mormon hate group Bill Keller Ministries, spoke the truth exactly once in a press release issued yesterday. Exhorting Christians not to follow Glenn Beck, he observed that the former Fox News entertainer “views himself as a modern day Paul Revere or Moses,” and makes money – “mostly from gullible Christians” – by scaring them into “buying gold, safes, and food insurance.”

Truer words were never spoken – unfortunately, they were spoken by a lunatic. ( continue to full post… )

The Liberty Counsel has announced the lineup of speakers for next year’s national conference, and it’s a marquee of far-right luminaries. Prominent figures of the anti-Muslim movement will rub shoulders with the anti-gay religious right. Christian dominionists will hang out with hard-line constitutionalists. And, of course, the prime minister of Israel will speak, too.

That’s right. The website for The Awakening 2012 lists Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as one of the confirmed speakers for the event scheduled for next April in Orlando, Fla. “As our nation’s honor is deteriorating, now is the time to take a stand and restore our country’s strength and dignity,” one conference flyer proclaims. ( continue to full post… )

Anti-Muslim hate crimes soared by an astounding 50% last year, skyrocketing over 2009 levels in a year marked by the vicious rhetoric of Islam-bashing politicians and activists, especially over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York City.

Although the national statistics compiled by the FBI each year are known to dramatically understate the real level of reported and unreported hate crimes, they do offer telling indications of some trends. The latest statistics, showing a jump from 107 anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2009 to 160 in 2010, seem to reflect a clear rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric from groups like Stop Islamization of America. Much of that rhetoric was aimed at stopping an Islamic center in lower Manhattan.

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DETROIT — The only thing more noticeable than Lou Engle saying he was going to pray that Muslims would have “dreams of Jesus” during his marathon 24-hour prayer gathering over the weekend in Detroit were the efforts he undertook to show that he was all about sensitivity to minorities.

From the American Indians dancing in full-feathered dress to his proclamation a few hours later that he chose Detroit in a nod to black Americans’ sufferings, Engle carefully avoided the anti-Muslim rhetoric for which he is known and emphasized his affinity with minorities instead. Indeed, he described Detroit as the final stop on the underground railroad, the end of “black America’s trail of tears,” in explaining why he chose the city for the interfaith event that began Friday.

This was the same man who earlier had said that Muslims are “fueling the demonic realm” and in the thrall of “spiritual dark powers.” But after widespread criticism of the event — Engle seemed at pains to avoid any semblance of intolerance. ( continue to full post… )

A coalition of national security hawks, Christian activists from both here and abroad, lawyers and GOP activists gathered on Friday at a Nashville-area megachurch notorious for hosting spectacles to discuss strategies and tactics for combating the “threat” that Islamic Shariah law supposedly poses in the United States.

Following an invocation and prayer, speakers at “The Constitution or Shariah: Preserving National Freedom” – hosted by the Shariah Awareness Action Network – wasted no time getting down to business. ( continue to full post… )

The anti-Shariah conference to be held tomorrow at an Assemblies of God megachurch in Madison, Tenn., was very nearly canceled. A few weeks ago, the Nashville hotel that was scheduled to host it abruptly canceled its contract. Maury Davis, flamboyant pastor of the Cornerstone Church, saved the day when he agreed to let the coalition rent his church for the event.

“I want to know what is Sharia law, how did it come about, what does it mean and how is it implemented – just as a citizen and as a Christian, what is Sharia law?” Davis told the Christian Post. ( continue to full post… )