Less than a week ago I told you about how Facebook is blocking sites like VDARE that apparently the woke and oh-so-smart people at Facebook don’t like, and it is no surprise to see Google hard at work doing the same.
Here is Robert Spencer, whose blog Jihad Watchhas been the go-to site for the latest news about the ‘religion of peace’ for going on two decades, finding the site buried by Google.
And, look who is here—Imam-extraordinaire Omar Suleiman!
Daniel Greenfield, the peerless Shillman Fellow and FrontPage writer, tweeted the news on May 7: “Google just erased my Sultan Knish blog and Front Page Mag articles from the first pages of results for my name doubt very much this is accidental.”
I did too, so I checked for myself, and sure enough: a Google search for “Robert Spencer” now does not bring up Jihad Watch, where most of my writing outside of books has been published for the last seventeen years, but it does give you defamatory and distorted attack pieces from the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center*** and the Saudi-funded Bridge Initiative, and nothing that doesn’t portray me and my work in the most unfavorable possible light.
This latest example of the tech giants’ determination to silence all dissenting voices reveals one often overlooked fact: they are desperately afraid.
Google is so afraid of Jihad Watch, in fact, that it is going to great lengths to make you think that the site (which you can find here) doesn’t exist at all.
Several years ago, under pressure from the Texas-based imam Omar Suleiman, Google changed the algorithm for its search results so as to bury anything critical of Islamic jihad violence or Sharia oppression of women. Jihad Watch, which for years had been the first result in a Google search for “jihad” (back when Google searches were based solely on relevance and the popularity of the site), fell off the front page of “jihad” searches.
Now Google has gone even farther to make sure you don’t see Jihad Watch. Just this morning, I was looking for an old Jihad Watch article from a few years ago that I needed for a citation, and I entered an exact phrase from that article into the Google search bar. What came back were two sites where the article had been republished, but no indication that it had ever been at Jihad Watch at all.
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel of a totalitarian society, 1984, to which far more people refer than have actually read the book, the dissenter Winston Smith’s job in the Ministry of Truth involves erasing from all historical records any mention of people who have been declared “nonpersons.” Foes of the regime aren’t just vilified. Their very existence is erased. Dissent is easy to control if all record of it ever having been enunciated is eradicated, and Google has apparently taken a page from Orwell’s book.
Of course, Jihad Watch is one of the least of the concerns of Big Tech. They’re erasing all manner of people who dissent from the Leftist agenda. Greenfield notes that “Google controls 80% of search. That means it controls what the internet looks like. And it’s continuing to erase conservatives from the internet. I’m just the latest victim. Its censorship and creepy surveillance have reached new heights during the pandemic.”
*** One of the funniest things I ever read from someone who had newly been labeled a hate GROUP by the Southern Poverty Law Center was Daniel Greenfield’s post in 2012when he learned he (with his blog Sultan Knish) had been added to the SPLC’s Hate GROUP list.
HOW I BECAME A HATE GROUP
Here are just a few snips:
When I went to sleep last night, little did I know that while outside sirens competed with car alarms in the symphony that is New York City, I had already been declared a hate group.
Being declared a hate group wasn’t in my plans for the day, but like winning the lottery, it seems to be one of those things that happens when you least expect it. Except that as the little bald man in front of the bodega tells you, you have to play to win, but you don’t even have to buy a ticket to be declared an official hate group.
My first response on finding out that I was now a hate group was to look around to see where everyone else was. A hate group needs the “group” part, and one man and a cat don’t seem to be enough. Even when the cat is a well known bigot who hates mice, birds, car alarms that go off in the middle of the night, the plumber and sudden noises.
Still the Southern Poverty Law Center had listed, “Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield” as one of their “Active Anti-Muslim Hate Groups…”
I suppose I found this so funny because the SPLC has done the same to me (I have a cat) too!
Since I had previously devoted some attention to immigrant-pushing Islamic cleric Imam Omar Suleiman this post at Islamist Watchby Sam Westrop jumped out at me this morning as I did my usual perusal of the news looking for items that I think would interest you.
Westrop points out that the Salafistshave not needed to change (or pretend to change) in Europe because the Muslim population there is high enough to push their ‘purist’ agenda without ‘modifying’ their hardcore beliefs, but in the US the population is not high enough (yet!) so they need the Leftwingers, the Progressive Dems, to essentially hide behind.
One of those clever pretenders is Suleiman. I wrote about him working with Church World Service and CAIR in March of 2018 to protest Trump’s refugee slowdown. See here.
Flexible Salafis
The Growing Political Power of ‘Woke,’ Modernist Islamism
Imam Omar Suleiman rarely talks about da’wah – the Islamic duty of proselytization. He never talks about Islamist designs for an Islamic state. Instead, America’s leading Islamic cleric speaks about broad political change, employing the language and ideas of progressivism.
In fact, Suleiman, president of the Yaqeen Institute, is not just a preacher; he is an activist, found often in front of TV cameras, speaking before Congress, or being arrested on Capitol Hill at protests against the Trump administration’s policies.
His success is surprising. Suleiman is one of a number of popular clerics who emerged from a network centered around the AlMaghrib Institute, a Salafi-founded organization dedicated to a hardline strain of Islam. Its own extremism is incontrovertible. Founder Muhammad Alshareef once wrote a paper titled “Why the Jews Were Cursed,” in which he claims Jews control the media and murder prophets. Other leading Almaghrib clerics include Abdullah Hakim Quick, who calls for the killing of homosexuals and urges God to “purify” Al-Aqsa from the “filth of the Yahud [Jews],” and “clean Afghanistan and Iraq” from the “filth of the Kafiroun [unbelievers].”
Suleiman at the southern border in December 2018
Suleiman’s rhetoric has at times been just as extreme. Around 2014, he was busy beseeching the ummah to rise up and act against the forces that threatened Islam. He praised a newer generation of “awakened” Muslim youth, and lauded the piety and commitment of the people of Gaza. And he criticized those who were “too lazy” to boycott the “Zionist regime,” claiming such activism by a committed few had already cost the Israelis over 8 billion dollars.
But as his fame grew, his tactics changed. Whereas once Suleiman excused the killing of adulterers and denounced homosexuality as a “repugnant shameless sin,” today he is an ardent advocate for political alliances with the progressive Left, including “LGBT” movements. In lectures and quasi-academic essays, Suleiman and Yaqeen now promote Islam as a force for “social justice.”
Instead of talking just about refugees from Gaza or Syria, Suleiman is today also found at the border with Mexico – equipped with journalists and their cameras – to embrace non-Muslim emigrants and loudly protest the Trump administration’s policies.
And rather than remain just a regular fixture on the Islamist conference circuit, Suleiman today finds himself introduced to Congress by Nancy Pelosi, and given a platform at Bernie Sanders’ campaign rallies, to talk about the “promise of America … an America that resists the forces of bigotry … the forces of greed … that distract us from corrupt billionaires.”
Omar Suleiman is both the Left’s talking-point and its talking-head.
He is no longer issuing parochial calls for an awakened Muslim youth, but he has become part of a broader hard Left movement that claims to be building a utopia for all.
His name is Idris Abdus-Salaam. Jihad Watch says he is a Muslim. Convert or immigrant is not clear.
As usual, the UK Daily Mailhas pretty good coverage and photos of the poor women who lost their lives. They were already risking their lives by working to provide the truckers America needs so much right now with meals.
And, to lose their lives so violently is sickening.
Idris Abdus-Salaam was shot and killed by police at the scene. No motive for the attack has been reported, although Jihad Watch suggests one. Was he a jihadist? I suspect we will never know.
A truck driver from North Carolina has been identified as the man who fatally stabbed three women and wounded a fourth at a Tennessee truck stop this morning, before a deputy shot and killed him after he refused to drop his knife.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday afternoon identified the suspect in the stabbings at the Pilot Travel Center on Strawberry Plains Pike off Interstate 40 as 33-year-old Idris Abdus-Salaam, from Durham, North Carolina.
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call at 7am at the truck stop to find a woman with stab wounds outside the store and a man armed with a knife in the parking lot, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
[….]
Grandmother Joyce Whaley
Authorities found in all four stabbing victims. Three were pronounced dead at the scene from their wounds and the fourth was taken to a hospital for treatment.
The victims include Pilot employees identified by TBI as Joyce Whaley, 57; Patricia Nibbe, 51, and Nettie Spencer, 41.
Investigators were still working to determine a motive for the deadly attack, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Leslie Earhart said.
Continue reading hereto learn more especially about the women who were, yes, slaughtered.
Georgia man pleads guilty to attempting to attack the White House with explosives
ATLANTA – Hasher Jallal Taheb, who planned an attack on the White House using weapons and explosives, has pleaded guilty to a charge of attempting to destroy, by fire or an explosive, a building owned by or leased to the United States.
“Taheb hatched a dangerous plan that would have resulted in unimaginable injury,” said U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak. “We are grateful to community members who noticed his dangerous evolution and alerted law enforcement. Along with our federal, state and local partners, we will remain vigilant in order to disrupt these types of attacks before they happen.”
“Taheb planned to conduct a terrorist attack on the White House as part of what he claimed was his obligation to engage in jihad,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers.
“And that was just one of the iconic American landmarks he wanted to target. Thanks to a tip from a member of the community and the work of the agents, analysts, and prosecutors responsible for this case, the threat posed by the defendant was neutralized and the defendant has admitted his guilt and will now be held accountable for his crime.”
“This plea is the result of a more than year-long intensive investigation by FBI Atlanta’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, which was because of a tip from the community,” said Chris Hacker, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta. “Our citizens are our most important weapons in fighting terrorism, our eyes and ears in our communities, and why we say to please contact law enforcement if you see or hear something suspicious.”
Ex-Mayo Clinic employee charged with attempting to provide ISIS support
A former medical coordinator for Mayo Clinic was arrested at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Thursday while trying to get to Syria to fight “on the front line” of ISIS.
The FBI arrested 28-year-old Muhammad Masood after he checked in for his flight to Los Angeles. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota has charged Masood with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, including wanting to serve as a fighter and combat medic and talking of his desire to enact a lone wolf-style attack. Masood made his first appearance in court Thursday.
Masood is a licensed medical doctor in Pakistan working in the United States on an H-1B Visa for the past two years in the Mayo Clinic Department of Cardiovascular Diseases. In a statement Thursday, Mayo Clinic communications manager Ginger Plumbo said that Masood was not a Mayo Clinic employee at the time of his arrest. It is unclear when his employment ended.
From January to March, Masood made several statements pledging his allegiance to ISIS and its leader, according to charges.
“i want to fight on the front line as well as help the wounded brothers,” he said over an encrypted social media app to confidential informant sources, according to charges. “as i doctor i want to help mujahedeen [sic] on the ground,” he wrote. According to charges, “mujahedeen” refers to those engaged in jihad.
On Feb. 19, Masood traveled to Bloomington to meet with a confidential informant he believed would help him join ISIS. They met in the parking lot of a shopping mall and drove to a nearby hotel. They patched in another informant via video conference, who Masood believed to be an overseas commander vetting him.
Left out of the Star Tribune story is this line from an AP story:
He explained that he wanted to make the trip because he “hates smiling at the passing kuffar just to not make them suspicios.” The affidavit said kuffar is an Arabic term meaning nonbeliever or non-Muslim.
You have probably seen the news, but just in case….
