Video besmirches institutions, stokes fear of Muslims

Isn’t it time for state Sen. Bill Ketron to come clean?

After co-sponsoring legislation that put a target on Muslim beliefs, then revising the bill to remove any reference to Islam, the Murfreesboro Republican now has handed out to fellow senators a video packed with lies and distortions that obviously is intended to galvanize support for his bill, the Material Support to Designated Entities Act.

And yes, the focus is back on Muslims in this diatribe, which accuses Vanderbilt University, Tennessee State University and the Islamic Center of Nashville of tolerating, even encouraging Islamic extremism.

The assertions in the video are easily debunked. Its claims that Carlos Bledsoe, a Memphian who converted to Islam and is accused of killing an Arkansas Army recruiter, was radicalized in Nashville, are specious. Local Muslims have said they barely remember the man, who studied at TSU and attended the Islamic Center. Court documents in Arkansas have shown that Bledsoe’s first exposure to terrorists was in Yemen, where he moved to teach English after leaving Nashville.

Neither do the passages in the video regarding the mosque’s former vice president hold water. Awadh Binhazim’s lectures on Islam at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, as they are detailed in the video, could only be interpreted as promoting radicalism by those with preconceived notions and a complete disregard for fact. For Binhazim to explain to his listeners that many Muslims worldwide are draw to Shariah law is not to say he endorses Shariah law. To explain to listeners that traditional Islamic law imposes the death penalty for homosexuality does not constitute support for that law, and Binhazim has said as much.

The accusations in the video are irresponsible, especially in how they smear two esteemed Tennessee institutions of learning in Vanderbilt and TSU.

While Sen. Ketron has much to answer for with this video, he is not alone in this slimy crusade. After all, the original version of the bill that Ketron and state Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, introduced was not written by either lawmaker, but by Arizona attorney David Yerushami and his staff — Yerushalmi an anti-Muslim activist who has been associated with hate groups. The Eagle Forum delivered the bill to Ketron and Matheny, who have admitted they did not read it before introducing it in the General Assembly.

The video was initially released by another out-of-state entity, Boston-based Americans for Peace and Tolerance, with credit given to the Tennessee Freedom Coalition — both groups with misleading names. The Boston organization touts tolerance but much of its work rests on baseless accusations of radicalism against Muslim leaders in American communities. The Tennessee Freedom Coalition is led by Lou Ann Zelenik of Murfreesboro, who helped inflame the controversy over a proposed Islamic center in Rutherford County during her failed campaign for the Sixth District Republican congressional nomination last summer.

None of the distortions in this video should be accepted as fact by any lawmaker, or any thinking Tennessean, for that matter. If anything, this ploy shows that the existing legislation, even stripped of references to specific religions, is ill-conceived and wrong for Tennessee.

Please, Sen. Ketron, do admit to your constituents and the state as a whole what your motives are, to go to such lengths to bring about this bill. Is it special-interest money? A pet cause on which to hang your ambitions to higher office? Is it a personal fear and dislike of Muslims, as many have suggested?

And if this video fails to change minds, what’s next, senator? “Wanted’’ posters with photos of local Islamic leaders, and the distribution of lanterns and pitchforks to the general population?

Source: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110519/OPINION01/305190019/Smear-tactics-behind-terror-bill

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