Fox News condemned Judge Jeanine Pirro last week for her focus on the danger of sharia law gaining a foothold in the United States of America. You can read my thoughts about that here.
But six years ago, I wrote a column about Islam and sharia gaining a foothold in Fox News that may shed light on current events. It focused on the fact that Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was an influential Fox News shareholder, but looked far beyond that.
That column is included in my new book — “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake?” — my analysis of Fake News, Media Bias and Political Smokescreens (available at Amazon). I’m reprinting the essay here because of its dire warning against allowing political correctness to restrict our ability to criticize anti-American threats within Islam.
Although Prince Alwaleed reportedly sold his shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. in 2017, the nature of that financial transaction has never been clear. Either way, Alwaleed had a profound influence on Murdoch and if Fox has a tendency to be an apologist for Islam, this may explain why.
Here’s my 2013 column in full, as originally printed at the Daily Inter Lake.
One good reason not to trust Fox News
February 23, 2013
FRANK MIELE/Daily Inter Lake
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and the same thing goes for Al Gore and Rupert Murdoch, right?
I wrote a column recently excoriating Al Gore for selling his Current TV cable channel to Al Jazeera, the Arabic news broadcast company based in Qatar. It isn’t just that Al Jazeera is Arabic, but rather that it is a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist causes.
Turns out that the new Al Jazeera America may not be the only problem, however. An interview with columnist Diana West on the website www.radicalislam.org has pointed to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News as another unlikely point of origin for Islamic propaganda in the United States.
Before we consider the particulars, let’s look at the larger picture.
Does American freedom of the press mean that our country is obligated to provide a forum for those who would destroy us? That is the central philosophical question on which hinges our cultural survival — for if we cannot ban anti-American propaganda within our own borders, then the Constitution is indeed a suicide pact, as a Supreme Court justice once famously assured us it wasn’t.
Yes, I know we are a diverse society, and we welcome all opinions, but nonetheless it is insane to allow foreign agents to promote anti-American viewpoints from within our very own shores. That’s why I wrote a column last month that blasted Gore for selling his company to Al Jazeera and its Muslim Brotherhood backers.
But this isn’t just a problem created by liberal Democrats. It is a social problem, and it reaches so deep that it avoids any partisan label. There was plenty of evidence of American subservience to Islamic sensitivities during the Bush administration. President Bush was famous for calling Islam a “religion of peace” at the same time when its clerics were calling for his head on a platter.
More recently, a perfect example is the failure of the Army to declare the attack at Fort Hood either a military attack or terrorism. Nope, just a plain old psycho who coincidentally happened to be a Muslim in communication with Islamic terror leader Anwar al-Awlaki.
And one more example: The U.S. military has responded to attacks on our soldiers by their Afghan trainees not by halting the training programs, but by implementing “Islamic sensitivity” sessions so that our GIs know why they annoy the Afghans so much.
Which brings us back to Fox News and Rupert Murdoch. I’d been vaguely aware that a minority shareholder in Fox News was Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, but the interview with Diana West showed just how much concern that should cause. Not only does bin Talal own 7 percent of Murdoch’s News Corp, but Murdoch also owns 19 percent of Rotana, which is bin Talal’s Arabic media group. These two are intimately involved in each other’s profit motives, and West makes a convincing case that Fox News has avoided controversial topics involving Islam ever since bin Talal made his first investment in News Corp in 2005.
Indeed, bin Talal bragged publicly that year about complaining to Murdoch that Fox News was characterizing street violence in Paris as “Muslim riots.” A short while later, Fox joined the rest of the mainstream media in referring to the “civil riots” in Paris without reference to the Islamic origin of the unrest.
It appears that Alwaleed’s investment in Fox News, as well as Al Jazeera’s purchase of Current TV, both represent the culmination of a plan which Alwaleed himself expressed in a 2002 interview with his own Arab News:
“Arab countries can influence U.S. decision making “if they unite through economic interests, not political… We have to be logical and understand that the U.S. administration is subject to U.S. public opinion. … And to bring the decision-maker on your side, you not only have to be active in the U.S. Congress or the administration, but also inside U.S. society.”
That is an absolutely transparent confession of what is going on, and yet Congress, the news media and the American public just act as though it doesn’t matter. They apparently believe that the United States is invulnerable to any threat — foreign or domestic — and that we really ought to just welcome our Muslim brothers to our shore as part of the great American melting pot that is now so diluted that there is virtually nothing American left about it.
Ask yourself: How exactly does the United States benefit by having the propaganda arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and the worldwide Islamic revolution being welcomed into millions of homes across the country?
I guess there’s nothing like humanizing the face of jihad so that Mr. and Mrs America can start to feel better about submitting to sharia (Islamic law) and dhimmitude (subservience by non-Muslims to their Islamic betters). Not much chance we will be watching programming on the “Real Oppressed Wives of The Casbah” or “My Big Fat Obnoxious Terrorist.” Instead, it will be a steady stream of how reasonable, rational and peaceful everyone is in the Middle East when they are not throwing together a “spontaneous demonstration” outside the U.S. mission in Benghazi, sentencing rape victims to death for provoking men by not wearing a burka, or stoning Christians for… well… for being Christians.
Oh, wait, I remember now. As I have been informed by my liberal betters, there is no reason to fear Islam. It is just right-wing hate speech to point out the historical basis of that fear. It is bug-eyed McCarthyism to suggest that foreign elements might not have America’s best interests at heart (even though history has proven that McCarthy was right about the Soviet Union’s spy network operating throughout the U.S. government in the 1950s).
Muslims, we are told, are not our enemy until they do something to prove they are an enemy. But tell that to journalist Danny Pearl, who was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2001 by Islamic fundamentalists who later cut his head off. Tell it to Nick Berg, a Jewish American businessman who was executed in Iraq by the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2004. Tell it to Eugene Armstrong or Jack Hensley, American contractors who were also decapitated after being captured in Iraq in 2004. These are but the tiniest indicators of the nature of Islam, but like the arrow of a compass aiming infallibly toward the magnetic field at the North Pole, these murders point inexorably toward the gathering force that confronts Western civilization.
But, of course, we need to all try to get along — so the less said about those brutal murders the better. We don’t want to insult our Muslim brothers by making them feel unwelcome. Remember, our self-interest as a free society should always come second if there is the slightest chance that our honesty might offend someone from a more oppressive, less tolerant culture. Otherwise we are being selfish, and that is politically incorrect.
Which is why, I suppose, there is absolutely no way for our country to stop our enemies from taking over our media centers, our digital networks, our manufacturing facilities, probably even our military and our government eventually. We are just too darn polite to ever say anything about how much our institutions and traditions mean to us. We used to fight to the death to preserve our culture, but now we are way TOO cultured to presume that the American way of life is in any way better than any other.
Hey, maybe that anti-American propaganda is working! Just a thought.
Frank Miele writes from Kalispell, Montana, at www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com and is a columnist at Real Clear Politics. My new book is “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake.” To support my work, please consider buying “The Media Matrix” or my “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy, which documents the downward spiral of the USA before Trump arrived on the scene. The books are available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle editions. Go here for a free sample: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/sitb/B07PDQBJM4
Charges against Judge Pirro because of her reasoning from Omar’s own words:
“Think about it: Omar wears a hijab,” Pirro said. “Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Shariah law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
Fox News condemned Pirro’s comments, saying they had addressed the matter directly with the host.
“We strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro’s comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar,” the network said in a statement last week. “They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly.”
Dear Journalists and Observers,
Am I the only one who actually watched Judge Jeanine Pirro’s program on Saturday, March 9, 2019? She was MAKING A POINT! If, indeed, Omar’s statement and belief is to be accepted, that she believes Americans who support the Israeli people and their world view cannot be loyal to the United States Constitution, then, it obviously follows, by covering her head, Omar is showing allegiance to Sharia law, and therefore is not loyal to the United States Constitution. It is using Omar’s own logic.
Judge Pirro was asking a question as Omar herself asked people how they could be loyal to Israel if they were loyal to the United States of America. Judge Pirro said, if it were true that Americans put Israel ahead of the United States of America because they supported policies which help Israel, it would then follow that Omar was putting Sharia law ahead of the United States of America by adhering to Sharia Law’s mandate that women must cover their heads so men don’t attack them. It is Omar’s own conclusion. Why should Judge Jeanine be punished for trying to work this out through the Socratic method, i.e., wanting to distingush between Omar’s bias against Israel, and her own loyalty to a law other than the laws of our Land. And don’t tell me Shariah law is a religion. Any doctrine that allows “Honor killings,” is not a religion.
Establishing the truth through “reasoned arguments” is not acceptable to Fox. I am re-thinking my respect for the lackluster Fox apologists. Is it because Lachlan and James are the product of politically correct England? Australia? Hollywood? Judge Jeanine had every right to see if Omar’s charges against people who support Israel are equal to charges that Omar must, therefore, support of Sharia Law because of the significance of the hijab she proudly wears. If one accusation against Israeli supporters’ loyalty is accurate, then it follows that the loyalty to Sharia Law is accurate. It also follows, by the Socratic reasoning method, that if loyalty to Israel does not negate loyalty to the United States of America, then wearing a hijab shouldn’t represent someone’s loyalty to Sharia Law over the laws of the United States. I should have been able to sum this up much more concisely, but if Fox was so deaf to Judge Pirro and her method of distinguishing between Omar’s bias and Omar’s own adherence to laws not of these United States, then more questions and answers are needed, not suspension of the Judge because someone is outraged with the truth.
Sincerely,
Joe Morrisco
Bedminster, NJ 07921
Your February 23, 2013, article, included this question: “Ask yourself: How exactly does the United States benefit by having the propaganda arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and the worldwide Islamic revolution being welcomed into millions of homes across the country?” Your article about Al-Jazeer’s tv station was correct in 2013 and it is correct now. Americans are so polite we don’t brag, when maybe we should. Obama made us swallow our national pride as though it were an ugly blemish. He wanted the United States to forget that in 1773,1774, 1775, 1776, old white men put together a government that could last as long as it remained a Republic. Young folks don’t have any history before the day Martin Luther King was killed. They can’t fathom that soldiers put their lives on the line to keep me free in 2019. Thousands of white men – the very same who are being vilified today for the color of their skin, not the content of their hearts. Minorities and women fought in WWII, but mostly white men. This isn’t bigotry or prejudice, it is a fact. We don’t speak German because U. S. soldiers fought for our freedom. We lost lives, blood, and treasure, but we are not under German rule. And it is not politically correct, but we don’t speak Japanese, either. We are allies with Japan now, but we were not allies in 1941. Young folks will never experience the fear those young soldiers experienced during WWI, WWII, the Korean war, the Viet Nam war, the two gulf wars. But the young soldiers fought to protect us. What do the young kids today do? I don’t know. Al-Jazeer’s message was made main stream by Al Gore who made $500 million dollars by selling the station to the Al- Jazeer propagandists. Did we really need a Muslim anti-American propaganda machine inside the United States? Who is monitoring them for “hate speech”? I may not watch the station, and I bet millions of Americans DO NOT, but Al-Jazeer is counting on that. They can say whatever they want on Al-Jazeer and there is no public outcry. I’m pretty sure Omar watches herself on that station and that she is their hero. Fox has made Omar, tlaib, and Cortez household names and they are believing their own hype. We have no issues with people of the Muslim faith, but like it or not, this country was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and there were no Muslims involved. Again, this is not bigotry or prejudice. It is simply a fact. If people wish to be governed by a more Muslim influence, I think there are about 57 Muslim countries from which people can choose. But to paraphrase what Cortez recently tweeted to one of her Democrat colleagues, “we are not locked in here with the Muslims. They are locked in with us.” They can assimilate, or choose other countries where they feel more comfortable. Just sayin’.
Sincerely,
Joe Morrisco
Bedminster, nj 07921
Joe: the good news is that Al Jazeera America went out of business!