Before I get to the point of this post, some contextual background is necessary to help peel through the layers of deceptive neutrality that Loon Watch wraps itself in. This enables a better understanding of the motivating factors which may not be immediately apparent to the casual observer.
That Loon Watch writers are rabidly anti Israel and their website attracts an Anti-Semitic, Anti-West and Islamist readership is no secret. The site links to Ali Abunimah whom even MJ Rosenberg has described as an
anti-semite who seeks the end of Israel by but pretends otherwise:
And, yes, using Ali’s definition, I am a Zionist. I support the existence of a sovereign secure State of Israel living side by side with a sovereign secure State of Palestine. The borders of both would be the ’67 lines with internationally enforced security arrangements to protect both states and both peoples.
This sets the tone for their political beliefs regarding Israel. Unlike the liberals that they desperately try to court they do not support the two state solution.
Try as they may to hide their Islamist agenda the mask often slips revealing their true ugly bigoted colours. Comments at Loon Watch are approved and long term commenters are invariably anti-West, anti-Israel, anti-Christian and anti-Hindu, the order of precedence, type and depth of hate depends on the national allegiance of the particular member. It is not altogether difficult to discern the background of Loon Watch writers or members; their favourite
Muslim conspiracy is a dead giveaway. I have already written about a
Pakistani American conspiracist that Ilisha recommends as a good source for Saudi Arabia. This particular nutroot who commented at Loon Watch under the moniker 'AJ' claims that Obama, Netanyahu and M15 are orchestrating terrorist bombings around the world to blame Muslims.
Pakistans arch enemy is India, and
India enjoys a close relationship
with Israel which is probably one of the main reasons why anti-semitism is rife amongst Pakistani communities. Pakistani media is full of
Hindu-Crusader-Zionist Axis conspiracies:
Mumbai massacre. Certainly Loon Watch has many commenters and probably writers of
Pakistani background.
Loon Watch also have an agenda to link '
Islamophobia' with Zionism. However, their simultaneous need to court liberal and Jewish groups to bolster their credibility presents a dilemma for which they are forced to put on air of feigned liberalism and tolerance, which necessitates that they must obfuscate their Islamist credentials if they want to become another
SPLC type hate fighting group. SPLC and other similar hate fighting groups do not have a political agenda. They fight hate, not claim to fight hate whilst promoting a political agenda like Loon Watch do. Loon Watch claim to fight '
Islamophobia' but their real mission is to delegitmise Israel and Zionism by attempting to link Zionism with '
Islamophobia'. It is clear from their commenters that they neither support nor share Western liberal ideals promoted by the SPLC type groups which Loon Watch also link to in an attempt to appear like a group fighting hate. And so, Loon Watch get around this dilemma by claiming to be a
'multi-faith' community which relieves them of duty of telling their readers their own religious beliefs whilst delegating the dirty work to their commenters whom they can conveniently distance themselves from as and when necessary but who are the bedrock of their support.
Why does Loon Watch need to engage in all this chicanery and subterfuge?
Perhaps some clues could be discerned in
MJ Rosenberg's words when he parted ways with Loon Watch pet Ali Abunimah by exposing him as an anti-semite who hopes using the word '
Zionist' with '
Jew' will give him a free pass:
I am not unaware that my labelling Abunimah as such makes him less influential. That is my intention.
Or maybe they could be taking a leaf out of
Lord Ahmed's book who was forced to resign from the Labour Party after the Times obtained a video of him in his native Pakistan where he thought he could safely dispense with politically correct '
Zionism' and vocalise
Jewish conspiracies. Recall that Lord Ahmed was part of a
'multi faith' group that was supposed to promote interfaith harmony until his
duplicity was revealed.
One has to wonder if the MSM journalists whose work Loon Watch copy and paste were aware of the
Loon Watch Indiegogo crowdsourced funding campaign which netted them an $8,000 bonanza, since much of the material at Loon Watch is merely copying and pasting other peoples work. This is ironic because Loon Watch like to propagate that 'islamophobes' are well funded but at least these so called '
islamophobes' write original material in their real names and are public personalities. The few pieces of orignial material Loon Watch have produced are usually ad hominen attacks on Robert Spencer. The recent smear conspiracy manufactured around a
Zionist Imam which is the subject of this post is certainly an original piece of work. What this shows is that Loon Watch are not above raising funds on the backs of other journalists who most probably are not aware of their insiduous agenda!
This then is the framework of the context for the rest of this post and to understand why Loon Watch orchestrated a year long smear campaign against an Israel friendly
prominent Muslim:
Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi of the
Istituto Culturale della Comunità Islamica Italiana (
Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community) by fabricating spiteful malicious lies and then encouraging their readers and members to make it go viral.
Yesterday, Ilisha at Loon Watch wrote '
The Curious Case of “Sheikh” Abdul Palazzi: The Muslim Zionist Hindu Islamophobe' beginning with:
Last November, we posted what turned out to be a very popular article about Abdul Hadi Palazzi’s apparent conversion to Hinduism.
Actually, the '
article' that Garibaldi (Loon Watch editor) and Ilisha cobbled together had no proof that Palazzi had converted to Hinduism. All they offered was an obscure anonymous Italian language website and a Facebook page:
Shankar Nath Baba. The same Facebook page that they now claim prove his '
Islamophobia':
For years he enjoyed notoriety for his novel stance on Zionism. Palazzi claimed to be a Muslim and an Islamic scholar. He was also an ardent supporter of Greater Israel and he claimed the Quran granted Jewish sovereignty over the Holy Land. Allah, according to Abdul Hadi Palazzi, is a Zionist.
Since Islam has no central Pope authority and Sheikh Palazzi's interpretation is just as valid as any other, it would have been interesting to see how Loon Watch would have refuted his words. The Quran was Sheikh Palazzi's source and perhaps Ilisha ought to have focused on those verses instead of engaging in ad hominem attacks. But no, Ilisha did not clarify why she thought Sheikh Palazzi was a '
charlatan' as she calls him. To do that she would need to show the Quranic interpretations which state that
Israel has no right to exist at all which Loon Watch avoids doing when it would show the unsavoury supremacist version of Islam they pretend does not exist. For the record, Sheikh Palazzi is an opponent of radical Islam saying that he debated "
for decades on the subjects of terrorism" with Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi on the subject of suicide bombings and terrorism.
One would expect that Loon Watch who are obsessed with Robert Spencer for what they claim are his
'anti Islam polemics' warning all and sundry to steer clear of them, would at least practice what they preach. But no! Ilisha is opportunistic enough to use his writings and happily distort the meanings of his words when she thinks it may suit the Loon Watch agenda:
Interestingly, even one of the most notorious anti-Muslim bigots, Robert Spencer, balked at the absurd claims of Palazzi and two of his fellow travelers:
Aside from the hypocricy of using Spencer when Loon Watch spend an inordinate amount of time trying desperately to prove that he is an '
islamophobe' and has no credibility when it comes to writing about Islam, this is actually not what Robert Spencer meant. There Spencer was ridiculing Palazzi because Spencer's own views are shaped by the likes of
Yassir Al Burhami as he
elaborates here:
In December 2011, Yassir Al-Burhami, a leader of the Salafists, an Egyptian movement of rigorist Muslims, reiterated some of the classic Islamic laws regarding the dhimmis: “Appointing infidels to positions of authority over Muslims is prohibited. Allah said: ‘Never will Allah grant the infidels a way [to triumph] over the Believers’” (Qur’an 4:141). He also declared that the Muslims of Egypt should begin again to collect the jizya from the Christians.
Al-Burhami also cited Muhammad’s precedents as a guide to Muslims living in countries in which they were still minorities: “The Muslims can implement any form of conduct used by the Prophet Muhammad. When the Prophet Muhammad was still in Mecca, he dealt with the infidels in a certain way, and when the Muslims are weak, they should deal with the infidels this way. ‘Refrain from action, pray, and pay the zakkat.’ In many infidel countries, such as occupied Palestine, we instruct Muslims to do just that. We are not telling the Muslims in Gaza to launch rockets every day, which would lead to the destruction of the entire country. We tell them to adhere to the truce. When the Prophet Muhammad first arrived in Al-Medina, he signed a treaty with the Jews without forcing them to pay the jizya poll tax. This was necessary at the time, but when they breached the treaty, he fought them, and eventually, he imposed the jizya upon the People of the Book…. The Christians [of Egypt] can be dealt with like the Jews of Al-Medina. This is possible.”25
Ilishsa further misrepresents Spencer's views:
Yes, it seems out of all the scholars in the world, only a handful have “interpreted” the Qur’an as a real estate guide.
This is a bold faced lie. The Quran has been interpreted as a
'real estate guide' since the dawn of Islam by Muslims themselves. What were the Caliphate dhimmi rules based on if the Quran wasn't interpreted as a
'real estate guide' where only Muslims could hold sovereignty to land and all others subjugated to dhimmi status? The 14 century ban on non Muslims from entering Mecca and Medina? The
religious reasons that Osama Bin Laden used to launch a jihad against the West? These are not extremist fringe views confined to Al Qaeda as apologists will claim, they were practiced by Islam's Prophet, by the Caliphs and has religious endorsements from the hightest luminaries in the Islamic world. Not content with merely using Spencers words Ilisha then goes on to distort the meaning and context to infer something that he neither said nor believes in. If anything, Robert Spencer was saying that the Quran is a
'real estate guide' for Muslims only. Unwittingly, clearly Ilisha demonstates that Loon Watch's real reason for demonising Robert Spencer is because he tells the truth.
Ilisha gleefully continues:
He also seems to hate Islam and Muslims. He now openly denigrates the faith he once claimed as his own.
The second smear piece that Ilisha published uses the same
Shankar Nath Baba as proof of Sheikh Palazzi's '
Islamophobia' that was cited when Loon Watch first claimed that he had left Islam for Hinduism. Except that now, almost a year later Ilisha also cited crude anti Islam and anti Pakistan bigotry from this same Facebook page, and indeed a cursory glance at the page shows all that she claims. However, any intelligent person would pause and question why this page with the name
'Shankar Nath Baba' was even assumed to be of Sheikh Palazzi. One gets the distinct impression that this may be impersonator determined to portray Sheikh Palazzi, Israel and India in a bad light. Since Loon Watch claim that they 'meticulously vet' their sources and go to great lengths to prove that '
Islamophobes' use doctored pictures and manufactured propaganda from social media, one would expect them to shun social meda as proof of anything. What they cite can hardly be called conclusive evidence. They could have contacted Sheikh Palazzi as any responsible writer/blogger would have done to verify their claims if their intention had been fair and balanced reporting. After all they hold '
Islamophobes' to those standards why should anyone else expect less from them? But clearly that was not the intention.
Upon further digging I discovered that there were no independent sources that verified their claims. All sources on the Islamist underworld blogosphere led to Loon Watch as the source. If indeed he had converted there would have been some independent media publicity. Sheikh
Palazzi’s Wikipedia entry has no reference to his conversion to Hinduism. Nevertheless, Wikipedia which anyone can edit cannot be relied upon for accuracy. Could these rumours be false? Was the Facebook page fake? If yes, then who would go to the trouble of updating a Facebook page for so long? Obviously anyone with the means to propagandise it would be a good candidate. By now, the sneaking suspicion that Loon Watch may have knowingly fabricated these claims lingered in my mind. Or perhaps it was one of their regular Pro Pakistan, Anti Israel commenters? Certainly a number of them can be seen salivating and expressing glee in the comments below Ilisha's smear piece.
I decided to get to the bottom of this mystery by contacting the only person who could shed light on this. Sheikh Palazzi is a public figure and his contact details are freely available on the internet. I managed to reach Sheikh Palazzi in Rome on the telephone, and in softly spoken Italian accented English he tore apart Ilisha’s claims as being utterly fictitous. Loon Watch’s first article had been libelleous and indeed had gone viral as Ilisha had gloated, but it had no substance whatsoever. With permission I will reproduce some relevant and condensed parts of our conversation:
Question: Have you converted to Hinduism?
Sheikh Palazzi: No. I am a Muslim. I engage in interfaith engagements too. I did not convert to Hinduism but I have been to India to study under a guru as part of an interfaith programme. This is a common practice for Sufi Muslims such as myself. There I met people of all background who were there to learn yoga and meditation. I made friends there and exchanged pictures some of which were obviously used on blogs. It appears that some of those pictures were used with malicious intent and used to claim that I had now converted to Hindusim. It is sad that some of my enemies have chosen to smear me using pictures to misrepresent my views and to claim that I had left Islam. It is not possible to convert to Hinduism anyway.
Question: Can you shed some light on your '
Shankar Nath Baba'
page?
Sheikh Palazzi: That is not my page. I don't use Facebook. I closed my Facebook account some years ago.
Question: What about your own website?
Sheikh Palazzi: My own website amislam.com is offline because I am now retired, and the costs for running the websites were prohibitive. I am in the process of looking for alternative web space to upload my content. In the meantime I have published works at Front Page Mag and other online publications.
Question: Have you been active in any functions since Loon Watch's first claim (late 2012) that you converted to Hinduism ?
Sheikh Palazzi: I have attended two engagements in my role as Sheikh. One (which can be viewed on Youtube here) was at a conference in Moscow in mid 2013. The other function was the 2013 Yom Yerushaleim celebrations at Edgware Synagogue in London. Celebrations included the showing of a new documentary about Jerusalem made by Aumie and Michael Shapiro of the Springboard Trust in which Sir Martin Gilbert also featured.
Question: Do you have any upcoming projects or future plans to share?
Sheikh Palazzi: I will continue to engage in interfaith helping promote harmony between Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and I will continue to support Israel and speak out against radical Islam. Radical Islam is heavily funded in Italy and people are often powerless to speak out.
Therefore Ilisha's claim that Sheikh Palazzi
'moves between two identities' is as false as the Facebook page Loon Watch based their smear campaign on. After Ilisha published her smear piece Loon Watch's editor Garibaldi is seen crowing in the comments section:
The reference to 'HP' is
Harry's Place. Garibaldi may have failed in his mission to convince the Hurry Up Harry '
goons' but there is no doubt that '
charlatan' aptly describes both him and Ilisha. These charlatans proved that Loon Watch employ the exact same unsavoury tactics in promoting bigotry that they claim '
Islamophobes' do.
In conclusion the inevitable question is; Who created the
Shankar Nath Baba used to libel and slander Sheikh Palazzi?
Update: Loon Watch's crucial-to-this-saga 'source' the
Shankar Nath Baba Facebook Page is currently unavailable.
