By Ramy Osman
On December 10, 2012, Illume Magazine featured an article putting the spotlight on Director William Coley and the Muslims4Liberty organization. The feature is titled: “New Muslim Movement Challenges Islamophobia on Home Turf“.
The article by Carl Berg, traces how the Tea Party and some of their anti-Islam tactics have actually contributed to the mission of M4L by causing Muslims to engage in constructive dialog with some Tea Party Groups. He calls M4L a movement and we also consider it a movement. Our principles of liberty, non-agression, voluntaryism and free markets are not bound by an organizational structure. We consider these principles to have parallels in Islamic teachings, and anyone can be a “Muslim for liberty”.
Please check out the feature and show support for Illume Magazine, a ground breaking American Muslim digital news outlet.
Javed Ali, CEO and Founder of Illume, also has an article about M4L featured in the Huffington Post: “Muslim Libertarians Fight Islamophobia in a New Way“. Think Progress, a cutting-edge political blog, then also weighed in on the Illume feature with: “Meet The Tea Partier Fighting Against The Right Wing’s Islamophobia“.
This seemed to have sparked new interests in M4L as interview and speaking engagement requests have increased. M4L Director Will Coley will be interviewed by NPR’s The Takeaway morning show in the coming weeks. And the Republican Liberty Caucus just confirmed that Coley will be one of their speakers at the RLC National Convention in March 2013. Other engagements are currently in the works for other M4L representatives. Please keep in mind that M4L has a small volunteer staff, and we will do our best to accommodate all questions and requests.
UPDATE
On December 16, journalist Aaron Klein recorded an interview with Will Coley under the premise that it was for the “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio Show” to be broadcast on WABC Radio in New York. The interview was later scraped by Klein and he instead wrote a piece on the neoconservative website World Net Daily titled “Tea Party Group Fights for Islamic Causes” (the underlining is part of the title). In it, he attempts to rile up his right wing audience by showing how M4L is anti-American Supremacy (which we are), anti-Israeli aggression (which we are), and anti-GOP radical right (which we are). Abandoning everything Coley said in the interview, he instead quoted extensively from two M4L articles: one was Dear Religious Right, and the other was American Supremacy Disorder.
Kleins strategy to rile up WND readers was somewhat successful because within hours the article had hundreds of comments of people declaring to destroy Islam or to purge the Tea Party of any Muslims (for the record, M4L is not part of any Tea Party group). A number of right wing websites and organizations also weighed in, even one from Canada where The Jewish Defense League of Canada posted “THEY infiltrate with the goal to detroy. Muslims are infiltrating the conservative TEA Party Movement“.
We recognize that these are reactions of the paranoid. And that this paranoia is harmful for the Tea Party and for the GOP in general. However, the overall exposure and feedback that M4L has received since the Illume feature has been positive. M4L received over a hundred new fans on its facebook page, and support from within the liberty movement is steadily increasing. We’ll continue reaching out to Muslims and Non-Muslims in our effort to educate about Islam and about liberty.
UPDATE #2
Here is a list of other significant outlets that covered the story:
- Loonwatch.com , included the feature in their listing of Anti-Loons: IllumeMag: New Muslim Movement Challenges Islamophobia
- Islawmix.com, a Harvard project providing Sharia-based perspectives on news stories: Muslim Libertarians Fight Islamophobia in a New Way
- Mother Jones , one of the first news outlets to report on Will Coley and the TN anti-Sharia bill: Tennessee Shariah Bill Too Extreme For Tea Partiers
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