When broadcaster Keith Olbermann named Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post his “Worst Person in the World,” he was not engaging in media theatre — he was documenting a moment of profound moral failure at the heart of American public life. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organisation, released footage capturing what happens when organised Islamophobia is amplified by a major media outlet and converted into street-level action. Near the site of a proposed Islamic community centre in lower Manhattan — cynically and deliberately mislabelled the “Ground Zero Mosque” by Murdoch’s tabloid — 500 protesters gathered with a singular purpose: to direct hatred at Muslims exercising their constitutional rights. This episode cuts to the core of what it means to uphold justice, dignity, and the Qur’anic imperative to stand as witnesses to fairness — not merely within our own communities, but in the public square where the rights of all people of faith are tested.
The Organised Islamophobia Network Behind New York’s Anti-Muslim Campaigns
The protest and the accompanying anti-Islam bus ad campaign were not spontaneous outbursts of civic concern — they were the deliberate output of “Stop the Islamization of America” (SIOA), a hate group led by blogger Pamela Geller whose rhetoric has been condemned across the political spectrum. Geller’s documented record includes publishing images depicting Islam’s noble Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as a pig, mocking the sacred phrase “Peace Be Upon Him” with a profane parody, and claiming without evidence that Muslim groups secretly control “senior levels of the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, and the various branches of the military.” She has called for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and, alongside SIOA’s deputy Robert Spencer, promoted content urging the mass killing of all Pakistanis — language that no reasonable reading can describe as anything other than incitement. Even the United States Patent and Trademark Office refused to grant SIOA a trademark, finding the group’s name inherently disparaging to Muslims — and the full picture of this network, as documented by CAIR, reveals how far its reach extends:
“The applied-for mark refers to Muslims in a disparaging manner because by definition it implies that conversion or conformity to Islam is something that needs to be stopped or caused to cease.” — U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
- SIOA is an outgrowth of “Stop the Islamization of Europe,” a network that openly declares Islamophobia to be “the height of common sense”
- Geller has been criticised even by fellow Islamophobes for her extremism and her open support of far-right fascist movements in Europe
- The New York Post‘s sustained media amplification provided the mainstream legitimacy that transformed online hatred into a 500-person street protest
- The “Ground Zero Mosque” label was a deliberate fabrication — the proposed development was a Muslim community centre several blocks from the World Trade Center site
- CAIR’s documentation shows SIOA’s conspiracy theories echo the dehumanising language historically deployed against minority communities before acts of collective violence
When Hatred Strikes Blindly: The Human Cost of Anti-Muslim Bigotry
The most chilling detail of the New York protest — and the one that Keith Olbermann placed at the centre of his commentary — is what the crowd’s hatred actually produced when it met reality. When protesters spotted two dark-skinned men speaking Arabic near the rally, a portion of the group surrounded them, shouting “get out” and “go home.” As the confrontation escalated and New York’s police stepped in to extract the men for their own safety, one of them cried out in a voice witnesses described as half-fearful, half-startled. The two men — Joseph Nasala and Karam Elmaz — were Egyptian Coptic Christians, employees of a Christian satellite television station in California, who had flown nine hours specifically to join the protest against the community centre. The crowd’s fury was so indiscriminate, so completely untethered from any genuine knowledge of Islam or its adherents, that it consumed two Christian men simply because of how they looked and what language they spoke.
“I flew nine hours in an airplane to come here,” Nasala said, before repeating: “I’m a Christian.” The reply that cut through the chaos was equally stark: “The problem, sir, is not what you are — but what the rest of them think you are.”
This incident stands as a sobering parable for our times, and its lessons extend far beyond one protest on one afternoon in New York. The campaign against the Islamic community centre — fuelled by Geller’s hate network and amplified through mainstream media — was never truly about a building, a location, or even a theology. It was about the willingness to assign collective guilt to an entire global community of nearly two billion believers, reducing the rich, diverse, and spiritually profound tradition of Islam to a single, malevolent caricature. For Muslims in America and around the world, this moment calls not for despair but for renewed commitment to the path of truth: to educate with wisdom, to engage with patience, to bear witness with dignity, and to trust that justice — as our faith has always taught — is never ultimately defeated. CAIR’s work in documenting and challenging these campaigns of hatred is a reminder that the civil rights and human dignity of American Muslims are not a niche concern — they are a test of America’s deepest values, one that every generation must choose, clearly and courageously, to pass.
