I think these bloggers are less radical anti-Islamists than these West people.
Anti-Islam Activists To Hold Armed Rally In Atlanta, Shred Copy Of The Quran
by
Jack Jenkins
Apr 12, 2016 1:55 pm
CREDIT: AP Photo/LM Otero
Armed anti-Muslim protestors stand across the street from a mosque during a demonstration in Richardson, Texas, on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015.
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A group of armed, right-wing activists are planning a non-permitted anti-Islam rally in Atlanta, Georgia this weekend, where organizers say they will shred a Quran alongside pictures of president Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other politicians.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgian James Stachowiak, founder and editor of “Freedom Fighter Radio,” sent a letter to the Georgia Building Authority in February asking for a permit to hold a “United against Islam and Islamic immigration refugee rally” at Liberty Plaza in front of the state capitol. The Authority declined his request, but protest organizers have decided to convene along the public sidewalk in April 18 anyway — with guns in tow.
“You are hereby notified that protest organizers have encouraged their participants to carry loaded long guns,” read a statement from Capitol Police Director Lewis G. Young to law enforcement officials. “[The Georgia Department of Public Safety] is currently monitoring the threat risk and, together with GBA, is taking precautions to make Capitol Hill a safe environment.”
You are hereby notified that protest organizers have encouraged their participants to carry loaded long guns.
Stachowiak is an outspoken anti-Islam activist in the Peach State, where he has also been
arrested several times for, among other things, downloading a man’s picture from a social networking site and using it to label him as a terrorist. He caused minor controversy in 2015 for standing outside a military recruitment center in Augusta, Georgia with a “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt, a rifle, and a sign that read “Protect our troops from Islamic savages.”
These days, Stachowiak regularly pens Facebook posts that accuse politicians and the federal government of conspiring with terrorists, and often casts Islam as an immediate threat to the United States. In a
March 25 post, he called for his fellow “patriots” to “stockpile weapons, train and prepare for the coming clash of islam v.s. infidels and the coming civil war in America.” Stachowiak published
another post that same day promoting the upcoming rally, declaring “Death to Islam” and bragging that Terry Jones — the nondenominational pastor who stoked global controversy in 2010 for
planning to burn Qurans — would be in attendance. He noted that the demonstration will take place in front of the headquarters for CNN, which is based in Atlanta.
AJC reportedly obtained a February email from Stachowiak about the protest, in which her stated that his intent is to “raise public awareness to what we perceive as a threat to our nation from Islamic immigration and refugees.”
“We also plan to shred images of Obama, Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton and Muhammad along with the shredding of the Koran (sic),” Stachowiak said in the email. “This will be an open carry event with the use of long arms as Georgia law allows.”
The Georgia office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release calling for organizers to cancel the demonstration and put away their weapons.
We also plan to shred images of Obama, Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton and Muhammad along with the shredding of the Koran.
“Hatred of Muslims and Islam stems from ignorance,” CAIR-GA Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell
said in a statement. “We encourage these protesters to put down their guns, cancel their unsanctioned rally, and meet with representatives of our state’s Muslim community for an open and frank discussion of their concerns.”
“As American Muslims, we do not begrudge our neighbors the right to publicly challenge us or our faith,” Mitchell added. “But as Americans, we should always debate each other in a civil, respectful and safe manner.”
The protest is the latest in an
unprecedented surge of anti-Islam hatred that has swept the United States since the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, with Muslim Americans falling victim to an ever-growing number of shootings, attacks on their houses of worship, and Islamophobic demonstrations similar to what Stachowiak is planning in Georgia. Groups in Texas — which, like Georgia, is an open-carry state — have taken to standing outside mosques wearing camouflage and
brandishing loaded firearms.
Anti-Islam activists are often confronted with
larger, more peaceful counter-protests, but tensions are beginning to run high: when an anti-Islam group tried to stage an armed protest of a predominantly African American Dallas mosque in early April, they were met with
equally armed counter-protesters. Police reportedly stood between the two groups to help maintain the peace.
Anti-Islam Activists To Hold Armed Rally In Atlanta, Shred Copy Of The Quran | ThinkProgress
