These questions are timely, following Vice President Joe Biden’s dismissive description of the Boston Marathon bombers as “knockoff jihadis.” Mere amateurs, these brothers, who were capable of murdering several marathon participants, maiming scores more and shutting down a major city and even rail lines for hours or days. The real amateurism, it might be suggested, is that of the pundits and journalists trying to psychoanalyze the Tsarnaev brothers and their relations from a distance.

But there are already reports that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving killer, has said that he and his brother acted in response to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — wars that they considered to be attacks on Islam. What if this really was the motive? What if these brothers really were sincere Islamist revolutionaries, like the thousands of others who have rallied to militant jihadism in the past several decades, whether they were connected to international Islamist networks or acting on their own? That doesn’t exonerate their brutal crimes in any way. But surely Islamist terrorists are best understood in terms of the common Islamist ideology they share, rather than personal or familial experiences that are unique to each.

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"Most Muslims are outstanding people, but the threat is coming from the Muslim community," said King, who was behind the House hearings on Muslim radicalization.

He continued: "And in previous times, when certain elements in a community are the ones responsible for crime, the police focus on it. For instance, in Boston, the F.B.I. never spoke to the Boston police about the older brother. And afterwards, there were no intelligence files in Boston on these type of people, these people inclined to terrorism. The F.B.I. never even got to examining him."

"I think it's ineffective law enforcement to go after a particular community," said Ellison, who is Muslim. "Once you start saying, "We're going to dragnet or surveil a community," what you do is you ignore dangerous threats that are not in that community and you go after people who don't have anything to do with it."

Watch:

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It's not particularly surprising that Tsarnaev would be drawn to a wide range of conspiracy theories, as research shows that people prone to believing one conspiracy theory will likely believe many -- even if they're completely contradictory. And he fits a profile of a type of person likely to be drawn to conspiratorial thinking, considering he was allegedly alienated from and disgruntled with society.

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by Scott Korb

Beacon Press, 2013

What inspired you to write Light Without Fire? 

In the wake of the Fort Hood mass shooting by Army Medical Corps officer Nadil Malik Hasan, Forbes published an essay under the headline “Going Muslim,” written by Tunku Varadarajan, who today often writes for The Daily Beast. At the time, Varadarajan was working at NYU, where I teach writing courses, often about religion. The coinage he explained this way:

“This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American—a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood—discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans.”

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When the news broke, snarky Twitter trolls – are there any other kind? – launched the rhetorical gauntlet of questions, those predictably designed to confirm a biased, flawed narrative that casts “Islam” as the quintessential anti-American antagonist in the endless "War on Terror."

First, I was asked how I felt knowing “Islam” was behind the bombing?

I felt the same way I did before the suspects were identified: devastated and saddened at the needless loss of life and the chaos that paralyzed a nation for a week. I prayed that the capture of the alleged suspects brings much needed peace and catharsis to the victims, their families and the entire city of Boston.

As far as Islam goes, I’ve never met Islam.

Islam has never asked me out on a date.

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The older and apparently more radical of two brothers suspected in the deadly Boston Marathon terror bombings, objected to a sermon at a Cambridge mosque on Martin Luther King Day this year in which the speaker compared the Prophet Muhammad with King, known for his advocacy of nonviolence, a mosque official said.

Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston, which runs the mosque, said Tsarnaev told the speaker, “You are a kafir [an unbeliever],” and said he was contaminating people’s minds and was a hypocrite.

Vali said, “The congregation then said, ‘You are the hypocrite.’ The congregation shouted him out of the mosque.”

Later, a respected volunteer talked with Tsarnaev and told him he needed to decide whether to stay and not shout out or stop coming to the congregation.

Vali said it was the second time that Tsarnaev had made an outburst during one of the speaker’s sermons.

“There was nothing about it that would suggest that he would kill a person,” said Vali.

Anwar Kazmi, a board member of the Islamic Society of Boston, discusses the brothers in this AP video:

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Next to nothing, aside from supposition and close-reading of Tweets, is known as yet about the possible motivations of the suspected bombers.

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From the New York Times:

The messages cited in the indictment were Mr. Say’s personal remarks referring to a poem by a famous 11th-century Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, which poked fun at an Islamic vision of the afterlife.

The poem was sent to Mr. Say from another user before he forwarded it.

In another personal Twitter post, he joked about the rapid call to prayer at a nearby mosque, questioning whether the muezzin who makes the call was running late for a drink.

In recent years, several intellectuals, journalists and artists who have voiced criticism about the Islamic government have faced persecution, but the Times notes that social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter "have rarely figured in previous trials."

Say maintains that he has “committed no crime" and has previously said that the accusations go “against universal human rights and laws.”

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The synagogue told Great Neck Patch that safety concerns prompted the cancellation. "As the notoriety and media exposure of the planned program this Sunday have increased, so has the legal liability and potential security exposure of our institution," the synagogue announced. Geller told the local news site that it is "a very sad day for freedom-loving peoples." This writer and her anti-racist counterparts contest that it decidedly is not. American left-leaning Jewish groups publicly rallied for the temple to cancel Geller's appearance. Jewish Voice for Peace sent out an email to members, reported the Jerusalem Post, that stated, "The kind of venom that she spews against Islam is completely inappropriate for a synagogue.”

Habeeb Ahmed, a member of the Nassau Commission on Human Rights, called Geller the "personification of an Islamophobe" and garnered interfaith opposition to her speaking engagement. Ever measured, Geller responded by calling Ahmed an "Islamic supremacist."

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Geller, who is one of the most active proponents of anti-Muslim attitudes in the United States, rose to notoriety as one of the key instigators of the Park51 backlash, misrepresenting a proposed Islamic Community Center (think a YMCA or Jewish Community Center) by calling it the “Ground Zero mosque” and engaging in dishonest rhetoric and blatant fear-mongering. Her organization, Stop the Islamization of America, was identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, alongside extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis. And it’s earned that label — Geller and her allies have dedicated countless hours and millions upon millions of dollars to drum up hatred, fear and xenophobia toward Muslims.

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From the Guardian:

"It is the latest in a series of arrests of opposition activists, lawyers and politicians this week – and according to Egypt's foremost human rights campaigner, it heralds the most serious affront to free speech since associates of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood assumed power last year. 'This is the crackdown,' said Heba Morayef, director of Human Rights Watch in Egypt.

Youssef rose to prominence after the country's 2011 uprising. His show has more than 30 million viewers across the Middle East and he has been sued several times by private individuals. But this is the first time that the prosecutor general, Talaat Abdallah, has followed up one of the complaints with legal action – a symbolic gesture that suggests President Mohamed Morsi's Islamist-led regime is now prepared to take a more authoritarian stance against its critics."

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Bassem Youssef is the most prominent critic of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi to be called in for questioning in recent weeks in what the opposition says is a campaign to intimidate critics. It followed warrants for five prominent anti-government activists accused of instigating violence.

Youssef, the host of the weekly show "ElBernameg" or "The Program," is known for his skits lampooning Morsi and Egypt's newly empowered Islamist political class, but also mocks the opposition and the media.

Several dozen supporters gathered outside the public prosecutor's office as he presented himself for questioning, a day after the warrant was first reported in the media.

The media also intently followed the comedian's interrogation. He first tweeted a series of quips from the prosecutor's office. "They asked me the color of my eyes. Really," one read.

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Clearly aware of first term missed opportunities in the relationship with America's closest Mideast ally, Obama chose to crown his two day trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority with a passionate, forceful speech addressed to a group of more than 2,000 Israelis.

Whereas for the Obama administration the trip, and the speech, may represent a gamble on a second term commitment to the thorny problem of an Israeli-Palestinian peace, for Israelis it was a chance to see, up close and personal, a man who had remained for them a cipher.

Immediately following the address, Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, blogged, "I spoke to several members of the audience, who confirmed my impression that Israelis just wanted to know that he liked them. It's hard to understand this from the US, but the idea really did take hold here that Obama genuinely hated Israel. So this whole trip is a bit of a revelation for ordinary Israelis."

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The Washington Times wrote a short report, which was quickly picked up by Fox Nation, conservative blogs and, naturally, the trifecta of the Islamophobic blogosphere: Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs, Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, and David Horowitz’ Front Page.

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“I want to thank CPAC for making this panel necessary," said the Bush-era attorney general, taking a sarcastic swipe at the organization for frowning on the panelists. "And thank Breitbart.com for making this panel possible."

The "Uninvited" panel, organized by Breitbart media, brought together anti-Muslim activists like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer, and Mukasey fit right in.

"The vast majority of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims adhere to a view of their religion that agrees on the need to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on the world," he said.

Mukasey criticized the Obama administration for being too soft on radical Islam, saying there's been a "systematic purging" in the government of the notion that radical Islam is dangerous. Why? Because of pressure from civil society groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) -- "both of them a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.

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From the Miami Herald:

The bill, SB 58, bans courts or other legal authorities from using religious or foreign law as a part of a legal decision or contract relating to family law. Florida law would supercede foreign law regarding divorce, alimony, the division of marital assets, child support and child custody. The bill is ready to be heard on the House floor but it has more committee stops in the Senate. Last year, the bill passed the House but died in the Senate.

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Update - March 8, 2:53 p.m.: John Hawkins of Right Wings News, one of the groups that was supposed to give out CPAC’s People’s Choice Award to Robert Spencer, told Salon in an email that he never told Spencer he was "barred from receiving his award," as Spencer claimed.

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When you think of Pakistan, acclaimed literary fiction is not your first thought. You’re thinking of the ubiquitous nation of 180 million that bleeds daily and leads sensationalist headlines declaring it the world’s “most dangerous place,” a title often  accompanied by encouraging descriptions such as “terrorist haven,” “chaos,” “explosive,” “nightmare,” and “failed state.”

You know Pakistan as the moody, unhinged sister of India, which hennas itself with ghastly violence seeped in extremism and sectarianism.

You know a country whose complex, messy and challenging narrative is reduced to caricatures paraded on news shows as the bearded, anti-American Rage Boys, angry, obscurant Mullahs, disfigured burqa’d women, and President Zardari’s well-groomed mustache.

However, if you look beyond the increasingly grim and sordid headlines and peer deeper into history, you will discover a Pakistan of brilliant, artistic richness as heard in the Qawwalis mastered by the late, great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or the philosophical meditations of Urdu poets Iqbal and Faiz.

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In a segment on his show Thursday, Hannity accused Ellison of having "a host of radical connections," and revived attacks made during Ellison's 2006 campaign about ties to Farrakhan and the Million Man March. "The reality is, the congressman not only associated with these radicals – but he spent years spewing their hateful rhetoric,” Hannity said.

He continued: “What is the difference, I mean, do we have somebody then in Congress that is the equivalent of one side of what the Klan is? Because I view the rabid ranting of Khalid Mohammed as frightening in terms of racism, anti-Semitism.”

As ThinkProgress reports, Ellison addressed his work with the Million Man March and Farrakhan several years ago:

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