The Week in Sharia: America Dodges a Bullet

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What just happened:

  • Nearly 20 states have considered legislation to ban Sharia since the start of 2010—and more than half of those bills were based on the work of one man: Arizona-based attorney David Yerushalmi. So who is Yerushalmi? And how did his work spread so widely? Read my story here.
  • Meg Stalcup and Joshua Craze have your long-read of the week over at Washington Monthly. It’s called “How we Train Our Cops to Fear Islam,” and it’s about exacty that. I have nothing snarky to say about it; just read the piece. While you’re at it, check out Justin Elliott‘s explainer on what Sharia law actually is.
  • This footage from an anti-Islam protest in Orange County is the most disturbing six minutes of video you’ll see all week.
  • Congratulations to Missouri and Alabama, which became the 16th and 17th states to consider a ban on Islamic law. When asked to explain his legislation, the sponsor of the Missouri bill referred reporters to Google; the author of the Alabama bill lifted language from Wikipedia. Stay tuned next week, when Iowa considers a bill it found on 4Chan.
  • Florida also got in on the action, introducing a bill to ban the only scary thing that’s not actually happening in Florida. A similar effort in the Sunshine State failed last year.
  • Pamela Geller‘s organization, Stop Islamization of America, was officially designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Geller, in typically non-linear fashion, responded by posting the divorce papers of the SPLC’s founder on her blog, and then called the label a “badge of honor.” Geller’s group joined the ranks of other illustrious groups like the United White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and Independent Skins Southwest.
  • The Muslim Terry Jones, British cleric Anjem Choudary, was supposed to hold a rally in front of the White House this week calling for a global Caliphate under strict Sharia law. Also scheduled to attend: the Christian Anjem Choudary, Orlando pastor Terry Jones, who organized a counter-rally. Choudary ultimately cancelled, much to the dismay of Glenn Beck, who had argued that the event would be “the moment that I’ve been saying for five years.” It wasn’t.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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