The Week in Sharia: Terry Jones’ Revenge

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Flickr: Jason AdamsFlickr: Jason AdamsEveryone stay calm:

  • Sharia came to Florida, and it was not so bad.
  • Tennessee lawmakers rewrote their anti-Sharia bill to turn it into a material support for terrorism law.
  • Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann demonstrated their presidential bona fides by cozying up to Bryan Fischer, a far-right radio host who thinks the First Amendment doesn’t apply to Islam. He’s also written that “deaths of people and livestock at the hands of savage beasts is a sign that the land is under a curse.” That last sentence was about grizzly bears.
  • As Governor of Minnesota, GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty oversaw a program that helped Muslims get Sharia-compliant mortgages. No big scandal there—just a state housing agency helping people get houses. But Pawlenty wants you to know that he had nothing to do with it: “As soon as Gov. Pawlenty became aware of the issue, he personally ordered it shut down. Fortunately, only about three people actually used the program before it was terminated at the Governor’s direction.”
  • Chupcabras are, apparently, not real. But in their absence, the Rev. Franklin Graham has a new terrifying bogeyman for you: It’s called the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Texas pseudo-historian David Barton (among others) also subscribes to Graham’s view. Which is why it was so surprising—or maybe not—to see Newt Gingrich lavishing praise on the WallBuilders founder at an American Family Assocation forum on Friday.
  • Requisite Terry Jones disclaimer: We fully acknowledge that Gainesville pastor Terry Jones has a following of about 30 people. Requisite Terry Jones update: The Gainesville* pastor celebrated “International Judge the Quran Day” by putting Islam on trial—as one does. Islam was found guilty, and Jones carried out the sentence by, finally, burning a Quran. Explained Jones, “We tried to set it up as fair as possible, which you can imagine, of course, is very difficult.” Quite.
  • And finally, your qualifying clause of the week. Atlanta pizza mogul and totally random GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain spoke with Christianity Today about Islam and apparently he’s not a fan. While lamenting that Muslims push their faith on others, Cain explained: “[B]ased upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.”

*This post originally stated that the Rev. Terry Jones’s church is in Orlando.

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.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

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.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

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.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

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.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate