Debbie Schlussel
For years, the Muslim community, its leaders including myself and the organization which I lead have been subjected to fallacious allegations, distortions and smears from “xenophobic loon” Deborah (Debbie) K. Schlussel. Despite her incessantly bigoted blogging, we have virtually ignored this “know-nothing nut”, and I haven’t really blogged about her over the years because she is frankly an irrelevant, fringe in my book. In other words, she’s simply been a Class A, minor league annoyance unlike major league Islamophobes that can cause serious harm to civil liberties.
In regards to the current complaint that has been made against Schlussel for her commandeering the name Council on American-Islamic Relations – Michigan, she is trying to frame her bogus argument that the legal complaint against her is to silence her freedom to criticize Muslims. This, however, is a classic straw man argument. Our complaint against her, though it mentions that she is an anti-Muslim blogger in showing her motive, focuses on her attempt to represent herself as the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in the state of Michigan, an organization devoted to protecting the civil rights of Muslims and challenging Islamophobia. This is the issue at hand, not her bigotry.
If Schlussel wishes to state that President Obama is an uncover Muslim who can’t be trusted, let her do so. If she chooses to continue to mislabel Dearborn as “Dearbonistan” (Arabs, by the way, don’t use “stan” behind their lands; those are Central Asians 🙂 ), she is free to do so. If she even chooses to state that Christian Arabs such as Coptics deserve to be bombed because of their “anti-Semitism” (Arabs are Semites too by the way 🙂 ), she can also say such.
It appears in this situation that her disdain for Muslims caused her to make some crucial lapses in her attempt to “drive the Muslims crazy.” (To DS: We have the entire blog saved, so no need in trying to erase the post now. :)) And like any organization or business with a trademark and name recognition which has offices or stores in other regions, we signed an affiliation agreement to use the trademark with our national office kind of like how franchisees sign a contract with Burger King for instance with its corporate office to use the name Burger King. Burger King would never allow its trademark to be used by a store that is strictly vegetarian and against selling hamburgers in America, nor would a civil rights organization such as CAIR allow an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigot to use its name in any state, be it Alaska, Colorado or Michigan. Even my 9 year old son grasps this simple logic.
Anyway, I have bigger fish to fry for now. I have talks to give at area mosques today and tomorrow as well as have official business with government officials to conduct. This will all work itself out in court.
Cut & paste below to view complaint filed against Schlussel:
http://www.4shared.com/document/4Ls80IjM/Final_Filing.html
