Fox News says Al Jazeera America Is A Plot To Activate Muslim Sleeper
Cells In Detroit

By Hayes Brown on Feb 20, 2013 at 3:04 pm

In a typical fair and balanced panel, Fox News warned on Wednesday that
Al Jazeera is set to “infiltrate” the United States amid dire warnings
about “sleeper cells” in the Muslim suburbs of Detroit.

Host Megyn Kelly began a segment about Al Jazeera’s expansion into the
American television market by raising questions about the network’s
“real anti-American bias.” Contributor Lisa Daftari agreed, veering into
blatant Islamophobic fear-mongering in the process:

DAFTARI: The point is they want to differentiate themselves from
their sister network, but at the same time, it’s the same thing. They’re
having the same type of coverage. They’re apparently expanding to eight
cities, including Detroit, Michigan. Detroit, Michigan is a large ex-pat
community of Muslim-Americans and sleeper cells have been detected. You
can Google this, you can find out all this information. So if you’re
trying to set yourself apart the Qatari petro-dollars are backing this,
you’re still developing in this area where the sleeper cells have been
detected. They’re going to have do do much more to prove to me that
they’re different from their sister network.

Daftari was referring to the suburbs of Detroit — like Dearborn, MI and
others — which have high populations of refugees and immigrants from
Muslim-majority nations like Lebanon. Dearborn has been the target of
hate speech and protests against Muslims for years now. As for the
specific “sleeper cells” she was referring to, in 2008 a former Dearborn
resident was convicted of “providing material support” to Hezbollah —
hardly the makings of a widespread support for terrorism.

Conservatives have been concerned about the purchase of former Vice
President Al Gore’s Current TV by Qatar-based Al Jazeera since the deal
was announced in January. Fox’s points about the difference in coverage
between Al Jazeera English — which currently airs in millions of homes
in the United States — and Al Jazeera Arabic — the original channel,
which was the chosen distributor of Osama bin Laden’s video messages —
would be accurate if they weren’t so hyperbolic and fearful of the
encroaching Muslim threat. Also, Fox News’ concern about the presence of
Middle Eastern oil money in U.S. media does not extend to Fox owner
Rupert Murdoch’s deals with Saudi Arabia.
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racist militaristic xenophobic corporate oligarchy wasn't going to work
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