Pamela Geller: Beware “Stealth Halal” Turkeys This Thanksgiving

Muslim Brotherhood Turkeys Are Taking Advantage Of The Arab Spring.

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Anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller, one of the driving forces behind the Ground Zero mosque controversy, has set her sights on a new manifestation of the stealth jihad: Your Thanksgiving turkey. Geller is calling for a boycott of Butterball, accusing the compainy of selling “stealh halal” turkeys prepared in accordance with Muslim dietary laws:

Across this great country, on Thanksgiving tables nationwide, infidel Americans are unwittingly going to be serving halal turkeys to their families this Thursday. Turkeys that are halal certified — who wants that, especially on a day on which we are giving thanks to G-d for our freedom? I wouldn’t knowingly buy a halal turkey — would you? Halal turkey, slaughtered according to the rules of Islamic law, is just the opposite of what Thanksgiving represents: freedom and inclusiveness, neither of which are allowed for under that same Islamic law.

Just in case you’re wondering, Jewish and Muslim dietary laws regarding meat are very similar. Similar enough, in fact, that a proposed ban on the ritual killing of animals in the Netherlands has both the Jewish and Muslim religious communities up in arms.

Now, assuming Geller’s right about Butterball turkeys being halal, you might think that in a capitalist economy, halal turkeys are a sign of meat sellers responding to market demand for food prepared a certain way. You might even be tempted to observe that Muslim Americans marking a secular, American holiday celebrating pluralism and freedom from religious persecution might be a sign of the extent to which American Muslims have assimilated into American culture. What you didn’t know was that when markets respond to the demands of Muslim consumers, freedom dies. 

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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