CAIR Asks GOP to Repudiate Anti-Islam Comments by Fla. Party Official

CAIR Asks GOP to Repudiate Anti-Islam Comments by Fla. Party Official 

County GOP executive committee member claims 'Islam is NOT a religion'

(TAMPA, FL, 10/31/11) -- The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations today called on state and national Republican Party leaders to repudiate bigoted comments by a GOP official in that state who claimed in an email that "Islam is NOT a religion."

In that email sent this morning to CAIR-Tampa Executive Director Hassan Shibly, Hillsborough County Republican Party Executive Committee Member Scott D. Barrish wrote in part:

[NOTE: Barrish's email was signed in his official capacity with the county Republican Party.]

"Islam is NOT a religion, but rather a theocracy. It uses elements of religion to bind a spiritual, cultural and system of law elements. It is NOT a pluralistic ideology for it seeks complete domination; to say otherwise is a complete and utter lie. It is totalitarian and littered with human rights violations. Your efforts in espousing Islam in America and Florida will not succeed. . .This is us vs. you."

"It is imperative that Republican Party leaders at the state and national levels repudiate these bigoted comments and take concrete steps to challenge the growing perception that the GOP is not a big tent party that welcomes Muslims," said Shibly.

SEE: Muslim Activist Challenges Fla. Republican's Views (NPR)

Barrish apparently sent the email in response to a letter to the editor, headlined "U.S. Muslims are not the enemy," written by Shibly and published today in the St. Petersburg Times.

In his letter, Shibly was critical of the Hernando County Republican Party for hosting a dinner with Rep. Allen West (R-FL) and former Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, two politicians who he said misdirect their political efforts using the "disturbing smokescreen" of "the hysteria-myth that Islam is the enemy and we must be at war with Islam."

Shibly also wrote: "American Muslims are not the enemy, nor is our faith. We are proud and loyal Americans. . .We cannot let religious extremists - of any faith - guide our political discourse as Americans. I call on Republican leadership to remind their party members that they are also representatives of their Muslim constituents and that there is no room for such bigoted discourse in a civilized and free society."

SEE: U.S. Muslims are Not the Enemy (St. Petersburg Times)

U.S. Muslims are not the enemy

Hassan Shibly | St. Petersburg Times | Letter to the Editor

It is concerning when politicians advocate for positions that are antithetical to our core values and constitutional principles and yet mainstream political organizations embrace them.

The Hernando County Republican Party hosted a dinner with U.S. Rep. Allen West and U.S. Senate candidate and former Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, two politicians who instead of focusing on real issues that affect everyday hardworking Floridians, have focused their efforts on a disturbing smokescreen: the hysteria-myth that Islam is the enemy and we must be at war with Islam.

These politicians have used their political positions to promote their religious agenda. In an effort to alienate and lambaste the Muslim religious minority in the United States with false claims that we threaten American values and freedoms, the politicians have themselves threatened American values and freedoms.

American Muslims are not the enemy, nor is our faith. We are proud and loyal Americans. The beauty of American diversity is that we may disagree on issues relating to politics or foreign policy. But we can all agree that the Bill of Rights must be preserved for all and that innocent blood should never be shed.

We cannot let religious extremists — of any faith — guide our political discourse as Americans. I call on Republican leadership to remind their party members that they are also representatives of their Muslim constituents and that there is no room for such bigoted discourse in a civilized and free society.
Hassan Shibly, executive director, Council on American-Islamic Relations-Tampa

(Original Link)

CAIR Florida Calls on Hernando Republican Party to Denounce Bigotry

(Tampa, FL 10/28/2011)- The Council on American Islamic Relations Florida issued a statement today calling on the Hernando Republican Party to denounce the hate-filled rhetoric of Congressman Allen West and Former Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner. Both politicians have promoted the position that Islam is not a religion, that Muslims should be denied freedom of religion, that America is at war with Islam, and that Muslim schools and institutions in the US must be shut down. "We cannot let our political discourse become hijacked by extremists who are using their political office to promote their personal religious agendas. Both Hasner & West have supported advocating for polices that, if enacted, would be tantamount to destroying the Bill of Rights and persecution of the Muslim religious minority in the US, as has happened to the Japanese before. Hasner & West owe a duty to the Constitution, their Muslim constituents, and all freedom loving people to renounce their sectarian and discriminatory statements against the Muslim community."  Said CAIR Tampa Executive Director, Hassan Shibly. CAIR Florida calls on all people of conscience to make it clear there there is no room for hate-filled bigotry in our political discourse. See: Extremists Must Not Hijack Our Political Discourse Contact: Hassan Shibly (CAIR Tampa) 813-541-4321, hshibly@cair.com CAIR is America's largest Muslim Civil Rights and media advocacy organization.  ###

THE TAMPA TRIBUNE: Extremists Must Not Hijack Our Political Discourse  Friday October 28th 2011 | Editorials, Pg. 15  | Hassan Shibly  It is very concerning when mainstream politicians openly advocate for positions that are antithetical to our core values and constitutional principles. Enough is enough. We must stand united as Americans and make it clear to politicians that we will not let them divide us against each other, use fear-mongering to distract us from the real issues or take away our fundamental rights and values. Tonight, the Hernando County Republican Party is hosting a dinner with U.S. Rep. Allen West and former Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner. These politicians have one thing in common: Instead of focusing on real issues that affect everyday, hard-working, tax-paying Floridians, they have focused their efforts to create a smokescreen - the hysteria-myth of Sharia taking over and undermining our country. Instead of focusing on finding solutions to real problems we face, they are creating solutions in search for a problem. Instead of targeting problem issues such as violence and crime, they have targeted a faith and people. Both these politicians have used their political positions to promote their religious agenda. In an effort to alienate and lambast the Muslim religious minority in the United States with false claims that we threaten American values and freedoms, the politicians have actually threatened American values and freedoms Both politicians have made statements that may incite violence against and persecution of the millions of American Muslims, and yet instead of condemning them, Republican leadership in Hernando County only honors them. West and Hasner have both supported stereotypes and made bigoted remarks against Islam that we would never tolerate against any other group.....(Read Full Article)

CAIR-FL Thanks Rubio, Scott for Avoiding Event with Hate Group Leader

MIAMI, Oct. 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL) today thanked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Governor Rick Scott for declining to speak at next week's Florida Tea Partyconvention, which features a presentation by anti-Islam extremist Pamela Geller and another Islamophobe.

Rubio and Scott are listed as "confirmed speakers" at the convention, but representatives of their respective offices told CAIR-FL that the event is not on the senator's nor the governor's official schedule.

SEE: Fla. Tea Party Convention to Feature Anti-Muslim Extremist

http://tinyurl.com/6yutagj

SEE: Florida Tea Party Convention Program

http://www.ttpnc.com/schedule-of-events.shtml

Along with Geller, the convention features AN anti-Islam activist who goes by the name "Bill Warner." "Warner" (Bill French) and Geller are identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as members of the "anti-Muslim inner circle."

SPLC: The Anti-Muslim Inner Circle  

http://tinyurl.com/6xl4d4h

"We thank Senator Rubio and Governor Scott for avoiding the false perception that they would in any way legitimize anti-Muslim hatred by appearing at an event featuring hard-core Islamophobes," said CAIR-Tampa Executive Director Hassan Shibly.

Shibly said Pamela Geller is co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), an organization designated as a hate group by the SPLC, and author of a new book offering step-by-step instructions on how to stop mosque construction in American communities.

SPLC: Active Anti-Muslim Groups

http://www.splcenter.org/node/3502/activegroups  

(Read Full Report)

Hassan Shibly's Fox AMTampaBay Interview

Click here to listen to my interview on Tampa Muslims, Gaddafi, Sharia & Women's Rights.

NYPD Spied on City's Muslim Partners

By EILEEN SULLIVAN Associated Press

NEW YORK October 5, 2011 (AP)

The New York Police Department's intelligence squad secretly assigned an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police, dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series by The New York Times about Muslims in America.

Sheikh Reda Shata was among those singled out for surveillance because of his "threat potential" and what the NYPD considered links to organizations associated with terrorism, despite having never been charged with any crime, according to secret police documents obtained by The Associated Press.

This was life in America for Shata: a government partner in the fight against terrorism and a suspect at the same time.

[Read Full Article]

The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality

Glenn Greenwald | Salon.com

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki.  No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him).  Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt.  When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts.  He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner.  When Awlaki’s inclusion on President Obama’s hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.”...


What’s most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar (“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government.  Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President’s ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki — including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry’s execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists: criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed....


 What amazes me most whenever I write about this topic is recalling how terribly upset so many Democrats pretended to be when Bush claimed the power merely to detain or even just eavesdrop on American citizens without due process.  Remember all that?  Yet now, here’s Obama claiming the power not to detain or eavesdrop on citizens without due process, but to kill them; marvel at how the hardest-core White House loyalists now celebrate this and uncritically accept the same justifying rationale used by Bush/Cheney (this is war! the President says he was a Terrorist!) without even a moment of acknowledgment of the profound inconsistency or the deeply troubling implications of having a President — even Barack Obama — vested with the power to target U.S. citizens for murder with no due process.

[Read Full Article]

NPR: How Did Anti-Muslim Bias Seep Into FBI Training?




Listen to Report

  by Dina Temple-Raston

The first inkling that something was amiss in the counterterrorism training given to local and federal law enforcement came in March. That's when NPR reported on the cottage industry of independent counterterrorism trainers who signed up to teach local and federal law enforcement officials about terrorism. The report warned that the instructors were not being properly vetted and some were presenting skewed views about Muslim-Americans and their potential links to terrorism.

Then, last month, Wired magazine reported on a counterterrorism training session at the FBI training center in Quantico, Va., that was led by an FBI employee. The slides of the PowerPoint presentation obtained by Wired magazine made clear that the instructor was teaching agents not only that Islam was a violent religion, but also was erroneously linking religiosity to terrorism. He said the more religious a Muslim in this country was, the more he should be seen as a potential suspect.

Complaints From Agents

NPR has obtained real-time emails from agents who were attending that controversial class at Quantico this April. What the emails indicate is that at least some of those in that class objected to the biased information they were getting and they reached out both to experts and to supervisors to complain about the curriculum.

[Read Full Report]

Advocacy group tells Muslims to know their rights when talking to police

Janelle Irwin | WMNF News

The Tampa Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, has received a startling number of complaints from members of the Muslim community claiming they have been harassed by the FBI. In a workshop yesterday residents were taught how to handle encounters with law enforcement.
Hassan Shibly, executive director for CAIR’s Tampa chapter, said harassment has always been an issue, but the frequency of Muslims being hassled by law enforcement has increased.

"We’ve received calls from various, a lot of prominent Muslim community members, people who never expected to be harassed by the government, starting to have the FBI right at their door step and being questioned. One got delayed from getting on a flight until the FBI came and questioned him. And we really feel that opens people to criminal liability when they’ve done nothing wrong."

Shibly said some people say too much to police officers because they have nothing to hide. But in an environment where Muslims are often presumed guilty just because of their religion, he says being careful is important.

"Obviously, you know, the police get away with doing a lot of things to people that don’t know their rights. Why? Because they don’t stand up and they don’t protect. And we’ve seen, I mean you tube these days, the advent of social media you see many instances of police brutality and abuse. And again there’s a lot of good. We don’t want it to look like we’re just focusing on the negative, but we have to focus on the negative so we can prevent the negative."

He added, it would be unpatriotic to not stand up for your rights...(Read Full Article & Listen to Radio Interview)