Facts about Muslim faith ignored as fear-mongering, fabrications spread

Hassan Shibly | Bradenton Herald | [ Read Original]

...What scares me as an American of Syrian descent and Muslim faith is how normal and acceptable it has become to use the same rhetoric against the Muslim community today that's been used against the Jewish community before the Holocaust and Japanese Americans before the internment camps.

I attended last week a talk at one of the leading local political and social clubs in Manatee County, where one of the main speakers, just like some of today's leading candidates and politicians, blanket referenced the Muslim community as a threat...

It is the same hate with a new target. In both cases, masses of otherwise reasonable people were and are misled by leaders to demonize an entire group of people and portray them as a threat. The "threat" is fabricated using outright lies, half-truths, and double standards....

In reality, the migration we see is a direct result of our failed foreign policy that destabilized the Middle East, such as the illegal invasion of Iraq, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the birth of groups like ISIS. They are fleeing persecution, war and destruction to seek freedom, justice and opportunity.

Yes, the Prophet Muhammad also migrated, but that was also to escape the oppression and persecution he and his followers faced at the brutal hands of the powerful of Mecca.

When the Prophet Muhammad called the powerful polytheists to worship One God and that all human beings were equal before God, the elite responded by torturing, killing and abusing the Muslims for disrupting their social order, which made the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Prophet Muhammad migrated to Medina to seek freedom of religion and fought several defensive battles while building alliances with Jewish and Christian communities.... [ Read Full Article]

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How Hate and Islamophobia Undermine America This Election Year

Hassan Shibly | Huffington Post | [Read Full Article]

What does it say about our country when the debate for the highest office in the land becomes about whose genitals are larger, who can kill the most civilians and reinstate torture, and which religious minorities to persecute?

Not only do the presidential debates reflect on the poor quality of those we select as leaders, but their rhetoric often reflects a disregard for human life and is reminiscent of the rhetoric of the worst historical figures who have brought down democracies and enabled crimes against humanity.

They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. What scares me as an American of Syrian descent and Muslim faith is how normal and acceptable it has become to use the same rhetoric against the Muslim community today that's been used against the Jewish community before the holocaust and Japanese Americans before the internment camps.

Have we not learned what has happened in history when an entire group of people are categorized as a threat based on their race or religion?

Prior to the holocaust, the Nazi propaganda machine spoke about the "Jewish problem" and how allegedly the Jewish community was organized in a diabolical scheme for world domination, and that Jews were liars and could not be trusted or be loyal to the state. Those are verbatim the same arguments that we hear made against Muslims today and which far too many Americans find acceptable. It is the same hate with a new target.

In both cases, masses of otherwise reasonable people, were and are misled by leaders to demonize an entire group of people and portray them as a threat. The "threat" is fabricated using outright lies, half-truths, and double standards. What is scary is when otherwise normal people are willing to rally behind leaders who advocate for the curtailment of the civil rights of minorities, while other leaders remain silent. [ Read More ]

The belief system of the Islamophobes

The discourse over Muslims today resembles the manner in which Jews were vilified around a century ago.

Arun Kundnani

Arun Kundnani is the author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror.

@ArunKundnani

Since the 1970s, Muslims have repeatedly been stereotyped in the US as dangerous terrorists. But, over the last six years, a new fear of Muslims has gradually entered the conservative mainstream: that Muslims are taking over the United States and imposing "sharia law".

In 2011, Republican Congressman Allen West called Islam a "fifth column" that had infiltrated US institutions. In a 2010 speech in Washington, Newt Gingrichdescribed sharia as "a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States".

Another candidate, Herman Cain, condemned what he called the "attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government", and said he would introduce a special loyalty test for Muslims wanting to serve in his administration. Another US Representative, Michele Bachmann, declared that sharia "must be resisted across the United States" and demanded national security officials investigate Muslim Brotherhood infiltration into the federal government.

Such fears are paranoid and lack any basis in reality. No significant Muslim organisation has called for sharia in the United States. For most devout Muslims in the US, sharia is a personal, moral code rather than a political programme.

Imminent Islamic takeover

Nevertheless, many conservatives view an imminent Islamic takeover as a real danger. The currentleaders in the 2016 Republican presidential field are playing on that fear. Donald Trump and Ben Carson have both made anti-Muslim comments in the last two weeks.

On NBC's Meet The Press show broadcast earlier this month, retired neurosurgeon Carson said: "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that."

A few days earlier, during a question and answer session at a New Hampshire campaign rally, a Trump supporter said: "We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims."

Trump nodded in response.

A recent poll in Iowa found only around half of Republicans thought Islam should be legal in the United States. Forty-three percent of Republicans believe Obama is Muslim, according to a CNN poll. These attitudes are not simply a spontaneous reaction to 9/11. After all, this kind of rhetoric only really got going several years later. Nor are they a reaction to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Beyond the headlines lies an organised and well-funded propaganda campaign. According to an investigation by the Center for American Progress, seven conservative foundations spent over $40m on anti-Muslim propaganda between 2001 and 2009. Others estimate the amount spent is over $100m.

Among the groups funded is Brigitte Gabriel's ACT! For America, which has 170,000 members and models itself on the highly successful National Rifle Association.

The aim of this propaganda is to popularise an anti-Muslim version of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that began to circulate a century ago. Like anti-Semitism, Islamophobia is not only about hatred. It is also an ideology that seeks to connect with people's social, economic, and political frustrations and advocate a course of action, even if the explanation and the action are based on falsehoods.

Secret sharia

Clearly, no national problems can plausibly be blamed on Islam. To have any effect, Islamophobic ideology needs a conspiracy theory that says the US is, despite appearances, secretly run by Muslims. Muslims can then be portrayed as a hidden force preventing American renewal. The message is a convenient one for the US ruling elite: don't blame the people who actually run the US, just smell the sharia.

To the Islamophobe, the US government is not what it seems. The Muslim Brotherhood has placed a Muslim in the White House and is implementing its secret sharia plan. It begins with school textbooks in Texas trying to present Islam in a positive light, Campbell's bringing out a halal version of its iconic soups, or the Obama White House refusing to use the phrase "Islamic terrorism".

Then, one day, Americans will wake up to an Islamic government. Europe, with its larger Muslim population, has already succumbed: It is now Eurabia, an Arab colony; London has already become Londonistan.

A century ago, America's Jews were likewise seen as infiltrators threatening Western values. Central to US anti-Semitic ideology was also a conspiracy theory that presented Jews as secretly pulling the strings of international finance and world revolution. Henry Ford, for example, used the pages of his Dearborn Independent newspaper to propagandise such views in the 1920s.

The modern discourse over Muslims today resembles the manner in which Jews were talked about then. In both cases, a religious minority is seen as a dangerous underclass destroying society from below with their alien values, as well as a hidden force secretly controlling the world from above, through their infiltration of centres of power.

American Jews were eventually able to overcome the worst anti-Semitism of the 20th century and establish security and equality in the US. Will Muslims be able to do the same? Unfortunately, history never repeats itself in the same way. The key difference is that, today, widespread anti-Muslim fears among the public provide a justifying pretext for a global US empire that did not exist in the 1920s. Islamophobia is not just an irrational fear, but a belief system that is useful to sections of power.

Opposing anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and all of their accompanying rhetoric are not just about defending the civil rights of Muslims in the US. It is also about removing one of the ideological supports of US imperialism.

Arun Kundnani is the author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror and teaches at New York University.

Hassan Shibly: CAIR strikes right balance between protecting security and liberty

Hassan Shibly | Special to the Tampa Tribune | 11/14/2014 [Read Original]

Regarding “Don’t stifle FBI’s terror effort” (Our Views, Nov. 7):

It is easy for editors who are not attorneys and have not represented hundreds of victims of FBI abuse to give ill-informed legal advice and advise the public to waive the constitutionally protected right to have an attorney present when approached by the FBI.

America is one of the few nations in the world whose Constitution assumes that the people should take precautions to hold the government accountable. Exercising one’s constitutionally protected right to have a lawyer present when approached by the FBI helps ensure agents are behaving both constitutionally and efficiently. Meanwhile, people who feel their rights are secured with legal counsel present will have the confidence to be more open.

Our concern with the FBI selectively targeting the Muslim community for interrogation and recruitment of agent provocateurs is primarily because it has been documented that such profiling is ineffective, a waste of resources and actually makes our nation less safe and less free. Law enforcement must invest our limited public resources conducting investigations based on probable cause, not religious profiling. Having a lawyer present ensures that the FBI has a legitimate investigative purpose for interrogating Americans and are not acting based on politically acceptable biases that merely serve to intimidate religious minorities and waste taxpayer dollars.

Even though the Trib failed to request any such evidence from us, it claimed “there is no evidence local FBI agents have been abusive.” I’ll wager that the Trib’s own police reporters would find this assertion patently naïve. The Founders did not write the Bill of Rights and then reject it because there was no evidence that the new American government was going to be abusive.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has documented how the FBI has targeted law-abiding American Muslims for interrogation and coerced recruitment as agent provocateurs. According to Trevor Aaronson, executive director of the Florida Center for Investigative Journalism, such FBI tactics are similar to that used by the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) against the African-American civil rights movement decades ago and has included engaging in blackmail, extortion and threats of harm to self, family and friends. Coerced individuals are then forced into mosques to promote radical violent extremism — using taxpayer dollars — to unstable and mentally disturbed youths.

These programs are not only contrary to the protections enshrined in the Constitution, but are ineffective and make our nation less safe and less free. Even with the rise of Islamic State, those engaging in acts of terrorism on U.S. soil have more often attended churches or synagogue than mosques, and yet the FBI is not engaging in similar tactics against the Christian or Jewish communities — nor should they.

Engaging in criminal plans should make one the subject of a FBI investigation — not following a particular faith. When the FBI wastes resources in questioning individuals who have engaged in no wrongdoing, they may miss catching some of the overwhelming amount of criminals and terrorists who have nothing to do with that faith.

The Trib used Sami Osmakac as an example. The Trib does not mention that Osmakac would not have had the potential ability to harm our community without facilitation by paid FBI agent provocateurs or that in the same time frame several terrorist attacks were planned in Tampa by disturbed youths who, unlike Osmakac, were not Muslim.

Selective targeting of a religious minority by the federal government undermines the Constitution and harms America as a whole. CAIR has documented how many FBI agents have received false training that the entire Muslim community is a threat and that Muslims are not entitled to First Amendment rights. In Florida and nationwide, the Muslim community has often reported extremists espousing violence in mosques who turned out to be paid FBI agent provocateurs. Examples such as these abound.

Let us not forget that only last year an FBI agent who had a documented history of beating up suspects and witnesses and falsifying evidence, threatened several Orlando Muslims with false charges to pressure them to become informants, and then shot in the back and killed one of them after six hours of interrogation in their home three days later.

Counter-productive tactics that infringe upon the rights of religious minorities are not necessary to keep our nation safe. American Muslims are invested in the security of our nation and have a track record of voluntary cooperation with law enforcement on the rare occasion a threat should arise. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that “many of our cases are a result of the cooperation from the Muslim community in the United States.” The U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida also has repeatedly thanked the Muslim community for helping keep Florida safe.

We are not a nation of fearful people. Our rights are not things to be cast aside because someone scary threatens us. Groups such as IS strip people of their rights, and we should not do this in America. If we willingly cast aside the liberty that previous generations have bled for, then the terrorists win.

Just as taking precautionary measures to protect our security is reasonable, taking precautionary measures to protect our rights is also reasonable. That is why CAIR’s recommendation of having legal counsel present when talking to law enforcement is the right balance. Neither liberty nor security is sacrificed. Instead, both are protected.

Hassan Shibly, Esq., of Tampa is chief executive director of CAIR Florida.

POLICY: NATIONAL SECURITY The FBI prospers by feeding public safety fears

BY: Steve Chapman| Washington Examiner| May 25th, 2014 | [Original Article]

...Comey is upholding the tradition that once the government identifies an evil, the evil never goes away — it only gets bigger and tougher, requiring ever-increasing efforts to combat it. The Department of Energy was created during the "energy crisis" of the 1970s. The crisis didn't last, but the department did.

The same pattern holds here. In the decade after Sept. 11, the number of terrorist episodes in this country averaged 17 a year, compared to 41 a year in the 1990s. Nor is al-Qaida gaining ground. Since 9/11, reports the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, it has carried out no attacks in the U.S.

But progress is never taken as progress. It's always interpreted as the calm before the storm.
When Comey arrived, nerves were raw from the Boston Marathon bombing, which sparked fears of a wave of domestic attacks. Since then, there has not been a single death from homegrown terrorism in the U.S. In the following 12 months, the number of Muslim-Americans arrested on terrorism charges was 15, below the annual average of 20.

"Almost all of these arrests were for attempting to join a foreign terrorist organization abroad, not for planning attacks in the homeland, and were motivated by sympathies with rebels in Syria and elsewhere rather than by al-Qaida's call for Muslims to attack the West," wrote David Schanzer of Duke University and Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in The News and Observer of Raleigh.


None of this matters to Comey or his associates in the federal government, which has an unbreakable addiction to dire forecasts. When it comes to national security, they see every silver lining as attached not just to a cloud, but to a skyful of black thunderheads. Read Full Article

Why You Should Never Speak to the FBI Without a Lawyer

BY: Harvey Silvergate| FORBES | June 3rd, 2014 | [Original Article]

DOJ's New Recording Policy: The Exceptions Swallow The Rule

...FBI agents routinely conduct their interviews in pairs, with one agent asking the questions and the other taking notes which are eventually typewritten into what is known as a form 302 report. It has previously been strictly against FBI policy to electronically record any of these interviews. Without an objectively accurate, verbatim record of the interview, the witness is compelled, forced even, to follow the script of the 302 report if it is presented in a court of law. If the witness’ testimony strays from the agent’s report, she opens herself up to a felony charge, for either making “false statements” to a federal agent (at the time of the interview) or for perjuring herself on the witness stand. This is how the FBI is able to coerce witnesses (or suspects) and shape their testimony.

Given the obvious dishonesty of this system, and the extent to which the truth can be corrupted by FBI agents and federal prosecutors who are able to teach their witnesses not only how to sing but also how to compose, it seemed only a matter of time before the interview procedure would change. While many think this memo will precipitate that shift, the devil is in the details of the document, which provides so many exceptions that the new rule, to be implemented on July 11^th, will arrive stillborn. 

…

This policy thus is so riddled with exceptions that it is less a policy than a half-veiled attempt at improving the troubled public image of the DOJ and FBI.  Instead, such self-cancelling policies should only add to the dubious reputation that federal law enforcement has gained in recent years for its often over-zealous, selective and coercive prosecutions.

All citizens – both of the law-and-order variety as well as civil libertarians– should want to see federal law enforcement practices become more transparent and less accommodating to rogue agents and overzealous prosecutors. Such reform will not be accomplished by enacting compromised policies like this one.  [Read More]

Muslims to Tea Party: Welcome to our world

By: Sahar Aziz | CNN.com | May 15 2013 | [Original Article]

Reports that the Internal revenue Service has been targeting Tea Party-affiliated nonprofit organizations has grabbed headlines, but should come as no surprise. In part because of ten years of expanding government powers, much of it under the guise of national security, selective enforcement of the law has increasingly become a norm rather than an aberration.

But some in the Muslim community might have a question – why are conservatives so surprised (and outraged) by this news when Muslim nonprofits and their leaders have been under intense scrutiny for over a decade? And when so many Muslim groups and individuals have faced scrutiny simply for the religion they follow?

Within months after 9/11, the U.S. government shut down the three largest Muslim American charities as part of a broader scorched earth strategy that sent a chill across American Muslim communities nationwide. Their boards of directors were arrested and many were prosecuted on pretextual violations of immigration or tax laws. None of the charities had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda, or the Taliban. That they were Islamic charities was all the government needed to seal their fate before a suspicious and traumatized American public.

Since then, new Muslim charitable organizations have faced heightened scrutiny from the IRS, with applications for many seeking nonprofit status taking years to process. My experience representing some of these organizations, and the anecdotes I hear from other attorneys in the same boat, have turned up example after example of selective targeting.

Even when organizations are able to make progress with their applications, they find themselves asked to provide additional information to the IRS, and are left with no choice but to patiently comply. Their files are often referred to the national office for further processing and in-depth national security checks on every board member. Upon expressing surprise at the unusual length of time and scrutiny, I was informed this was standard procedure after 9/11 for Muslim charities. In stark contrast to the average six to nine months application process other groups face, some Muslim nonprofit organizations have typically waited for two or more years.

People are rightly concerned by allegations that the IRS applied its powers in a discriminatory fashion. This is not how the federal government is supposed to work. Yet while some may see the case of Muslim organizations and Tea Party affiliated groups as different, the same principles are involved – the uneven application of the law and discriminatory treatment directed at a minority. In one case the minority is targeted for its faith, while in another they are targeted for their politics.

But something I find troubling is that for the largely white, conservative, anti-government Tea Partiers and their supporters it is apparently acceptable to target legal immigrants or first generation American Muslims in the name of national security, even as any singling out based on political affiliation is treated as an outrage.

Still, despite the vastly different public responses, the targeting of these seemingly unrelated groups is predictable. Why? Because once selective targeting is normalized, it is only a matter of time before such practices have an impact on other minorities and eventually political dissidents.

We saw this with the targeted surveillance used for Muslims that was also eventually applied to the surveillance of right wing groups as outlined in a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report in 2009. We also saw this when the Department of Justice inspector general reported that the FBI had been improperly spying on left wing political groups in 2006. And we witnessed the expansion of government surveillance of the nonviolent Occupy Wall Street movement, which was spied on by the joint terrorism task forces also used to spy on American Muslims.

These troubling trends mirror the alleged methods in the FBI's COINTELPRO program targeting black nationalists, communists, and anti-war groups particularly in the 1960s and 70s. It was only after white male veterans and college students were targeted that the public finally pushed back on government excesses, leading to passage of government accountability and oversight measures that were in turn reversed after 9/11.

While selective enforcement of any group based on discrimination or political ideology is anathema to a democracy, the IRS’s alleged targeting should at least trigger a long overdue national conversation on government overreach. That is one debate that impacts all Americans, whatever their race, religion or political persuasions.

CBSMiami reports 'Anti-Foreign Law Bill Can't Pass Senate'

By Staff Writer | CBSMiami  | May 3, 2013  | [Original Article]

TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami) – A bill that would have banned Islamic, or Sharia Law, along with other foreign laws from being applied in state courts died in the legislature Friday.

Senate President Don Gaetz on Friday declared the bill (HB 351) “resolved” after its sponsor decided not to ask for the unanimous vote required to move the bill forward. It had failed a previous procedural vote on Thursday. The House approved the legislation on a 79-39 vote last month.

The bill is similar in scope to bills in a handful of other states. The push for the bills began a few years ago when extremist wings of political parties began to spread the word that Sharia Law could be creeping into the United States.

The theory has been pushed by Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann and others. Bachmann has repeatedly said in the past that President Barack Obama wants to institute Sharia Law in the United States, even though President Obama isn't Muslim.

Florida’s law doesn't mention a specific set of foreign laws and instead targets foreign laws in general. But the need for such a law doesn't seem to be needed, according to the Florida Bar Association. No case could be found where a Florida court applied foreign law.

It led critics to call the foreign law ban a solution to a “phantom menace.”

Read more on this 'phantom menace' phenomenon here.

Creeping Counterterrorism: From Muslims to Political Protesters

By Sahar Aziz | Truth-out.org | August 21 2012 | [Original Article]

"Few Americans are surprised to hear that 9/11 shifted our domestic terrorism focus from neo-Nazis and white supremacists to Muslims in America. What may come as a surprise, however, is the pervasive use of anti-terrorism powers against non-Muslims as well, including white middle-class protesters - as we saw in the Occupy movement.

The 9/11 terrorists' warped misinterpretation of Islam triggered a maelstrom of expanded national security powers selectively enforced against American Muslims en masse. Mosques are infiltrated with dubious and highly paid informants, thereby chilling religious freedom. Mentally unstable young Muslim men are targets of overzealous counterterrorism sting operations, and Muslim student associations are under mass surveillance for no apparent reason other than the religious identity of their members. Despite the serious civil liberties implications of such selective enforcement, it has occurred with minimal opposition by the American public.

Our shortsighted forfeiture of civil liberties based on fears of the "Muslim other" now equips our government to quash political dissent..." [Read More]

"... By believing in the fallacy of the "Muslim terrorist other," we weakened our resolve to protect fundamental American values. As a result, post-9/11 counterterrorism authorities are used to spy, infiltrate, entrap, arrest and aggressively prosecute any protesters.

When we allow governments to forfeit our civil rights to protect "us" from "them," we lose sight of how quickly we can become the "them."

So, how many more Americans must be subjected to civil liberties violations before we realize that no one is immune from creeping counterterrorism?"

The Muslim populace, not America, is under siege

By S. Amjad Hussain | ToledoBlade| August 20, 2012 | [Original Article]

"Most Americans reacted with disgust and revulsion when a white supremacist opened fire in a Sikh gurdwara and killed six innocent people in suburban Milwaukee this month.

It is heartwarming that all segments of society condemned this wanton act of terrorism, and the bizarre philosophy that underpins such acts. But we seldom reflect on why such things happen. What compels a man such as Wade Michael Page to go on a rampage?

Perhaps the same reasons compelled U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a psychologist, and Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, each of whom faces charges in mass shootings, to kill innocent people in the cause of something they hold dear..." [Read More]

"...Last year, the Associated Press published a series of investigative reports about the New York Police Department and the FBI infiltrating Muslim communities and mosques. According to the reports -- which won a Pulitzer Prize -- the NYPD sent undercover officers into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program.

The police also sent informants called "mosque crawlers" to monitor activities and sermons. This was done not as a result of specific information, but as part of a wide dragnet. Many of these mosque operations and infiltrations of Muslim student groups were put together with the help of the CIA.

The New York Times reported this month that the much-touted psychological profiling of passengers at Logan International Airport in Boston turned out to be the guise for indiscriminate racial profiling of Middle Easterners, African-Americans, and Hispanics"