Spate of attacks near Ramadan trouble U.S. Muslims

By Yasmin Amer and Moni Basu | CNN | August 22, 2012 | [Original Article]

"(CNN) -- To mark the end of Islam's holiest month, Iftikhar Ali will head not to a mosque but to a convention center guarded by law enforcement officers.

That's because this month, during Ramadan, the mosque in Joplin, Missouri, burned to the ground. Its rubble smoldered for two days as a shocked Muslim community came to terms with what had happened.

"I think there are a few people who don't like anybody," Ali said. "They don't like a different color than their color or different religions."

Ali, who is the president of the Joplin mosque, said the congregation rented a convention center so people would have a place to pray and celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the feast that marks the end of fasting for Ramadan..." [Read More]

"... Hooper, the spokesman for the Islamic Council, said Muslims in the United States have been asked to exercise caution. The council released a tip sheet on security: know your emergency responders, post observers, report threats, install surveillance cameras.

Hooper said anti-Muslim rhetoric has been building for years, especially from groups formed specifically to fight against Islam in the United States.

"Anti-Muslim hate groups are a relatively new phenomenon in the United States, most of them appearing in the aftermath of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks such groups..."
 

"...He said all Muslims have a right to practice their faith without fear.
On this Eid, that may not happen in some houses of worship in America."

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"

CAIR Asks FBI to Probe Firebomb Attack on Fla. Muslim Family

Temple Attack Shows Jihadis Aren’t the Only Terrorists

By Spencer Ackermam| Wired.com | August 6, 2012 | [Original Article]

"The FBI is treating Sunday’s attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, as a “possible act of domestic terrorism” — raising the possibility that the face of domestic terrorism in the United States looks different than the homegrown jihadism many have forecasted...

...While counterterrorism analysts have long predicted a rise in domestic terrorism from American jihadis, there haven’t been any successful attacks pulled off by homegrown Islamic militants — with the prominent exception of the 2010 Fort Hood attack committed by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. (Others, like would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, tried and failed in their attack attempts.) But there have been non-jihadist terrorist attacks committed by people who were extremists, but definitely not Muslims: the white supremacist attack on the U.S. Holocaust Museum in 2009, for instance, and the 2010 airplane attack on an Internal Revenue Service building in Austin...

...The fact that a white non-Muslim man pulled off a prospective act of terrorism is a reminder that terrorism is not limited to any race, color, religion or creed. Counterterrorism experts have long warned against racial, ethnic or religious profiling, since terror organizations recruit from non-Arab communities (British-Jamaican would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid; Nigerian would-be underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab); and because terrorists can be non-Muslims who have not attracted the suspicions of law enforcement. Carlson said that Page had “contact with law enforcement in the past” but not enough to warrant an investigation..." [Read More]

Michele Bachmann's McCarthyite Witch Hunt Against Muslims, 'Sharia Law'

By Robert Dreyfuss | TheNation.com | July 23, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"I’d call Frank Gaffney an intellectual bomb-thrower—but, he’s not an intellectual. Instead, he treats politics and national security the way James Holmes treats movie-theater patrons: don’t worry about aiming, just shoot to kill. Fortunately for his victims, Gaffney mostly fires duds, such as the ones he’s been shooting lately at Huma Abedin, an aide to Hillary Clinton, whom Gaffney calls an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood...

...Gaffney, of course, is the extreme-right-wing chief of something called the Center for Security Policy. AsRightWeb and SourceWatch report, Gaffney is involved in, connected to, or cited by anti-Muslim crazies who oppose mosque-building, generated volumes of conspiracy theories, and he was even cited by the Norwegian terrorist who killed scores of campers in 2011. How far right? For years I’ve watched Gaffney’s Islamophobic and ultrahawkish antics, including a long-running battle he’s had with Grover Norquist, the taxophobic head of Americans for Tax Reform...[Read More]

...In her jihad against Abedin, Bachmann spewed out a stream of letters to half a dozen top US officials, including John Brennan, Obama’s top adviser on terrorism; the director of National Intelligence; and many others. To get a flavor of the letters, I urge you to read one or two. Among them: a letter to the deputy inspector general of the State Department...

Fortunately, rather than rely on pro-Obama, obviously Muslim-tainted sources to rebut Bachmann, we can quote a speech from Senator McCain on the Senate floor"

"These allegations about Huma and the report from which they are drawn are nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American and a loyal public servant."

Bachmann's paranoia strikes deep

By Daniel Ruth | TampaBayTimes | July 24, 2012 | [Original Article]

"It would be too easy, too convenient to dismiss the ramblings of Rep. Michele Bachmann as the rants of a cravenly ambitious politician all too willing to cater to the paranoid lemmings of her tea party followers.

But it still doesn't diminish the harm Bachmann's latest paroxysm of fearmongering has caused to loyal Americans whose only crime has been the vagaries of birth and/or the choice of religion.

...Bachmann — unburdened by fairness, or truth or reality — decided to impugn the patriotism of Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and fellow Rep. Keith Ellison.

Abedin and Ellison are Muslim, evidence enough for Bachmann and fellow members of her unhinged Tailgunner Caucus, which also includes Florida's Rep. Tom Rooney... [Read More]

...he notion that evildoers are trying to infiltrate the State Department was all the rage 60 years when McCarthy attempted the same, unsubstantiated witch hunt...

...What Murrow had to say about McCarthy in 1954 applies just as pointedly to Bachmann's bigotry and racism"

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular"

Michele Bachmann’s anti-Muslim paranoia

By Juliette Kayyem | Articles.Boston | July 19, 2012 | [Original Article]

...It is simply not enough to mock the Bachmann crusade against the “civilizational jihad” festering in federal government. Much more than the recent and desperate accusations that President Obama needs to be “more American,” the charges against those in government — appointees, civil servants, and advisers — are far more dangerous. They are intended not so much to root out the enemy in our midst, but to raise suspicions against Americans simply by demanding the hunt.

In five separate letters to the Departments of State, Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense, as well as the director of National Intelligence, Bachmann’s congressional allies detail their objections about Islam’s influence on America’s policy. These policies include the relatively benign outreach efforts with Muslim organizations and apologies for the Koran burnings in Afghanistan. But it really isn’t policies that the Bachmann cabal is worried about. It’s the people...

In government, such a request for the kind of information the letters demand — Joe McCarthy would be proud — will require each agency to track the strange claims and interview personnel. It will distract from a focus on the nation’s security. But that’s the point. It is the search that matters.

EEOC Determination Against Anti-Muslim Training: Muslim Asserted "Stereotyping" and "Personal Bias"

CAIR Florida | July 16, 2012

In a decision available online, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) ruled in favor of a Muslim who filed a complaint about a 2005 course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). In Washington Monthly's "How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam," available online since early 2012, authors Joshua Craze and Meg Stalcup describe the Muslim's complaint about Kharoba this way:

SEE: How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2011/1103.stalcup-craze.html

"As things turned out, though, the students of FLETC wound up being more skeptical than the school's course evaluators. The same month that Kharoba was being invited to incorporate his material into the FLETC curriculum, FLETC received a complaint from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official named Muhammad Rana. Rana had been angered by course materials that included a handout describing "fundamentalist Muslims" as people with "long beards and head coverings" who, while "we call them radicals ... are practicing true Islam." Eleven out of fifteen members of the class submitted a letter in support of Rana's complaint, and Rana took his case to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which ruled in his favor."

In his March 2012 response to the Washington Monthly article, Kharoba did not make any effort to rebut Craze and Stalcup's reporting on Rana's complaint.

SEE: CTOCs Statement on the Washington Monthly Article
http://www.ctocus.com/CTOC_Statement_Washington_Monthly_Article.pdf
The EEOC, referring to Kharoba as I1, also found the following in its decision:

SEE: EEOC Decision
http://www.eeoc.gov/decisions/0720060056.txt

"The [EEOC Administrative Judge] noted that complainant was not the only student who felt I1's comments were inappropriate and had the purpose of degrading and demonizing followers of Islam. The evidence showed that the agency had received complaints regarding this course from prior students. Indeed, complainant's classmates complained as well. On February 23, 2005, eleven out of the fifteen members of the class submitted a letter to the Director of the training program (D1), requesting that he eliminate I1's class altogether, calling it 'repulsive.' The letter from the class to D1 stated:

"'Our reasons for making this request is that we found the content, most of it, to be filled with stereotyping, unsubstantiated allegations, unrelated information and personal bias. [I1] continuously emphasized that all people of the Muslim faith would exhibit this particular behavior and share the one common goal of either converting everyone to their religion or eliminating them, in essence, they all had terrorist characteristics.'"


SEE:

Muslim Organizations Say Police Training Teaches Bigotry
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-07-11/features/fl-muslims-anti-terrorism-training-20120711_1_cair-s-south-florida-nezar-hamze-islam-and-terrorism

Muslims Seek Law Enforcement Instructor's Ouster
http://www2.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/2012/jul/12/2/muslims-seek-law-enforcement-instructors-ouster-ar-429525/

Expert Gives Florida Police Anti-Muslim Training, Claims Civil Rights Group

By Claire Gordon | AOL | July 13, 2012 | [Original Article]

"Counterterrorism in the U.S. is traditionally the job of the FBI. But since 9/11, increasing numbers of state and local police have undergone training in spotting and catching terrorists, often funded by federal grants. Muslim groups are now concerned that some of the counterterrorism experts instructing our nation's police are unqualified and bigoted, spreading stereotypes about Muslims that ultimately make our country less safe.

One of those experts is Sam Kharoba, president of the Florida-based Counter Terrorism Operations Center. Through an open information request, the Council on American-Islam Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, found that Kharoba had conducted at least 21 separate trainings in Florida between 2005 and 2011, many of them sponsored and advertised by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

A letter sent Wednesday, co-signed by 18 other Muslim organizations and a half-dozen Florida mosques, as well as non-Muslim advocacy groups, asked FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey to sever the department's ties with Kharoba; to hire "someone with appropriate credentials and accurate subject matter content" to re-educate the officers who received his training; and to adopt a vetting procedure for counterterrorism experts who train police...

...Kharoba is a Christian, but was born in majority Muslim Jordan. "That's like saying any American who lives in America is qualified to teach about Christianity," says Hassan Shibly, the executive director of CAIR's Florida chapter.

Shibly believes that Kharoba's teachings result in more police profiling of Muslims. "We've had so many complaints from local Muslims who've been praying, and stopped and questioned," he says. "and asked what hand he wears his watch on. This guy teaches that if you wear a watch on your right hand you're a jihadist."...

...Critics of the training fear that it will discourage American Muslims from coming to police officers and agents with valuable leads, and cooperating with investigations.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has said on record that the cooperation of Muslim communities is "tremendously important" and that revelations, such as the one about offensive training materials, "set us back.""

CAIR: Fla. Law Enforcement Asked to Drop Anti-Muslim Trainer

CAIR Florida | July 11, 2012

(TAMPA, FL, 7/11/2012) -- The Florida Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL) today held news conferences in Tampa and Pembroke Pines to ask the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to stop using a notorious anti-Muslim bigot as a counterterrorism trainer.

At the news conferences, CAIR-FL released a letter sent to the FDLE by a 30-member coalition of Muslim organizations and individuals requesting that the department no longer use Sam Kharoba of the Counter Terrorism Operations Center (CTOC) as a trainer on issues related to Islam and Muslims.

The coalition's letter to FDLE Commissioner Gerald M. Bailey asserts that Kharoba's training materials on Islam are riddled with inaccuracies, sweeping generalizations and stereotypes, that he is unqualified as a subject matter expert on either Islam or countering violent extremism and that his training has elicited disturbingly prejudiced responses from trainees.

It states in part:

"Sam Kharoba's training undermines the Building Communities of Trust (BCOT) initiative released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security and International Association of Chiefs of Police. It also directly contradicts the Line Training provided by the DOJ for our Law Enforcement Officers regarding SARS."

SEE: Muslim Coalition's Letter to FDLE

That letter also asks that officers who received Kharoba's biased training be given accurate and unbiased retraining by credible experts and that the FDLE adopt a policy ensuring that those offering counterterrorism training be vetted for their academic credentials, operational experience and accuracy of course content.

For more Background on Sam Kharoba, see:

Critics say Broward College teaches police to profile, discriminate against Muslims
FDLE and Broward College disagree on who is responsible for controversial police training

Documents obtained by CAIR-FL reveal at least 21 separate trainings conducted by Kharoba in Florida from 2005-2012. In many cases, these trainings were sanctioned by the FDLE.

The documents were obtained through a nationwide effort in which CAIR chapters filed 87 separate public records requests about possible Islamophobic training of local, state and national law enforcement personnel.

SEE: CAIR Files Multi-State Records Requests on Anti-Muslim Law Enforcement Trainings

Kharoba's main training manual, "A Law Enforcement Guide to Understanding Islamist Terrorism," combines vile accusations against Islam, sweeping generalizations targeting all Muslims and factual inaccuracies.

About the manual, the coalition letter states: "Objective readers of this material will walk away with a clear impression that Al-Qaeda and its ideological allies are representative of mainstream Islam and that all Muslims lie as a matter of routine."

The first chapter of Kharoba's training manual attacks the entire religion of Islam and attempts to prove, through selective evidence, that it is inherently violent. He writes: "Most of us have heard statements similar to 'Islam is a religion of peace' and that 'Muslim radicals hijacked, twisted and altered Islam to justify their Jihad against non-Muslims.' This book will provide definitive proof contradicting these statements and allegations."

In its 2011 investigative report, "How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam," Washington Monthly quoted Kharoba: "'When I look at the life of Muhammad, I get a very nasty image,' said Kharoba. . .'And that is just to start off with. Anyone who says that Islam is a religion of peace,' he continued, 'is either ignorant or flat out lying.'"

SEE: How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam

CAIR also recently called on the Department of Defense to dismiss an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., who taught fellow officers that only a "total war" on Islam would protect America, that they should use "Hiroshima" tactics, target civilian populations, and abandon the Geneva Conventions. The instructor of that course was later relieved of his teaching duties.

SEE: U.S. Military Instructor Suspended Over Islam Course

The Washington-based Muslim civil rights organization has also called on the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security and Congress to provide oversight for apparently widespread anti-Muslim bias in the training of law enforcement, security and military personnel nationwide.

SEE: CAIR Asks Sec. Napolitano to Probe Use of Islamophobic Trainers
Obama Orders Clean Up of Islamophobic Terror Training

An 80-page report by Political Research Associates (PRA), titled "Manufacturing the Muslim Menace: Private Firms, Public Servants, & the Threat to Rights and Security," details a systemic failure to regulate content in counterterrorism training.

SEE: Manufacturing the Muslim Menace

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

UPS supervisor spied on Muslim employee in the bathroom... and then demonstrated 'how we urinate in this country'

By Emily Epstein | Dailymail | July 11, 2012 | [Original Article]

"A Muslim UPS worker claims his colleagues and managers routinely humiliated and harassed him - including spying on him while he went to the toilet.

Palestinian-American Ashraf Sarandah, 35, has filed an official complaint against UPS with the Equal Employment Opportunity commission for routinely discriminating against him, including one instance in which his boss followed him to the bathroom to watch him urinate.

Mr Sarandah, who has a bladder and kidney condition, was then questioned for the manner in which he used the toilet, prompting a demonstration by his supervisor in the 'American' manner of peeing: standing up at a urinal...

...His attorney Michael Hanna called UPS's conduct 'horrendous.' The most heinous instance of harassment was this year, when a manager followed him to the bathroom to watch him use the toilet... [Read More] 

... Some Muslims believe that getting urine on one's body or clothing is a sin, so men will often refrain from using a urinal, opting for a toilet instead...

...Mr Sarandah hopes that his complaint can lift the lid on what he says is UPS' blind eye to discrimination. 'Today I file these charges against UPS to help make sure that no employee has to face racial slurs, harassment, and fear that their management is secretly watching them use the restroom,' he said to the MailOnline..."

CAIR Florida, Morgan & Morgan, File Harassment Charges Against UPS

Orlando UPS Employee Alleges Anti-Arab Bias

Anika Myers Palm | Orlando Sentinel | July 10, 2012 | [Original Article]

  

Today's Orlando Press Conference

 An Orlando employee of UPS filed a federal complaint today alleging that the company allowed a hostile environment to exist because of his ethnicity and faith.

Ashraf Sarandah, 33, said he has been denied promotions, called names and that co-workers and supervisors spied on him in the restroom at the parcel-delivery-service company. He has filed discrimination charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Sarandah, a Palestinian-American who is also a Muslim, said the harassment has been a steady problem during at least six of the eight years he has been employed by UPS as an industrial engineer and planner.

 "This conduct is un-American," said Hassan Shibly, executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations... [Watch Video]

Muslim Worker Claims Management at UPS Watched Him Urinate

Claire Gordon | AOL News | July 10,2012 | [Full Article]

...Sarandah says that in February he went to use the bathroom, and was followed by two managers. Deeply uncomfortable, Sarandah says that he turned around and left, even though he has a kidney and bladder condition for which he was previously hospitalized. "Employees should not have to fear that their employers are kneeling under them and watching them urinate," says Shibly. "It's frankly disgusting on UPS' part."... 

Ashraf's lawyers say that they aren't surprised that a Muslim should be the latest target of abuse at UPS. Harassment and discrimination of Muslims took a turn for the worse a few years ago, says Shibly. A month after the Sept. 11 attacks, 47 percent of Americans had a favorable view of Islam, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. When that same question was asked in 2010, only 37 percent said the same.

"What I really find fascinating about this case is that UPS is supposed to be a worldwide company," Shibly added. "They serve the world. They should be all about diversity. It's a global corporation." [Read Full Details]

Appreciating Islam's Contribution to Civilization

By Parvez Ahmed | HuffingtonPost.com | July 5, 2012 | [Original Article]

"Nearly four in 10 Americans hold an unfavorable view of Islam and Muslims. That number has remained steady since 9/11. Several factors contribute to this negative perception, certainly none greater than Muslims, albeit a few, committing terrorism in the name of Islam. The media exasperates this negativity, as aptly noted in Edward Said's 1981 classic "Covering Islam." However, some media outlets are more egregious than others. A 2011 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that the majority of Fox News viewers perceive that Muslims want to establish sharia (Islamic law) in America and express the distressing view that Muslims are NOT an important part of America's religious fabric. Nearly seven in 10 viewers of Fox News believe that the values of Islam are at odds with American values. In contrast fewer than four in 10 viewers of public television hold such negative perceptions...

...On Friday, July 6 at 9 p.m. EST, PBS will nationally broadcast a documentary titled, "Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World" narrated by Susan Sarandon. The documentary is a timely reminder about the many contributions made by Muslims to art and culture. As an educator, I am looking forward to this documentary as it adds to a growing collection of well-made documentaries that provide a semblance of balance to the general propensity in the media to stereotype Muslims... [Read More]

... PBS airing yet another documentary about Islam suggests that a small but critical mass of Americans remain open minded about better understanding other cultures and religions. Critics of public radio and television, I am sure, will accuse PBS of a pro-Islam bias. And many Muslims may hastily conclude that the negative attitude of Fox News viewers is representative of the general unawareness of Islam in America. PBS's Friday night national broadcast provides both critics countervailing facts to reconsider their stereotyping..."

An Islamic state in Egypt can still mean democracy

By Timothy Stanley | CNN | June 27th 2012 | [Original Article]

"Islam is simply too complex to be stereotyped as the faith of tyrants.

Early Muslim societies, romanticized by Islamists, were decentralized in nature and allowed for a large degree of self-government. The first caliphs were elected by tribal councils, and their powers were limited by legal scholars in a manner that approximates to constitutionalism. Rulers could, theoretically, be impeached; religious pluralism was tolerated.

When Umar Ibn al-Khattab conquered Jerusalem in 637,he permitted Christians and Jews to remain in the holy city and worship freely in their own temples. The Covenant of Umar is one of history's first examples of a state guaranteeing religious freedom…

In short, the spread of democracy in the Islamic world has either been retarded by autocratic practices imported from the West, or subverted by Cold War politics and economic globalization. Pitted against these savage forces, Islam has sometimes offered a rare vehicle for anti-authoritarian dissent -- from Algeria to China…. [Read More]

The people overthrew a dictator and then elected a new leader in free and fair elections. The very fact that the "wrong man" was even allowed to assume the presidency suggests that Egypt is embracing a more humane politics. So far, political Islam has facilitated, not hindered, the building of a democratic country. So far"

The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate

Max Blumenthal | TheNation.com | June 13, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"...Besides funding a Who’s Who of anti-Muslim outfits, Rosenwald has served on the board of AIPAC, the central arm of America’s Israel lobby, and holds leadership roles in a host of mainstream pro-Israel organizations. As groups like AIPAC lead the charge for a US military strike on the Islamic Republic of Iran, threatening to turn apocalyptic visions of civilizational warfare into catastrophic reality, Rosenwald’s wealth has fueled a rapidly emerging alliance between the pro-Israel mainstream and the Islamophobic fringe. (In 2003 alone the Rosenwald Family Fund donated well over half of its $1.6 million in total contributions to pro-Israel and Islamophobic organizations.) This alliance serves to sanitize and legitimize professional anti-Muslim bigots like Wilders, allowing their ideas to mingle easily with those of neoconservative foreign policy heavyweights intent on promoting the appearance of a convergence between US and Israeli interests by invoking the specter of a common “Islamofascist” enemy. With Gatestone—which publicizes the writings of figures ranging from pro-Israel super-lawyer Alan Dershowitz to “counter-jihad” propagandist Robert Spencer, and boasts Harold Rhode, a neoconservative former Pentagon official credited, as a senior fellow, with helping to try to push the Bush administration to invade Iraq—Rosenwald has attempted to shift the alliance into overdrive. [Read More]

…

To his shame, Pipes earned eighteen citations in the manifesto of Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, the self-proclaimed “counter-jihadist” standing trial for the murder of seventy-seven people, mostly teenagers. Drawing heavily on sources like Pipes to justify his actions, Breivik said he carried out the slaughter to punish Europe for succumbing to “Islamicization” and multiculturalism. Ranking just behind Pipes in Breivik’s thought was the Middle East Monitoring and Research Institute (MEMRI), with sixteen citations from the right-wing terrorist. Founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer to monitor and selectively disseminate Arabic-language media, MEMRI has become a key source for organizations in the Islamophobic network. MEMRI provided much of the translated material in the anti-Muslim Clarion Fund’s mass-distributed propaganda film Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. The Clarion Fund and MEMRI have received handsome donations from the Rosenwald family."

The True Story of Sharia in American Courts

Abed Awad | TheNation | June 13, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"On May 21 Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed legislation prohibiting judges in the state from considering foreign law in their rulings. The law declares that any court decision will be considered void if it relies “in whole or in part on any foreign law, legal code or system that would not grant the parties affected by the…decision the same fundamental liberties, rights and privileges granted under the United States and Kansas constitutions.”

The real target of the law goes unnamed. “This [bill] doesn’t say ‘Sharia law,’” Republican State Senator Chris Steineger said in a speech that condemned the legislation for discriminating against Muslims, “but that’s how it was marketed back in January and all session long—and I have all the e-mails to prove it."

"...From a legal perspective, the wave of anti-Sharia legislation should be much ado about nothing. Sharia is as much a threat to our Constitution as Bible verses calling for the stoning of adulterers or the genocidal directive in Deuteronomy to leave “alive nothing that breathes.” Like the Old and New Testaments, Sharia has its own conflicts and tensions with modern conceptions of gender equality and citizenship. To suggest that banning Sharia or the Bible is the only way to ward off the stoning of women or the execution of apostates is clearly, maliciously false...

...However absurd, the notion that radical Muslims are trying to take over the country seems to be catching on. A 2011 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that 30 percent of Americans believe Muslims want to establish Sharia in the United States. The percentage was even higher—52 percent—among those who said they most trust Fox News..." [Read More]

The Long Roots of the NYPD Spying Program

Ramzi Kassem | TheNation.com | June 13, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"The stories are as remarkable for their banality as for their detail.
 
On February 8, 2006, the imam at a Bronx mosque advised congregants to boycott Danish products in response to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper. In November 2006, a member of the Muslim Students Association at the state university in Buffalo forwarded an e-mail to a Yahoo chat group advertising a conference featuring various Muslim scholars. And in April 2008, college students on a rafting trip discussed religion and prayed “at least four times a day.”

What the imam and students didn’t know was that members of the New York Police Department Intelligence Division were spying on them and recording their names and actions in secret reports forwarded to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. None of these people had done anything wrong or even suspect: they were simply Muslims practicing their constitutionally protected freedoms of religious belief and speech. But for today’s police, that was enough to earn them a place in the department’s secret counterterrorism database.

As the Associated Press revealed in a Pulitzer Prize–winning series of exposés, the New York Police Department has been engaged in a vast domestic spying operation targeting Muslims for surveillance, mapping and infiltration. Stretching from the heart of New York City to the border of Canada—by way of Connecticut, New Jersey and Long Island—the program is as massive in scope as it is in ambition. In the name of total security, the NYPD treated basic acts of daily living as potential crimes, disregarding privacy and the freedom of speech and religion. Traditional barriers between foreign and domestic spying were partially collapsed. And the “war on terror” took lessons from the war on crime. In the process, the NYPD created perhaps the largest spying program by a local law enforcement agency on record—a sprawling effort to map entire communities that emerged from the toxic convergence of the permanent state of emergency gripping our society since 9/11 with the NYPD’s historic propensities..."[Read More] 

Islamophobia and Its Discontents

Laila Lalami | TheNation.com | June 13, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"Although the anti-Muslim backlash is frequently called a myth, the numbers tell a different story. Muslims in the United States make up less than 1 percent of the population, but they were nearly 13 percent of victims of religious-based hate crimes in 2010. It is true that this number is down from the historic high of 27 percent in 2001, the year of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but almost double what it was in 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected president. These crimes include intimidation, burglary, arson, vandalism and aggravated assault. And they target not just Muslims but also people who are mistaken for Muslims—Sikh men, for instance.

Furthermore, this rise in hate crimes is taking place in the context of a highly virulent debate about the visibility of Muslims in America. Two years ago, a huge controversy broke out about building Park51, an interfaith community center and mosque planned to be two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan. Nearly everyone with political ambitions jumped into the fray. Mitt Romney declared that Park51 had “the potential for extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda.” Rudy Giuliani called it “a desecration.” And Sarah Palin famously tweeted, “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate [sic].” A month later, a cabdriver in New York was asked, “Are you Muslim?” When he said yes, he was stabbed in the neck...."[Read More]

"...None of this is to suggest that ideas should not be debated, still less ideas about Islam. But if you are opposed to specific religious edicts—retrograde blasphemy laws, say, or unfair divorce laws—then why not say you oppose them? Folding distinct issues under the banner term “Islam”—a term that covers an entire religion, a geographical region and countless individual cultures—is imprecise and maybe even useless. By all means, denounce fatwas on free speech, speak out against misogyny, criticize hateful practices. But don’t deny that Muslims, too, defend free speech; that they, too, fight for equality; and that they, too, can be victims of hate. Muslims are just like you. Incredible? No, just true."

Pamela Geller Ally Testifies on Behalf of Anders Breivik's Defense

By Brian Tashman | RightWingWatch.org | June 6, 2012 | [Original Article]

"Back in 2010, Pamela Geller announced the formation of an international “coalition of the free” to stop the supposed “overthrow of our western civilization” by Muslims. One of the groups Geller said she is working with is SIO Norway (Stop the Islamization of Norway), and today the leader of SIO Norwaytestified in court to bolster the defense of Anders Behrin Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing terrorist who murdered scores of Norwegians at a left-wing youth retreat and bombed a government building:" [Read More]

"...Geller had blamed the Norway attacks on Muslims, and Breivik cited Geller twelve times in his manifesto. After it came out that Breivik, not radical Islamists, were behind the atrocities, Geller then attacked the victims for their political views and diverse racial makeup."

Crusade 2.0

John Feffer talked about the resurgence of anti-Islamic sentiment in the West and reviewed the actions that the U.S. has taken against Muslim countries since September 11, 2001.

[Watch Video Here]