When an Iraq War veteran filed an appeal last month to get back his personalized license plates, his attorney claimed the Department of Motor Vehicles had misinterpreted them.
The tag that read “ICUHAJI” was intended only as a message of support for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. Not as a threat against Arabs.
What Andrew D. Meyer failed to mention was the content of the previous message his client had tried to get on his plates: HAJIKLR.
One of the Obama administration’s go-to civil rights groups in its efforts to build relationships with American Muslims is suing the New York Police Department over its surveillance programs, some of which were paid for with federal money.
Eight Muslims filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday in New Jersey to force the NYPD to end its surveillance and other intelligence-gathering practices targeting Muslims in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The lawsuit alleged that the NYPD’s activities were unconstitutional because they focused on people’s religion, national origin and race.
A new covenant aims to allow Jews and Muslims to continue to perform ritual slaughter of animals while answering the broadly supported call to prevent animal suffering.
After years of heated argument and increased polarization, the parties sat down in front of invited journalists to sign a carefully agreed covenant. The Jewish and Muslim representatives shook hands and, relieved, signed their names to the document.
In this case, Jews and Muslims were on the same side. The covenant they signed, along with Deputy Minister of Agriculture Henk Bleker, is a compromise that will allow Jews and Muslims in the Netherlands to continue the practice of ritual slaughter.
In an update on last week’s protest by Luton’s Sikh community, the Turban Campaign has reproduced an account by Peter Adams from St Mary’s Church in Luton. As they point out: “The account confirms the opportunistic actions of the EDL leadership and the very public disapproval by the local Sikh leadership as previously reported.”
Adams was at Luton Magistrates’ Court the day after the main protest and reports:
“Soon after 10.30 when I arrived it was confirmed that the Muslim lad had been charged and hearing would be in the afternoon. Kevin Carrol turned up soon after and not long afterwards community leader Jaswinder Singh Nagra. He told Carrol EDL were not welcome. When asked who had invited him to be there he could name no names. He withdrew and called Lennon. He hung around and then left.”
Which possibly explains why this EDL appeal was followed shortly after by this one.
The Right-wing mayor of Nice has been accused of “stigmatising” the southern French town’s Muslim population after passing a decree on “noisy” town hall weddings, in particular cheering, whistling and foreign flag-waving, which he says disturb the peace.
James Macintyre examines the double standards behind the prime minister’s differential treatment of Sayeeda Warsi and Jeremy Hunt.
If anything, Macintyre is too soft in his criticism of what to any independent observer looks like the result of blatant anti-Muslim bigotry directed against Warsi by the Tory right. Recent articles in the Sunday Telegraph (see here and here), trying to associate Warsi with Hizb ut-Tahrir, are in the classic tradition of Islamophobic witch-hunting. It’s only surprising that Andrew Gilligan isn’t on the case.
A website dedicated to following the New York City Police Department published a document Monday detailing Islamic schools, NGOs, mosques, student associations, and persons of interest that were monitored by the NYPD in 2006 as part of its secret and legally questionable program to spy on Muslims.
Christian and Muslim leaders came together to support the Murfreesboro Islamic community and imam Ossama Bahloul Sunday afternoon at The Village Church in East Nashville. “We just really wanted to reach out to him and to let him know that we cared about his community and him and that we would be praying with them,” said Dr. Andrew Anyabwile, Village Church pastor.
By the end of Marked for Death, we see what Wilders is leading up to – a horrifying vision of a fortress Europe, defending “freedom” through the deployment of totalitarian state powers to expunge Islam from the continent. His recommendations are reminiscent of the discriminatory social control measures taken against Jews and other minorities under Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Wilders, of course, is careful to disavow violence and reiterate he hates Islam, not Muslims. But it is difficult to deny the implicitly violent subtext of his sweeping proposals, including a halt to all Muslim immigration, payments to settled immigrants to leave, cessation of building of mosques, and taxation of Muslim religious practices such as the headscarf. Most disturbing is his endorsement of Israeli-style “administrative detention” (indefinite internment without trial on security grounds) in Europe as part of criminal operations in Muslim communities; not to mention the forcible deportation of tens of millions of Muslims from Europe for “thinking” about “crime” or “Shari’ah”.
Yasmin Qureshi and Nafeez Ahmed examine the political programme presented in Geert Wilders’ Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me.