New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has “categorically denied” that the NYPD was spying on Muslims. Len Levitt is not convinced.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Oslo: Muslim students denied high school prayer slot
High school student Ibrahim El Kadi asked if he could pray while at school. “No,” said his principal.
He asked for a quiet prayer area “for all religions” and was quoted the Education Ministry’s official line. “No one has the legal right to religious practice during working hours, neither employees nor students.”
The denial compelled El Kadi and some 40 other students in “multicultural” Ulsrud High School to protest in mock prayer outside the school’s library. Now they pray in the bitter cold of a nearby parking lot.
Muslims pray, rally in protest at NYPD spying
Hundreds of Muslims gathered in lower Manhattan on Friday to pray and march in protest against a decade of New York Police Department spying on Muslim communities.
The traditional Friday call to prayer echoed off the cold stone of government buildings as people, bundled in winter clothes, knelt in prayer on a blue tarp.
“We’re peaceful people,” said Dalia Nazzal, 18, a freshman at theCity University of New York, where police used undercover officers and informants to infiltrate Muslim student groups. “We don’t deserve to be under surveillance.”
US Muslims are ‘ordinary folks just like you and me’? That can’t be true
TLC’s reality TV show “All-American Muslim“, which focuses on the lives of five Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, has been getting up the noses of US Islamophobes.
See “Robert Spencer loses his mind over Muslim reality show, asks why ‘All-American Muslim’ doesn’t include terrorist family”, LoonWatch, 17 November 2011, and Wajahat Ali, “The reality of the ‘All-American Muslim’ reality TV show”, Comment is Free, 17 November 2011
Evil Islamists plot to impose barbaric dictatorship on Libya (not)
The Muslim Brotherhood held its first public conference on Libyan soil on Thursday after being banned for decades, and used the platform to set a moderate tone, calling for a broad national reconstruction effort.
Speaking nine months to the day after the start of the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi that eventually ended his 42-year rule, Libyan Muslim Brotherhood leader Suleiman Abdelkader praised the rebellion and called on Libya’s factions to unite. “Rebuilding Libya is not a task for one group or one party but for everyone, based on their ability,” Abdelkader told the meeting of about 700 people at a wedding hall in Benghazi, the eastern city where the revolt against Gaddafi began.
Dutch state taken to UN court of human rights over Wilders
Three Dutch Moroccans have made a complaint against the Netherlands to the UN court of human rights, claiming the Dutch state has not protected them from incitement to hatred instigated by Geert Wilders, Nos television reports.
The three, who are not named in the court filing, say the “systematic incitement to hatred and discrimination against Muslims and other migrants” committed by Wilders has left them feeling “discriminated against, humiliated and threatened”.
“They are of the opinion that Wilders by his continued hate speech has poisoned the social climate in the Netherlands that has become more and more anti-migrant and anti-Muslim,” the statement says.
Rick Womick calls Allah a ‘false god’, warns of a Muslim immigrant ‘population jihad’
Think Progress publishes more extracts from its interview with Rick Womick. According to Womick almost 30% of the population of Europe is now Muslim, a figure that will rise to over 50% within 20 to 25 years. Already in the UK “you have no go zones that are completely dominated by sharia law”. Womick claims that in the United States “we’re predicted to be over 50% Muslim some time by 2050 to 2055”. And bear in mind that this man isn’t some lunatic blogger. He’s a Republican representative in the Tennessee state legislature.
FBI reports dramatic spike in anti-Muslim hate crime
Anti-Muslim hate crimes soared by an astounding 50% last year, skyrocketing over 2009 levels in a year marked by the vicious rhetoric of Islam-bashing politicians and activists, especially over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York City.
Although the national statistics compiled by the FBI each year are known to dramatically understate the real level of reported and unreported hate crimes, they do offer telling indications of some trends. The latest statistics, showing a jump from 107 anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2009 to 160 in 2010, seem to reflect a clear rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric from groups like Stop Islamization of America. Much of that rhetoric was aimed at stopping an Islamic center in lower Manhattan.
Students at Indiana college protest against professor’s anti-Muslim comments
Anti-Muslim comments made by a PUC professor on his public Facebook page and during his class lectures have led to campus-wide outrage and student protests.
Energetic chants such as “No more Eisenstein, Eisenstein must go!” and “They say get back, we say fight back!” echoed throughout the courtyard between the Gyte and SUL buildings on Nov. 9 and 10. Students held signs and handed out transcripts of Eisenstein’s Facebook comments while expressing their opinions as others came and went between classes. Approximately 50 to 70 students took part in the protest.
Associate Professor of Political Science, Maurice Moshe Eisenstein posted comments attached with a link to a YouTube video on his Facebook page on Nov. 6, where he asked for justice for the killings of black Christians in Nigeria while lashing out towards Muslims. The video link was found by another PUC professor, which then started a heated debate between Eisenstein and PUC students via Facebook. On one of Facebook comments, Eisenstein wrote that “Muslims are barbarians and that they are nothing more to me than dogs.”
PUC Chronicle, 14 November 2011
Update: See “Nutty Professor Maurice Moshe Eisenstein: Racism and Anti-Muslim Hate”, LoonWatch, 16 November 2011
Muslims call for apology from Womick
Local Muslims are calling for action against a Tennessee State Representative Rick Womick after he said Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the U.S. military.
In an interview with thinkprogress.org, Womick said, “Personally, I don’t trust one Muslim in our military, because they are commanded to lie to us through a term called taqiyya, and if they truly are a devout Muslim and follow the Quoran, then I feel threatened, because they are commanded to kill me.”
Those comments came during a conference of conservative activists that focused on the threat of Islamic extremism in America.