Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Immigration officer forwards racist email to Muslim-American lawyer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shahid Haque-Hausrath

HELENA — Shahid Haque-Hausrath sat down at his computer on the morning of Sept. 28 and, as he does at the start of most work days, began reading his email. In his inbox that morning was an email from the state’s top U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, Bruce Norum.

Haque-Hausrath is an immigration attorney who often deals with ICE on immigration and deportation cases, so he wasn’t necessarily surprised to see an email from Norum, the supervisory detention and deportation officer for Montana.

Haque-Hausrath said he was somewhat perplexed by the email’s subject line: “FW: This AA Pilot tells it like it is …” In the body of the email Norum simply wrote “Good read” ahead of a forwarded message.

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Defend multiculturalism conference in London next Saturday

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Multiculturalism conference (2)

A huge range of speakers, including MPs, campaigners, writers and musicians is lined up for the one-day conference on defending multiculturalism on 15 October.

The event, titled Celebrate diversity, defend multiculturalism, oppose Islamophobia and racism, is organised by UAF and One Society Many Cultures and sponsored by SERTUC.

It is backed by the NUT, Unite, CWU, UCU and PCS trade unions, the Muslim Council of Britain and the NUS Black Students Campaign.

Speakers announced for the conference include Francis O’Grady TUC deputy general secretary, Kevin Courtney deputy general secretary NUT, Jack Dromey MP, Helen Goodman MP, Peter Hain MP,Claude Moraes MEP, Jean Lambert MEP, Farooq Murad secretary general, Muslim Council of Britain, Edie Friedman executive director, Jewish Council for Racial Equality, Michelle Stanistreet general secretary NUJ, Hugh Lanning deputy general secretary PCS, Steve Hart political director Unite, Megan Dobney regional secretary SERTUC, Zita Holbourne PCS NEC, Bob Lambert co-director European Muslim Research Centre, Jody McIntyre journalist, Peter Oborne journalist, Dilowar Khan director, London Muslim Centre, Alaa’ Samarrai vice-president student affairs, Federation of Student Islamic Societies, Kanja Sesay NUS black students’ officer, Nitin Sawney musician, Sabby Dhalu secretary One Society Many Cultures, Denis Fernando Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism, Weyman Bennett joint secretary UAF, Martin Smith national co-ordinator, Love Music Hate Racism.

>> Go here to download the conference flyer
>> Read more about the conference

The event takes place at the TUC conference centre, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS from 9.30am to 5pm on Saturday 15 October.

Conservative shock jock reels off Islamophobia’s greatest hits

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Conservative shock jock Bryan Fischer whipped out his best anti-Muslim rhetoric at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.

Some highlights:

“Christians and Muslims do not believe in the same God.”

“I believe it’s important that we have a president who understands that Islam is not a religion of peace, but a religion of war and violence and death.”

“Every single Mosque in America is a potential recruiting or training cell for Islamic terror.”

“The greatest long-term threat to our security and liberty is not radical Islam, but Islam itself.”

“This is not Islamophobia, this is Islamo-realism.”

“The more devout a Muslim becomes, the more of a threat he becomes to our national security.”

TPM, 8 October 2011

Moroccan Islamist leader threatens to sue Dutch newspapers over false terrorism accusations

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hassan BakirMoroccan Islamist Hassan Bakir has fled back from Spain to the Netherlands. After ten weeks of detention and house arrest, waiting for a Spanish decision about his extradition to Morocco, he thought it was time to go. Back in the Netherlands, he wants to clear his reputation. “I am falsely depicted here as a dangerous terrorist.”

Last Friday, the Spanish council of ministers authorized the judge to proceed with the extradition procedure of Hassan Bakir to Morocco. For Bakir it was the last drop. “I didn’t do anything wrong. All that time I have waited for them to find that out and release me. But the decision of the council of ministers really scared me so I decided to flee.” He left the address where he was under house arrest and travelled over land to the Netherlands in two days.

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Hertz suspends praying Muslim shuttle drivers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Zainab AweisIn the three years she’s worked as a shuttle driver for Hertz at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Zainab Aweis, had always taken time out of her shift each day to pray.

An observant Muslim, she prays five times a day – with one, sometimes two of those prayer times falling during her shift. “That was the one benefit of the job,” the 20-year-old said.

On Friday, she and 33 other drivers – all of them Somali Muslims – were suspended indefinitely from their jobs after they took religious breaks to pray while at work without first clocking out. A spokesman for Teamsters Local 117, which represents the workers, said it is trying to get the workers back on the job.

While the drivers were allowed two 10-minute breaks during their work shifts during which they could pray, Teamsters officials said managers had agreed in negotiations that workers would not have to clock out and in, though the contact itself does not address the matter.

And the workers and their union said Hertz had previously not required that workers clock out for prayer. The union said it has filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Hertz for failing to notify the union in advance of what it called a policy change.

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White House intervened to block notorious Islamophobes addressing security conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The CIA and Department of Homeland Security abruptly canceled a conference in August on homegrown U.S. radical extremism in what officials close to the issue say was an effort to block two conservative anti-terrorism experts from presenting their views.

The conference was slated for Aug. 10 through 12 at agency headquarters in McLean and was to have been hosted by the CIA Threat Management Unit. It was organized by the intelligence subcommittee of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

“The conference topic is a critical one for domestic law enforcement, and the sponsors – in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security – have decided to delay the conference so it can include insights from among other sources, the new National Strategy for Counterterrorism in an updated agenda,” wrote CIA police officer Lt. Joshua Fielder in an email announcing the postponement in early August.

According to people close to the conference, the event was ordered “postponed” after Muslim advocacy groups contacted the Department of Homeland Security and the White House about the scheduled speakers, who included Stephen Coughlin and Steve Emerson, both specialists on the Islamist terror threat.

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Lisa Valentine wins settlement: Douglasville courthouse screenings will now be adapted to accommodate religious head coverings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lisa_ValentineDOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — A Muslim woman who was arrested in 2008 after refusing to remove her hijab in a Douglasville courtroom has received a settlement from the city.

The settlement includes changes to the way people wearing religious head coverings are screened when they enter the courthouse, according to Azadeh Shahshahani with the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.

Lisa Valentine spent several hours in jail in December 2008 after declining to take off her hijab while accompanying her nephew to a traffic hearing in Douglasville Municipal Court. She sued the city in December 2010, saying her free speech rights were violated when she was asked to remove the head covering.

“We are glad that the city of Douglasville has acknowledged that the way that Ms. Valentine was treated was inexcusable and awful,” Shahshahani said. “No one should feel singled out in a court of law simply for observing her faith.”

According to Thursday’s settlement, Douglasville has adopted a special policy that allows people wearing religious head coverings to be screened in a private area by an officer of the same gender.

“I am glad that Douglasville has agreed to formal policies to make sure this never happens to anyone else,” Valentine said after her settlement hearing.

WXIA-TV, 6 October 2011

See also ACLU press release, 6 October 2011

Former employee sues US security agency over anti-Muslim bias

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A former employee is suing one of the government’s most secretive security agencies, alleging he lost his security clearance because his wife attended an Islamic school and worked for a Muslim charity. Mahmoud Hegab filed the discrimination lawsuit this week in federal court in Virginia against the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at Fort Belvoir.

The Alexandria resident worked at NGA as a budget analyst with a top-secret security clearance. But his clearance was revoked in November after he got married. NGA officials told him they were concerned about his wife’s schooling at the Islamic Saudi Academy, a private school in northern Virginia. Officials also cited her employment with an Islamic relief agency as a reason for revoking the clearance.

Associated Press, 6 October 2011

Muslim superhero comics meet resistance in U.S.

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dan Merica reports on the difficulties faced by Naif Al-Mutawa in getting a TV series based on Islam-inspired comic book THE 99 aired in the United States.

CNN Belief blog, 5 October 2011

Pamela Geller, who has featured prominently in the campaign against THE 99, reports: “CNN, the crescent news network, is shilling for a particularly insidious form of cultural jihad that is targeting our children: comic books featuring Islamic superheroes.”