The Associated Press reports. See also the New York Daily News.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
French court issues first fine over niqab ban
A French police court on Thursday issued its first fines against two women charged with wearing the full-face covering Islamic niqab.
Police have issued several on-the-spot fines since the ban came into effect in April but these are the first court-issued fines, with the women vowing to appeal their case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.
Hind Ahmas, 32, was ordered to pay a 120-euro fine, while Najate Nait Ali, 36, was fined 80 euros. The court did not order them to take a citizenship course, as had been requested by the prosecutor.
The two women arrived too late to attend the court’s deliberations. One of the women had not been allowed into the court in May because she refused to take off her niqab to show her face.
Yann Gre from the Don’t Touch My Constitution association that is defending the two women who were arrested in May in front of the town hall of Meaux, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Paris, said that they would appeal. If the fines are confirmed by a higher court, they will take their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, he said. “This law forbids women in niqab from leaving their homes and going out in public. It’s a kind of life-sentence to prison,” he said.
Aussie TV report’s false depiction of Muslims
Ahmed Kilani exposes the ludicrous inaccuracies in an Islamophobic TV report entitled “The Muslim Recruitment Drive” that was recently broadcast on the Australian current affairs show Today Tonight.
Southern California councilman boasted that he named his dog Muhammad
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. — A Southern California councilman is drawing criticism for mentioning in a public meeting that he named his dog after the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called on Derek Reeve to apologize for his comment at a recent San Juan Capistrano council meeting. The Islamic advocacy group says Reeve mentioned naming his dogs America and Muhammad during a discussion about a new dog park.
CAIR’s executive director in greater Los Angeles says while Reeve has a right to free speech, his “distasteful remark” is unbefitting of an elected official. The city’s mayor and another councilman also criticized Reeve.
The Orange County Register reports that Reeve said he named his dog Muhammad as a political statement.
Aussie TV report’s false depiction of Muslims
Ahmed Kilani exposes the ludicrous inaccuracies in an Islamophobic TV report entitled “The Muslim Recruitment Drive” that was recently broadcast on the Australian current affairs show Today Tonight.
Dudley planning committee accused of ‘bigotry, racism and Islamophobia’
Plans for a new mosque and community centre in the West Midlands have been turned down for the second time. Dudley Council refused permission on Monday for the buildings, which would feature a 35ft (10m) high minaret.
Dr Kurshid Ahmed, chairman of the town’s Muslim association, said the decision was “Islamophobic”. The council said its decision was based solely on planning reasons as the scale and design of the building would be out of keeping with buildings in the area.
The council originally refused outline planning permission for the Hall Street mosque in February 2007 on the basis the land had already been designated exclusively for employment use under the council’s unitary development plan. A planning inspectorate overturned the council’s reason for refusing outline planning approval in July 2008. The council fought the decision in the High Court in July 2009 and lost.
Full plans for a mosque and community centre went before Dudley planning committee on Monday night but were rejected.
Dr Ahmed said: “Obviously I am disappointed but certainly not surprised because decisions in Dudley planning committee are driven by the influence of bigotry, racism and Islamophobia.” Dr Ahmed said he was aware that the proposed buildings had been described by some councillors as “an alien feature” and “a blot on the landscape”.
He added: “There’s not really any planning consideration as the two comments that you’ve just referred to suggest, so it is a decision based on people’s prejudices against Islam. They don’t want to see a mosque or they see it as a blot, they see it as completely out of character, which means that they are still living in some historical context and don’t see the globalisation of today and Dudley as part of that.”
Dr Ahmed said it was evidence that council policy was being determined on the basis of anti-Muslim prejudices and described it as “institutional Islamophobia”.
See also Dudley News, 20 September 2011
Update: Kurshid Ahmed’s charge of Islamophobia is reinforced by the news that Gavin Boby of the far-right Law and Freedom Foundation (aka “Mosquebusters”) is involved in the anti-mosque campaign. For details see here, here and here.
‘Intelligence analyst’ tells FBI agents to go after Islam
Over at Danger Room, which broke the story about the FBI teaching its agents that “mainstream” Muslims are linked to terrorism, Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman have a video of a lecture by FBI intelligence analyst William Gawthrop from June this year – which rather undermines the FBI’s claim that the notorious counterterrorism course was a “one time only” event that took place in April and was “quickly discontinued”. Ackerman and Shachtman write:
The best strategy for undermining militants, Gawthrop suggested, is to go after Islam itself. To undermine the validity of key Islamic scriptures and key Muslim leaders.
“If you remember Star Wars, that ventilation shaft that goes down to into the depths of the Death Star, they shot a torpedo down there. That’s a critical vulnerability,” Gawthrop told his audience. Then he waved a laser pointer at his projected PowerPoint slide, calling attention to the words “Holy Texts” and “Clerics”.
“We should be looking at, should be aiming at, these,” Gawthrop said.
There is some background information on Gawthrop in the original Danger Room report:
In 2006, before he joined the Bureau, he gave an interview to the website WorldNetDaily, and discussed some of the themes that made it into his briefings, years later. The Prophet “Muhammad’s mindset is a source for terrorism”, Gawthrop told the website, which would later distinguish itself as a leader of the “birther” movement, a conspiracy theory that denies President Obama’s American citizenship.
At the time, Gawthrop’s major suggestion for waging the war on terrorism was to attack what he called “soft spots” in Islamic faith that might “induce a deteriorating cascade effect upon the target”. That is, to discredit Islam itself and cause Muslims to abandon their religion. “Critical vulnerabilities of the Koran, for example, are that it was uttered by a mortal,” he said. Alas, he lamented, he faced the bureaucratic obstacle of official Washington’s “political taboo of linking Islamic violence to the religion of Islam,” according to the website.
For more on Gawthrop see Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion.
Professional Islamophobe angry the FBI discontinued anti-Muslim counterterrorism training
Adam Serwer replies to Robert Spencer.
Brooklyn College professors condemn NYPD’s spying on Muslims
Professors at Brooklyn College have become the first city employees to publicly condemn the NYPD’s spying on local Muslims.
In a September 13th resolution, Brooklyn College’s Faculty Council denounced the spying on Islamic students, suggesting that the police department targeted them without any proof that they were engaging in terrorist activity.
“The Faculty Council opposes surveillance activities by the NYPD and affiliated agencies on our campus either directly or through the use of informants for the purposes of collecting information independent of a valid and specific criminal investigation,” the resolution read.
Meanwhile, the department has come up with a unique way to legally justify its spying. According to a former top police official, it has established its own internal review committee to determine whether prior evidence or indications existed that anyone under surveillance had been planning to break the law.
But this is hardly an independent committee. It reportedly consists of Police Intelligence head David Cohen, the former CIA spook and current NYPD spy mastermind; Chief Thomas Galati, the Intelligence Division’s commanding officer who at Cohen’s direction in 2007 violated diplomatic protocol by making the arriving Iranian delegation to the United Nations sit on the tarmac of at Kennedy airport for 40 minutes while he conducted a weapons check – to the chagrin of the waiting Secret Service, Port Authority Police and the State Department Security Service; Stu Parker, whom the official described as “of counsel” to Cohen, although he is not listed in the NYPD roster; and the department’s Deputy Commissioner of Legal Affairs, Andrew Schaffer.
This committee begs the question of whether there is any oversight over the NYPD’s domestic spying program outside the police department. Three of the committee’s four members belong to the Intelligence Division, which means they are monitoring themselves. The fourth, Schaffer, is not regarded as a department heavy hitter.
The Brooklyn College Faculty Council urged the college administration to issue its “own public statement outlining their opposition to on campus surveillance… as well as detailing their knowledge of or involvement in this surveillance and information gathering.
“We call on the administration to demand publicly that the NYPD inform those groups and individuals that have been the subject of this surveillance of the fact of the surveillance and the nature of the information gathered,” it said.
EDL supporter gets 8 months for chanting racist slogans outside mosque
The Sheffield Star has an editorial welcoming the 8-month prison sentence given to English Defence League supporter Daniel Parker who chanted racist slogans outside a South Yorkshire mosque.