ACLU amends California mosque-spying lawsuit

A civil liberties group in Los Angeles has amended its lawsuit alleging the FBI spied in mosques to include new claims the bureau used anti-Muslim training materials.

Peter Bibring, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said Thursday that FBI training materials included quotes from Islamic texts that were taken out of context to show the religion preaches violence.

The FBI has acknowledged a lecture at its training academy was critical of Islam but this was discontinued. In a statement, the FBI said policy changes were under way to ensure all training was consistent with FBI standards.

The amended lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims the FBI paid an informant to infiltrate Southern California mosques, violating Muslims’ freedom of religion by conducting indiscriminate surveillance because of their faith.

Associated Press, 16 September 2011

FBI teaches agents: ‘mainstream’ Muslims are ‘violent, radical’

FBI on ZakatThe FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

“There may not be a ‘radical’ threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology,” one FBI presentation notes. “The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream.”

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Rizwaan Sabir wins compensation from police

Rizwaan SabirA student who was arrested and held for seven days after downloading the al-Qaida training manual as part of his university research into terrorist tactics has received £20,000 in compensation and an apology from the police for being stopped and searched.

Rizwaan Sabir, 26, was studying for a master’s at the University of Nottingham in 2008 when he was detained under the Terrorism Act and accused of downloading the material for illegal use. He was arrested on 14 May after the document was found on an administrator’s computer by a member of staff.

Sabir had asked the administrator, Hisham Yezza, to print out the 140-page manual as they were collaborating on research. The university said it called the police after efforts to contact Yezza failed as it felt compelled to act by its duty of care to staff and students. However, Sabir and Yezza dispute this version of events.

As soon as he was made aware of the situation, one of Sabir’s supervisors confirmed that the manual – which he had downloaded from a US government website and which can be bought at WH Smith – was relevant to his research.

After seven days and six nights in custody, he was released without charge or apology. But his lawyers later discovered Nottinghamshire police were holding an intelligence file on him, which contained false information about him and wrongly claimed he had been convicted of a terrorist offence.

His legal team brought proceedings against Nottinghamshire police for false imprisonment and breaches of the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Human Rights Act 1998. The proceedings also included a claim under the Data Protection Act 1998 relating to the intelligence file.

The case was due to go to trial on Monday 19 September, but the force settled last week, paying Sabir £20,000 compensation and covering his legal fees. It apologised to Sabir for a stop and search on 4 February 2010 and agreed to delete the inaccurate intelligence information.

Guardian, 15 September 2011

See also BBC News, 14 September 2011

Australia: Greens move to censure Cory Bernardi

The Greens today will ask Parliament to condemn Liberal senator Cory Bernardi for offering to help controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders in his trip to Australia.

Mr Wilders has compared the Koran to Mein Kampf, called the prophet Muhammad a paedophile and said Islam was not a religion, rather it was a totalitarian ideology.

Last week it was reported that Senator Bernardi met Mr Wilders and offered to help him when he visited Australia, prompting calls for Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to dump him from the front bench.

The Age understands some Labor MPs have inquired about meeting Mr Wilders should he visit Australia.

Greens spokesman for multiculturalism Richard di Natale will move that the Senate condemn the invitation by Senator Bernardi to Mr Wilders and call on the Senator to withdraw that invitation; and if not for Mr Abbott to intervene.

”Senator Bernardi has expressed similar views in the past and there should be no room for extremists like Bernardi on Tony Abbott’s front bench,” Senator di Natale said.

The Age, 14 September 2011

Human rights activist warns of growing Islamophobia in Poland

Rafal PankowskiA leading Polish human rights activist warned of growing Islamophobia in his country in an exclusive interview with IRNA in Berlin.

“In general Islamophobia has become one of the big issues. I would say it is growing and I am afraid it will grow further. We see more and more talk about the so-called danger of Islam,” said the coordinator of the Warsaw-based anti-racist organization NEVER AGAIN, Rafal Pankowski. He linked the rise of “the relatively new” phenomenon of Islamophobia in his country to the global situation, particularly to Poland’s role in the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Pankowski said Muslims in Poland have been repeatedly the target of racial assaults, especially since the September 11, 2011 terror attacks. He added Chechen refugees in Poland have also been victimized by anti-Islam hate crime. Pankowski emphasized that the Polish media is not always covering Islamophobic attacks against Muslims. He said “more than 50 people” have died as a result of racial assaults in Poland since the early 90s when hate crimes were monitored and registered.

Pankowski also stressed there were major segments within the Polish Catholic Church who were “quite hostile to Muslims”. “Radio Maria which is a (Catholic) radio station but is also a big social movement, is a xenophobic movement. They strongly spoke out against Islam,” Pankowski pointed out.

The activist said the Polish right-wing is influenced or tries to copy the anti-Islamic rhetoric in some of the other European countries. Pankowski said the issue of Muslim migration to Poland is being exploited politically by the right-wing scene. He added that plans for the construction of a much-needed mosque in Warsaw were used “to mobilize” against Muslims in Poland.

IRNA, 13 September 2011

CIA investigates whether laws broken helping NYPD spy on Muslims

The CIA inspector general is investigating whether the agency broke the law by helping the New York Police Department build intelligence-gathering programs that monitored life in Muslim communities, the agency said Tuesday following an investigation by The Associated Press.

The agency’s unprecedented cooperation with the NYPD was part of an eight-month investigative reporting project by The Associated Press. The AP found that NYPD intelligence officers analyzed hundreds of mosques and student organizations, infiltrating dozens of them. Undercover officers eavesdropped in cafes and restaurants and wrote daily reports about what they overheard. The department also maintained a list of 28 countries that, along with “American Black Muslim,” the department labeled “ancestries of interest.”

A CIA officer, Lawrence Sanchez, helped create and guide these programs. From 2002 to 2004, when these programs were being built, Sanchez was on the CIA payroll and maintained an office at both the NYPD and the CIA’s offices in New York. The programs have continued with at least the tacit support of President Barack Obama, whose administration has repeatedly sidestepped questions about them.

Associated Press, 13 September 2011

See also “CAIR ‘cautiously’ welcomes CIA probe of role in NYPD mosque spying”, CAIR press release, 13 September 2011

Spiegel on Islamophobia in the USA

Ullrich Fichtner of Spiegel interviews Brigitte Gabriel of ACT! for America:

To support her ideas, Gabriel jumps from the 7th to the 21st century and back, from the suras of the Koran to Europe’s transformation into “Eurabia,” from the Islamic militant group Hezbollah to American textbooks, and from the Crusades to the massacre of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics (which she seems to think took place in 1971, rather than 1972). She juggles Hitler and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and explains why each and every devout Muslim is a potential terrorist, and how all the pieces fit together in one grand scenario of doom: America is being infiltrated. Sharia law is coming soon. The government is looking away. Government agencies are asleep at the wheel.

The problem has less to do with the fact that nothing, or next to nothing, of what Gabriel and her disciples are spreading among the American people is actually true. The problem is that many Americans – perhaps half, perhaps the majority – see the world today in a very similar way.

Report on EDL to be published at University of Northampton conference

A major report on the ideology, structure and development of the English Defence League (EDL) will be launched at an international conference at The University of Northampton next week.

The conference is entitled “Populist Racism in Britain in Europe since 1945” and will be held between 22-23 September.

The report, The EDL: Britain’s Far-Right Social Movement, also examines the EDL’s influence on far-right terrorism and “lone wolf” extremists. The latter are individuals who act alone with far-right extremist views; for example, Anders Breivik – perpetrator of the recent terrorists atrocities in Norway – allegedly acted alone and his manifesto praises the work of the EDL.

University of Northampton press release, 13 September 2011

US rabbis take part in anti-Islamophobia event

Jewish rabbis took part in an anti-Islamaphobia in Washington on Thursday, days before the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 Twin Towers attack in New York, JTA reported.

“Ten years after 9/11, it has somehow become respectable to verbally attack Muslims and Islam in America,” Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union of Reform Judaism, reportedly said at an event organized by Shoulder to Shoulder, a group founded a year ago to combat anti-Muslim rhetoric.

“There are very real consequences when entire populations are represented in the public imagination by their worst elements, when the sins of the few are applied to the group as a whole. I have watched in astonishment as prominent politicians, including candidates for president of the United States, have found it politically opportune to peddle divisive anti-Muslim bigotry,” Yoffie added.

Rabbi Burton Visotzky from the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary said Muslims “have always been part of the fabric of America,” the JTA report said.

Steve Gutow, a Reconstructionist rabbi and the president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the public policy umbrella group reportedly spoke at the event as well, saying “a great people and a great nation do not let their brothers and sisters suffer from bigotry and persecution.”

He condemned those who discriminate against Muslims throughout the United States, saying “our Muslim brothers and sisters suffer exactly that in all corners of this great country of ours. Today is a day to stand up and say we have had enough,” the report said.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, co-founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, Rabbi Jack Moline, representing the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, representing the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the Faith and the Common Good project, and Rabbi Dr. Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, representing the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, were also in attendance, the JTA report said.

Haaretz, 11 September 2011