A New York amusement park was temporarily shut down Tuesday after a large-scale altercation erupted between Muslim patrons and park rangers over a disagreement on headgear rules.
Muslim women in a tour group at Rye Playland in Westchester County were reportedly denied access to several rides because they were wearing hijabs – their traditional headscarves, MyFoxNY reports.
Believing that the upcoming 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 is best memorialized in crayon, Really Big Coloring Books, Inc. is publishing a new coloring book entitled “We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom“.
In offering kids the option of coloring the Twin Towers burning, mourning survivors, or the Navy SEALs shooting Osama Bin Laden, publisher Wayne Bell insists that “the doodles represent patriotism”, a “simplistic, honest tool” to “help educate children on events on 9/11”. But many Muslims describe it as, in a word, “disgusting”.
Pointing out that Muslims are already dealing with an environment of increasing Islamophobia, Michigan Council on American Islamic Relations representative Dawud Walid noted that “nearly all of the mentions of Muslims in the book are accompanied by the words ‘terrorist’ or ‘extremist’.” Indeed, the page depicting a Navy SEAL aiming at bin Laden cowering behind his veiled wife reads “Children, the truth is, these terrorist acts were done by freedom-hating Islamic Muslim extremists. These crazy people hate the American way of life because we are FREE and our society is FREE.” Bell’s response? “The truth is the truth“:
“Little kids who pick up this book can have their perceptions colored by those images … it instills bias in young minds,” said Walid. He says that some of the narrative and photos aren’t even correct, noting that Bin Laden wasn’t hiding behind a wife when he was shot.
Bell stood by the book as an “honest depiction”.
“The truth is the truth,” Bell said, adding, “It’s unfortunate that they were all Muslim and that’s the part people want to erase … I don’t know what else you can call them.”
Noting that one page depicts a woman mourning with a cross chain dangling from her neck, Walid says “Muslim mothers lost sons too”. He also noted that he’s not an advocate of showing children violent images – a sentiment that many military families share. Shariah Gibbs, a military spouse in Germany, said, “This should not be a coloring book.” Another said, “I would not buy a coloring book [about 9/11] … To me, coloring books should be fun … this is not!”
Think Progress, 30 August 2011
Meanwhile Insted has compiled a useful list for teachers and youth workers of 20 websites in the UK and the United States which contain materials, ideas and guidance for teaching and talking about 9/11.
Working with the CIA, the New York Police Department maintained a list of “ancestries of interest” and dispatched undercover officers to monitor Muslim businesses and social groups, according to new documents that offer a rare glimpse inside an intelligence program the NYPD insists doesn’t exist.
The documents add new details to an Associated Press investigation that explained how undercover NYPD officers singled out Muslim communities for surveillance and infiltration.
The Demographics Unit, a squad of 16 officers fluent in a total of at least five languages, was told to map ethnic communities in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and identify where people socialize, shop and pray. Once that analysis was complete, according to documents obtained by the AP, the NYPD would “deploy officers in civilian clothes throughout the ethnic communities.”
The architect of this and other programs was a veteran CIA officer who oversaw the program while working with the NYPD on the CIA payroll. It was an unusual arrangement for the CIA, which is prohibited from spying inside the U.S.
After the AP report, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the NYPD has kept the city safe and does not take religion into account in its policing. The NYPD denied the Demographics Unit exists. “There is no such unit,” police spokesman Paul Browne said before the first AP story ran. “There is nothing called the Demographics Unit.”
Internal police documents show otherwise. An NYPD presentation, delivered inside the department, described the mission and makeup of the Demographics Unit. Undercover officers were told to look not only for evidence of terrorism and crimes but also to determine the ethnicity of business owners and eavesdrop on conversations inside cafes.
A police memorandum from 2006 described an NYPD supervisor rebuking an undercover detective for not doing a good enough job reporting on community events and “rhetoric heard in cafes and hotspot locations.”
Associated Press, 31 August 2011
Update: See “CAIR asks NY City officials to enforce law barring NYPD mosque spying”, CAIR press release, 31 August 2011
A Rutherford County judge decided to uphold his earlier decision that the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro has a right, by law, to build a bigger place of worship.
“Those who are adherents to Islam are entitled to pursue their worship in the United States just as are those who are adherents to more universally established faiths (in our community),” ruled Chancellor Robert Corlew III.
Opponents of the mosque had asked Corlew to reconsider the decision he made in May, which was that the 17 plaintiffs suing Rutherford County government can only challenge whether an open meeting violation occurred over the mosque’s approval.
No trial has been scheduled on whether the county failed to provide sufficient public notice before its Regional Planning Commission met May 24, 2010, to vote on the Islamic center’s plans to construct a 52,960-square-foot community center with a mosque on Veals Road.
“We have a duty equally to treat those whose religious beliefs are similar to the majority beliefs and to those whose beliefs are very different from the majority,” Corlew wrote. “If the zoning laws are too favorable to those seeking to build places of worship, then citizens should prevail upon their elected representatives to change those ordinances, but until they do the Court must apply those laws equally to Protestant Christians, Roman Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists and others.”
The Tennessean, 31 August 2011
See also “Breaking bread (not signs) in Murfreesboro this Ramadan”, Daily News Journal, 31 August 2011
University staff including lecturers, chaplains and porters are being asked to inform the police about Muslim students who are depressed or isolated under new guidance for countering Islamist radicalism. The move has resulted in deep discomfort among university lecturers and student union officials who wish to combat terrorism but say the new strategy is an infringement of students’ civil liberties.
Officials implementing the government’s revamped Prevent strategy are training frontline university employees in how to spot students vulnerable to extremism. Documents handed to staff claim that students who seem depressed or who are estranged from their families, who bear political grievances, or who use extremist websites or have poor access to mainstream religious instruction could be at risk of radicalisation.
The National Union of Students has told its officers that they do not have to provide police with details about students unless they are presented with a warrant.
Local authority workers and police officers have been introducing the new strategy over the last month. Inquiries by the Guardianshow that colleges in Lancashire and London have been approached by police and local authorities.
James Haywood, president of Goldsmiths college students’ union in south-east London, met two Prevent officials last week. He said they began by asking about Muslim students and whether the college had problems with its Islamic Society.
“We were appalled to have Prevent officers asking us to effectively spy on our Muslim students. To pass on details of a student who the police consider ‘vulnerable’ is not only morally repugnant but is against the confidential nature of pastoral support. After the rise of hate groups such as the English Defence League, and the recent massacre in Norway, why are Prevent not also telling us to refer on students who have an irrational hatred of Islam?” he said.
A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today filed a lawsuit against a Washington, D.C., hotel on behalf of a Muslim employee who says he faced discriminationafter he was barred from carrying out his duties on floors occupied last year by a visiting Israeli delegation.
In its suit filed in U.S. District Court for the District Of Columbia against the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) alleges that in December of 2010, the American citizen of Moroccan heritage was forbidden to go to the 8th or 9th floors of the hotel because an Israeli delegation was staying there.
He was reportedly barred from those floors despite the fact that he had previously undergone an FBI background check and had carried out his duties for other foreign delegations and dignitaries, including former American presidents.
“No American should be treated differently or face discrimination by an employer because of his or her race, religion or national origin,” said CAIR Legal Counsel Nadhira Al-Khalili.
A small number of conservative foundations are propelling a handful of anti-Islamic activists who are fueling rising levels of Islamophobia, according to a report issued Friday (Aug. 26) by the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
The 130-page report identifies seven conservative funders who between 2001 and 2009 gave $42.6 million to eight anti-Islamic causes, most of them headed by individuals who critics say form an organized network.
The U.S. Justice Department reached a settlement Friday with the Georgia city of Lilburn over claims that it discriminated against a Muslim congregation’s request to build a new worship center.
Federal attorneys announced the agreement after filing a complaint in federal court in Atlanta that claimed the Atlanta suburb violated federal law when it blocked the congregation from expanding its place of worship.
“The city of Lilburn twice failed to approve rezoning permits to allow building a mosque, and the complaint alleges that the rejection was because the applicants are Muslims,” said U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates. “We are pleased that the city is settling the lawsuit and that the rezoning issue is being resolved.”
Lilburn officials did not return calls seeking comment late Friday. The city said in the settlement it would not impose different building or zoning requirements on the mosque or other religious groups. City officials also agreed to attend training classes on the federal anti-discrimination law and to clarify its complaint process for the zoning of religious buildings.
