Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Hysteria over sharia in Florida

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Conservatives are freaking out over a Florida judge’s decision to use Islamic law to arbitrate a lawsuit over a local mosque. Erick Stakelbeck at CBN cried that this was “the latest example of how it is slowly and stealthily creeping into our judicial system.” The judge, however, isn’t invoking Islamic law because he simply felt like it; he’s doing so because this is essentially a contract dispute in which the agreement was drawn up according to Sharia.

Adam Serwer at The American Prospect, 23 March 2011

See also Mother Jones, 23 March 2011

Franklin Graham’s new Obama-Muslim conspiracy theory

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Franklin-GrahamYes, there’s a new Obama-Muslim conspiracy theory on the right: The evangelical son of one of America’s most famous evangelists says that President Barack Obama has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to become part of the US government and influence administration decisions.

In an interview last week with Newsmax.com, a conservative website (that pushes the Obama-was-born-in-Kenya conspiracy theory), Franklin Graham, an evangelist like his father, Billy Graham, claimed that the fundamentalist Islamic political group has burrowed into the Obama administration and is shaping US foreign policy. Sounding a bit like Glenn Beck, Graham explained:

The Muslim Brotherhood is very strong and active in our country. It’s infiltrated every level of our government. Right now we have many of these people that are advising the US military and State Department on how to respond in the Middle East, and it’s like asking a fox, like a farmer asking a fox, “How do I protect my henhouse from foxes?” We’ve brought in Muslims to tell us how to make policy toward Muslim countries. And many of these people we’ve brought in, I’m afraid, are under the Muslim Brotherhood.

Infiltrated every level of our government – that’s quite a claim. Yet Graham did not name a single Muslim Brotherhood infiltrator or cite a specific Obama administration decision that has been manipulated by these crafty behind-the-scenes Islamists.

Mother Jones, 22 March 2011

Former marine in legal challenge to no-fly list

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A suburban man who describes himself as a patriotic, honorably discharged marine is one of 17 plaintiffs in a lawsuit involving the government’s no-fly list.

Abe Mashal is Muslim and says FBI agents told him he ended up on the list because he exchanged emails with a Muslim cleric they were monitoring. While Mashal is Muslim, his wife is Christian, and he says the e-mails were seeking advice on raising kids in a mixed-faith home.

Homeland Security will not confirm whether he’s on the no-fly list, let alone why.

Last April, Mashal went to Midway Airport to catch a flight to Spokane, Wash. He never got past the ticket counter. “I turned around, I didn’t even hear ’em coming and I’m surrounded by 30 TSA agents and Chicago police. She comes out and says, ‘You’re on the no-fly list, you can’t fly on any plane and the FBI is on there way here to speak with you,'” Mashal said.

Mashal says what followed was a series of interviews by FBI agents. They talked to him, his relatives, his friends and even a business client.

Two months after he learned he was on the no-fly list, Mashal says a pair of FBI agents sat him down at a local hotel. He says they told him if he worked as an informant, they would make sure he could fly again.

“They wanted me to go undercover at different mosques. They told me there are informants all over the area and they want me to find out about certain people for them. The strange part is, I’m not actively involved in any mosques. I’ve probably been to church with my wife more in the last year than the mosque,” Mashal said.

Mashal says he told the agents he didn’t think a married father of four should be moonlighting as an FBI informant.

In October, he received a letter from Homeland Security stating there would be no changes or corrections made to his status on the no-fly list. So, a few months back when the Mashal family wanted to go to Disney World, they drove. “They’re people out there that are bad and if this is the method they’re using to find them, it’s not effective and we’re not safe,” said Mashal’s wife Jessica.

The FBI and Homeland Security both declined to comment due to the pending lawsuit which was filed on behalf of Mashal and others by the American Civil Liberties Union.

ABC7Chicago.com, 21 March 2011

See also “Terror suspects in U.S. seek to clear names”, Associated Press, 21 March 2011

EDL stages anti-mosque protest in Reading

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL ReadingAround 200 members of the English Defence League came from across the country to demonstrate in Reading today (Saturday).

Members of the controversial group, which claims to oppose Muslim extremism, chanted and waved flags as they marched from the Three Guineas by Reading Station to Market Place, flanked by a heavy police presence.

They were greeted outside the Town Hall by around 50 demonstrators, who said the EDL were divisive, dangerous and not welcome in a multi-cultural, tolerant and united Reading. Edward Willis, 25, from Oxford Road, added: “We don’t tolerate or want them in our town, they are Nazis and fascists.”

Some EDL members said they were protesting against the building of the Oxford Road mosque and proposed east Reading mosque but others pointed to wider reasons, such as the building of mosques elsewhere in Britain, and called for more to be done to tackle Muslim extremism.

Among the EDL supporters was founder Tommy Robinson, from Luton, and a 38-year-old builder, from Oxford Road, who did not want to give his name but said he helped organise the protest. He described the Oxford Road mosque as an “absolute eyesore” and added: “We don’t want another one being built in east Reading.”

Reading Borough Council has released a statement condemning the “racist demonstration”. Council leader, Andrew Cumpsty, said: “We in Reading have excellent relations between our varied and vibrant communities. Hatred and division have no place in civilised political debate and I condemn the activities of this small minority. In Reading we celebrate all the varied parts of our town, as all together we are stronger and richer because of our diversity.”

Reading Chronicle, 19 March 2011

Update:  See also BBC News, 20 March 2011

Resisting the Islamification of Alaska

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Alaskan lawmaker hopes to guard against Islamic Sharia law by prohibiting state courts from honoring foreign law that violates Alaskan or U.S. constitutional rights.

Though the bill’s language does not specifically target Sharia, Rep. Carl Gatto, R-Palmer, said the legislation is a reaction to what he sees as the growing use of international law codes in courts that have robbed people of their constitutional rights.

In a hearing before the House State Affairs Committee, Gatto’s chief of staff Karen Sawyer said Sharia is an example of the type of transnational law that has appeared in family law, divorce and child custody cases nationally, though she knows of instances of it appearing in Alaska courts.

“Sharia is clearly offensive to the U.S. Constitution,” Sawyer said. “It is the foremost foreign law that is impacting our legal system.” Sawyer added that countries following Sharia law do not allow freedom of religion or equal rights to women.

Gatto called the law a preventative measure necessitated by the religious beliefs of recent immigrants. “As a kid, we had Italian neighborhoods, Irish neighborhoods … but they didn’t impose their own laws,” Gatto said. “When these neighborhoods are occupied by people from the Middle East, they do establish their own laws.”

Associated Press, 17 March 2011

See also “Alaska lawmaker smears American Muslims”, CAIR press release, 18 March 2011

Sunday Telegraph sued over ‘extremist’ claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yahya_IbrahimAn Islamic preacher is demanding libel damages of up to £100,000 over a Sunday Telegraph story.

Yahya Ibrahim launched an action for defamation claiming the story suggested he was a proponent of terror who holds offensive, violently extreme and anti-Semitic beliefs. The story, headed “Hardline cleric banned in the US will preach to British universities” ran in the paper and online in January last year.

According to a writ filed with the High Court, Ibrahim says the story suggests he intended to preach his dangerous beliefs to students in the Yuk in a bid to radicalise them and turn them to violence. Ibrahim says he is a moderate teacher committed to religious tolerance, denies he holds radical views, and is opposed to violence.

After he complained by email, the writ claims, publishers Telegraph Media Group ran a short apology and changed the online version of the story. However, Ibrahim claims the article included defamatory allegations until April last year.

Ibrahim, who lives in Western Australia, claims he suffered acute embarrassment and distress, and argues that his personal and professional reputations were damaged by publication.

He also claims his distress was compounded by the paper’s solicitors who falsely accused him of having discriminatory and anti-Semitic views. The solicitors also tried to tarnish him by citing untrue and defamatory material from the internet to support their position, without any proper research, the writ claims.

Ibrahim is seeking aggravated damages, saying the paper ran the stories without checking the facts with him first or giving him the chance to comment, and then published a woefully inadequate and insulting apology in the print edition. He is also seeking an injunction banning repetition of the allegations at the heart of his legal battle.

Press Gazette, 16 March 2011

Via ENGAGE

The offending article, by Patrick Sawer and Philip Sherwell, which was published in the Sunday Telegraph on 24 January 2010, was a typical scaremongering piece about “extremist preachers” speaking at British universities.

The reliability of the article may be judged by the fact that the main source for the attack on Yahya Ibrahim was David Ouellette, formerly of the (now defunct) right-wing Zionist website Judeoscope, which specialised in portraying mainstream Muslim figures as dangerous extremists. Ouellette was quoted as saying that while Ibrahim was “widely considered as a ‘bridge builder’ between Muslims and non-Muslims” in Australia, he was in reality “a hard-core activist of the Wahhabi strain working to spread in the West the hateful, terror-inspiring Salafi ideology, the likes of whom should not be welcome in free societies fighting Islamic extremism”.

The article also quoted critics who had “called on the Government to take a tougher line on barring extremists from Britain”. Predictably, these critics were Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens and Paul Goodman.

San Diego woman denied flight blames King hearings for rising anti-Muslim sentiment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Irum AbbasiA San Diego Muslim woman wearing a headscarf who was removed from a Southwest Airlines plane at Lindbergh Field on Sunday has received several apologies from the airline and a voucher good for a free flight “as a gesture of goodwill”.

But the woman, Irum Abbasi, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy and civil rights group which has taken up her cause, said at a Wednesday morning news conference at Lindbergh Field that this event is a sign of a anti-Muslim sentiment spreading through the country.

A Pakistan native and U.S. citizen, Abbasi was removed from a flight to San Jose on Sunday after an attendant thought she heard her say “It’s a go” on her cell phone. Abbasi said she actually said “I’ve got to go” because the flight was ready to depart.

“I was in tears,” said Abbasi. “I have lived in the United States 10 years. I am a U.S. citizen.” While she was quickly cleared, Abbasi said she was told she could not re-board the flight because the crew was uncomfortable with her presence.

Abbasi and CAIR both link her ejection to last week’s controversial congressional hearing on “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community” by Rep. Peter King, R-New York.

“Apart from the negative image it portrayed of the Muslim community in front of all the people at the airport, I strongly believe that this was a direct result of the hearings held by Peter King,” said Abbasi, a graduate student in experimental psychology at San Jose State who was returning there for a research project.

San Diego Union Tribune, 16 March 2011

Terrorist accusation stuns Nashville mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — During congressional hearings looking into whether some mosques are breeding grounds for Muslim extremists, a Memphis father said the Al-Farooq Mosque led his son down that very path. Melvin Bledsoe said he noticed a big change in his son after he joined the Mosque.

Carlos Bledsoe, who changed his name to Abdula Hakin Muhamad, is accused of shooting three army recruiters in Little Rock, Ark. One of the soldiers died from his injuries.

Al-Farooq Mosque officials were stunned when they heard the accusation that Muhamad became an extremist after joining the mosque. “I think it’s baseless and Mr. Bledsoe has limited knowledge of his son,” said Mohamad Shukri, a mosque spokesman.

Shukri remembers Muhamad as a normal young man who played basketball with other young members of the mosque. “He was just one of these kids, and all of a sudden he disappeared,” said Shukri. What happened to the former Tennessee State University student after he left the mosque is unknown.

Shukri is also concerned that his mosque is being blamed for the actions of one person. “Demonizing our faith because of one person is bad for Americans. America is suppose to protect everyone. It’s unfair and absurd, because it puts a community in danger and opens the door to suspicions in our community,” said Shukri.

Mosque officials told Channel 4 News that hate fliers are frequently found posted on the building. The latest flier was particularly disturbing. “It says that Muhamad is a dog, Islam is the enemy,” said Shukri.

WSMV Nashville, 16 March 2011

Read the statement by the Al-Farooq Islamic Center in response to Bledsoe’s accusation here.

For an earlier example of anti-Muslim bigotry directed against the mosque see here.

Update:  LoonWatch draws our attention to this article by Sarah Posner.

What has been the point of the EDL’s KFC protest?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL halal protestFor twenty-eight days members of the English Defence League are protesting outside a KFC. The protest is against the serving of Halal meat at the Blackburn store based on Haslingdon Road.

Things began with the predictable gusto on February 20. But trying to link the serving of halal food to “Islamification” was never going to be easy. In what way does halal food mean that a country was being Islamified? Why not also demonstrate against the serving of Kosher meat? Was halal food really impacting how people eat? And why only pick on KFC? Meat being served at other restaurants and takeaways across the region is halal. Should it really matter?

A specific reason given by the group is that it is inhumane to kill an animal the halal way. But these particular chickens are stunned before they are killed. KFC adheres to its strict laws and regulations as it did before the food became halal. Some would claim the slaughter of KFC chickens is done in a more humane way that the meat sold in your average supermarket!

Within days the Facebook page was asking for more demonstrators. By February 28 things had become a little desperate. A message read, “Tonight the turn out at the KFC was pathetic! All the so-called members of the Blackburn division and we have six stood up there! We need to sort this out!”

KFC meanwhile have handled the situation as diplomatically as possible. The company already came under fire from the Halal Monitoring Committee (HMC) for its use of stunning so to have a daily protest on its doorstep because you are too halal must be annoying to say the least.

Asian Image, 17 March 2011

Belgian department store worker to take legal advice over headscarf ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joyce Van op den BoschAfter being refused an extension of her contract because she wore a headscarf to work, an employee of Hema last week turned down a new job offered by the Dutch-owned retail chain. Antwerp-born Joyce Van op den Bosch, 20, said the new offer was not satisfactory.

“This is not my old job as a saleswoman; here I have to stay in the warehouse. I won’t be accepting their offer,” she said. In addition, the contract was temporary and part time, while Van op den Bosch had been promised a full-time job.

Van op den Bosch had been employed by Randstad as temporary staff in the Hema store in Genk, where she lives. When her contract reached its end and was not renewed, she was told there had been customer complaints about her headscarf. According to a spokesman for Randstad, wearing a headscarf was “not in conformity with Hema’s company dress code”. Her contract was not renewed, he said, because she had declined to comply.

At the beginning of her employment, Van op den Bosch had asked if wearing a headscarf was acceptable, and she was told it was. She was even provided with a Hema headscarf, as worn by staff in the Netherlands. That went on for two months, then came “many negative reactions” from customers, according to Hema spokesperson Inge Van Baarsen. The company declined to say how many complaints were received.

In a statement, the company made an unusual claim: “Since in Belgium is it not customary to wear a headscarf in a public place”, Hema decided to ask Van op den Bosch to stop wearing the headscarf, which she declined to do. “We wish to stress that this decision is not connected to the wearing of a headscarf as such, but that it applies to any outward appearance which is not in keeping with the neutral and discreet image of Hema,” the statement said.

However, Jozef De Witte, director of the Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Fight Against Racism, said that the case appears to be discrimination. The temp agency cannot discriminate among their staff on the basis of the complaints or prejudices of a client – in this case Hema. Unless the store cancelled its contract with Randstad as a whole, it would be guilty of discriminating against one member of staff.

Randstad later admitted it had misgivings about the question of discrimination against the wearing of a headscarf and had applied earlier this month to the Centre for Equal Opportunities for advice. The centre said a headscarf was in most cases not a significant item of business clothing and so could not be grounds for dismissal. Randstad later said it could not take the centre’s advice, since a number of employment law experts disagreed.

Last weekend, Hema issued the statement: “By permitting the wearing of a headscarf and later withdrawing permission, Hema behaved unfairly towards the temporary employee. Internal rules for work clothing have now been refined, central to which is that staff should be as neutral as possible in the view of the public.”

For Van op den Bosch (pictured), nothing is decided. “This week on Wednesday I have an appointment with my lawyer,” she said. “Then we’ll know where everything stands.” Also last weekend, about 300 people took part in a demonstration organised by supporters of the right to wear a headscarf.

Meanwhile, the controversy over the headscarf was also revived again at the federal level after a member of staff of the socialists appeared in parliament wearing one. N-VA called for a ban on the display of all religious symbols in parliament, a position supported by French-speaking liberals and the far-right Vlaams Belang.

Last year Jan Peumans, N-VA speaker of the Flemish parliament, reprimanded Vlaams Belang’s Filip Dewinter after he called for the expulsion of a woman wearing a headscarf in the public gallery.

Flanders Today, 16 March 2011