See “Hundreds of Muslims pack Detroit church for peace”, Detroit Free Press, 10 September 2010
And “Faith leaders join Muslims to fight ‘spiritual terrorism’ and ‘Islamophobia'”, Examiner, 10 September 2010
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Guardian reports on the Murfreesboro mosque hysteria
Safaa Fathy was as surprised to discover that she is at the heart of a plot against America as she was to hear that her small Tennessee town is a focus of hate in the Muslim world.
The diminutive fifty-something physiotherapist, who has lived in Murfreesboro for most of her adult life, happens to be on the board of her town’s Islamic centre. Now she finds herself accused of being a front for Islamic Jihad, of planning to impose sharia law on her neighbours, and of threatening the very existence of Christianity in Tennessee.
See also “Faith, fear clash in middle Tennessee over proposed mosque”, Baptist Standard, 10 September 2010
New York: candlelight vigil in support of Park51
As the anniversary of 9/11 and the Islamophobic rally led by far-right blogger Pamela Geller converge today, over 1,000 New Yorkers gathered Sept. 10 at Park Place in lower Manhattan for a candlelight vigil in support of the proposed Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero that has ignited a national firestorm over Islam in America.
Organized by New York Neighbors for American Values, a new coalition of over 100 groups formed in response to the opposition to the Cordoba House project, faith leaders, elected officials, musicians and activists voiced strong support for the proposed Islamic community center, which will also include a September 11 memorial, a restaurant and culinary school and more.
“This is not just an issue I should support silently,” said Frank Fredericks, the co-director of Religious Freedom USA. “This is a core, essential issue that Americans should stand up for.”
The supporters of the center, holding candles, filled more than two blocks, and some had to stand on a sidewalk across the street from the vigil. The music of Bob Marley, John Lennon and a live rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” filled the air.
“There’s enough for all of us. Nobody has to be thrown away. We can do this thing if we hang together. There’s enough room in this neighborhood for an Islamic center,” the keynote speaker of the event, Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, said. “We don’t have to say they gotta go… They are our fellow Americans.”
The action came the night before the 9th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and a planned rally in lower Manhattan organized by the right-wing Stop Islamization of America group.
“No neighborhood should be off-limits for any particular group,” said Aliya Latif, the civil rights director for the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations
“I think we all know that nobody would object to a community center on Park Place unless it was sponsored by Muslims. And no one can say with a straight face that that’s not based on religious discrimination,” said Richard Gottfried, a New York State Assemblyman. “People who share American values do not do that.”
The vigil came in the midst of an increase of anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, stoked by the right-wing press. There has been a spate of anti-Muslim actions over the past couple of weeks as the debate over the Muslim community center in New York has heated up. While two-thirds of New York City residents want the proposed center to be moved farther away from the site of Ground Zero, a majority of Manhattan residents support the project, according to a recent New York Times poll.
“We have every right to worship wherever we want. This country was founded on the basis of religious freedom,” said Rabyaah Althaibani, a Muslim Arab-American.
Indypendent, 11 September 2010
See also NY1, 10 September 2010
Rival demonstrations in New York over Park51
Competing demonstrations have been held in New York on the anniversary of 9/11 over plans for an Islamic cultural centre close to Ground Zero. Hundreds of people attended both demonstrations which became heated but passed off without violent incident.
New York authorities blocked off the street passing the site of the proposed Islamic cultural centre, a short walk away from Ground Zero. Mounted police and dog units patrolled the streets, keeping the protests separated in two pens a distance away from the site of the former World Trade Center.
The competing protests attracted people from many different groups, from anti-war activists to Hell’s Angels, former US Marines to Buddhists.
Mr Wilders, a right-wing politician from the Netherlands who believes that Islam is comparable with Fascism, told the crowd that the planned cultural centre should not be allowed to go ahead. “We must never give a free hand to those who want to subjugate us, draw this line so that New York will never become New Mecca,” he said.
The rally was also addressed by the former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton and other Republican commentators. But others said campaigners against the mosque were part of a hate campaign against Muslims.
“I’m really fearful of all of the hate that’s going on in our country,” Elizabeth Meehan, 51, told the Associated Press. “People in one brand of Christianity are coming out against other faiths, and I find that so sad, Muslims are fellow Americans; they should have the right to worship in America just like anyone else.”
See also AFP, AOL, NY1, TPM and New York Daily News.
‘This is the final struggle:’ Newt Gingrich sells a movie about the Islamic threat to America
In a straight-to-DVD movie that will premiere tomorrow night in D.C., Newt Gingrich and Citizens United warn Americans of the impending threat of radical Islam. As one of their talking heads says in the trailer, “This is the end of times. This is the final struggle.”
The movie, called “America At Risk“, paints the world as a dangerous place filled with radicalized Muslims who want to – and, importantly, can – destroy America.
If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s extremely similar to movies by the Clarion Fund, the nonprofit which produced “The Third Jihad” and “Obsession.” The latter, sent to 30 million homes during the 2008 election, helped plant the seeds of the current spate of anti-mosque protests and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
It has the same themes (immediate threat of death by Islam), the same shots of terrorist attacks and scary “death to America” rallies, and many of the same people, like M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim doctor from Arizona, and Bernard Lewis, a Princeton professor and sounce of the aforementioned “final struggle” line.
“America At Risk” goes on the attack against the Obama administration much more than the Clarion movies, however, calling it “crazy” that the administration doesn’t say “Islam” enough when discussing the war on terror.
Donald Trump’s Park51 offer rejected as ‘cheap attempt to get publicity’
Donald Trump offered Thursday to buy out a major investor in the real estate partnership that controls the site near ground zero where a Muslim group wants to build a 13-story Islamic center and mosque.
The offer, though, fell flat nearly instantly.
“This is just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight,” said Wolodymyr Starosolsky, a lawyer for the investor, Hisham Elzanaty.
In a letter released Thursday by Trump’s publicist, the real estate investor told Elzanaty that he would buy his stake in the lower Manhattan building for 25 percent more than whatever he paid.
“I am making this offer as a resident of New York and citizen of the United States, not because I think the location is a spectacular one (because it is not), but because it will end a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation that is destined, in my opinion, to only get worse,” the letter said.
Trump also attached a condition to his offer: He said that as part of the deal, the backers of the project would need to promise that any new mosque they constructed would be at least five blocks farther away from the World Trade Center site.
US Catholic bishops denounce ‘outright bigotry’ against Muslims
Several U.S. bishops attended an interfaith dialogue earlier this week in Washington D.C. and voiced their opposition to recent events in the country that have displayed anti-Muslim sentiments.
Numerous religious leaders from Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths attended a Sept. 7 meeting in D.C., titled “Beyond Park 51,” which was hosted by the Islamic Society of North America.
In a statement on Thursday, Archbishop Wilton Gregory, Bishop William Murphy and Bishop Howard Hubbard said they voiced their “solidarity” with the leaders who gathered to “denounce categorically derision, misinformation and outright bigotry being directed against America’s Muslim community.”
The three prelates are chairmen of USCCB’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and Committee on International Justice and Peace, respectively.
NSW Opposition won’t support veil ban Bill
The NSW Opposition says it will not support a Bill seeking to ban the wearing of burqas and other face veils in public, delivering a final blow to the hopes of its author, the conservative MP Fred Nile.
The Christian Democratic Party MP introduced the Bill in June, even though the same Bill was voted down by the NSW Upper House in May.
Two weeks ago NSW Premier Kristina Keneally announced that Labor MPs would not support the proposed legislation, giving it little chance of success. “Such a ban has no place in multicultural NSW,” she said.
Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell said today that the Coalition had also decided it would not back the burqa ban Bill. “We decided last week, the Liberal-National parties, that there shouldn’t be discrimination,” Mr O’Farrell told Macquarie Radio.
Netherlands: Labour party to launch offensive against ‘Wilders cabinet’
The Labour party (PvdA) has accepted it will be in opposition and is planning a major offensive against the expected right-wing government, the Telegraaf reports on Friday, quoting an internal party document.
According to the secret plan, entitled “opposition strategy”, Labour is to go all out on countering what it calls the “Wilders cabinet”.
The right-wing Liberals, Christian Democrats and anti-Islam PVV expect to resume their coalition negotiations next week.
“It will be up to us to expose the tensions within this coalition and cause the cabinet problems,” the Telegraaf quotes the document as saying.
The right-wing cabinet will have just 76 of the 150 seats in parliament and a number of CDA MPs are opposed to any alliance with Geert Wilders’ PVV.
The document, which was discussed by MPs at a secret meeting last week, also outlines how the PvdA will mobilise voters against the right-wing cabinet.
“The right-wing policy of destruction will lead to a lot of opposition in society at large,” the document says. “We will not be in opposition in The Hague alone, but in a close alliance with social movements, environmentalists, the elderly and youth organisations. We will actively look for those alliances.”
See also “Wilders ‘can say what he likes’ at Ground Zero”, Dutch News, 10 September 2010
Obama calls for religious tolerance
gave an impassioned call on Friday for tolerance and better relations between Muslims and non-Muslims at home and abroad, defending the “inalienable rights” of those who worship Islam to practice their religion freely.
He made his statements as protests and violence continued in Afghanistan, set off by the plans of a Florida preacher, now suspended, to burn Korans on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and against the backdrop of the controversy in New York over a proposed .
While Mr. Obama cast the issue in terms of American national security and the impact of assaults on Islam in this country on American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, he also said that national security was not the only prism through which the issue should be viewed.
“We’ve got millions of Muslim Americans, our fellow citizens, in this country,” Mr. Obama said. “They’re going to school with our kids. They’re our neighbors. They’re our friends. They’re our co-workers. And when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?”