Video here. Via MEDIAite.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
CAIR calls for investigation into hate crimes
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on law enforcement authorities to investigate possible bias motives in two recent incidents involving Muslims in New York and Oregon.
CAIR’s New York chapter (CAIR-NY) has asked the NYPD Hate Crimes Taskforce to investigate a possible bias motive in the brutal beating of a Muslim man in East New York on Saturday. According to media reports, the 57-year-old man of Bangladeshi origin was jumped by four assailants who beat but did not rob him. The man’s daughter and nephew reported that the attackers referred to the his being Muslim at the start of the assault.
“Attacks motivated by racial or religious animosity are directed at entire communities,” said CAIR-NY Civil Rights Director Aliya Latif. “Such incidents should be investigated from all angles to serve as both a deterrent and repudiation of intolerance.”
CAIR also called on the FBI to investigate a possible bias motive for a bomb scare at a Muslim family’s home under construction in Oregon.
According to news reports, a 30-year-old Muslim man of Afghan origin was watching the house in Tigard, Ore., while his parents were away. He was woken Sunday night by the smell of gasoline and the sounds of intruders, who ran when the man yelled. He called 911 when he found the floors of the home covered in gasoline and a ticking device in one room.
Jewish club offers to help with repairs to firebombed mosque
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The soot has been washed away but evidence from the May attack on a Jacksonville mosque is still visible. Now, a group of a different faith is offering to repair it. “I simply called Ash (Shaikh) to find out if there was anything to do to help out,” said Ken Organes, who represents the Jacksonville Jewish Center Men’s Club.
Organes said he was dismayed when he heard about the attack and offered the services of some of the Men’s Club members to repair the damage caused by the pipe bomb. “We have a group of guys who like to do carpentry, painting or whoever we can to help out,” he said.
Ash Shaikh, spokesman for the Islamic Center, called the offer heartwarming and said they are grateful for the assistance. “No matter what the extent of the repairs, the very fact that someone of another faith tradition is going to take the time and is so concerned to show his compassion and the compassion of his community,” Shaikh said of the tremendous support they’ve received from the Jewish community.
Interfaith support for so-called ‘Ground Zero mosque’
We are three New Yorkers who hail from three different faiths but cherish the religious and cultural pluralism of New York City. We would like to inform Mark Williams of the national Tea Party and all those who strongly object to the proposed Muslim cultural center near the World Trade Center that Islam is a wonderful, faith-filled religion just like Judaism and Christianity.
Islam did not bring down the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. What brought the towers down were 19 men who were deeply misguided and brainwashed by an ideology that is not blessed in the teachings of the prophet Mohammed in the sacred Koran. To believe otherwise is to equate Catholicism with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 by Irish American Catholic, Timothy McVeigh, or to connect Judaism with the 1977 Son of Sam murders with a Jewish American, David Berkowitz.
Therefore, please do not condemn Islam due to the crazed, morbid actions of zealots who abused the Koran and the free will given to them by God.
After a careful period of inquiry, we have discovered that the particular proposed development in question is based on the spirit of peaceful co-existence with other faith traditions. (And: It happens not to be a “mosque,” as many are calling it, but a multi-purpose cultural center; even if it were a mosque, however, it would be an institution to welcome, not fear.)
Father Brian Jordan, Richard Shierer and Muhammed Luquman in the New York Daily News, 23 April 2010
Cordoba House: hope from the ashes of tragedy
Sheila Musaji counters the “blizzard of bigotry that paints all Muslims and the entire religion of Islam as being evil” with which the Islamophobic right has responded to the so-called “Ground Zero mosque’.
Clapham Common is a ‘Muslim ghetto’ claims US TV presenter
This exchange between right-wing US TV presenter Bill O’Reilly and political commentator Imogen Lloyd Webber would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of US citizens get their information from Fox News.
Lloyd Webber attacks the proposed French ban on the veil as “a massive mistake”, “an infringement of women’s rights”, “completely counterproductive” and “an act of discrimination” – which is not at all to O’Reilly’s taste. He counters that the French “are really worried about these Muslim ghettos”, which he associates with riots and suicide bombing.
O’ Reilly insists: “The same thing’s going on in London. You have neighbourhoods in London, they’re totally Muslim, they speak Arabic. You walk in those neighbourhoods, you’re not in England – you’re not there, you’re in Kuwait.”
“I can’t actually think of one in London”, Lloyd Webber replies. “Clapham Common”, suggests O’Reilly, bizarrely. Lloyd Webber responds that “Clapham Common is full of posh people with push-chairs”!
Portraying Muslims as sub-human is not ‘free speech’
The depiction of Prophet Muhammad as a dog by a Swedish cartoonist has sparked off controversies and renewed debates on the limits to free speech. The incident at Uppsala University when Muslim protesters physically attacked Lars Vilks while giving a lecture on the limits of free speech is presented in the media as yet another instance of Muslim intolerance and violence. But let us first examine the subtext of the message that Vilks is trying to convey….
Muslims, in Vilks’s view, as represented by their prophet, are sub-human creatures to be looked down upon. They are perhaps the worst vermin that “nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”, to use Swift’s phrase in a different context. In this respect, Vilks’s message seems fairly similar to that conveyed by the short “documentary” film Fitna produced by the Dutch politician Geert Wilders….
But does Vilks realise the impact of this kind of representation on the lives of ordinary European Muslims going peacefully about their business? Does he realise that the image he has created feeds into the racial profiling and stereotyping targeting the Muslim population in Europe in particular? …
Vilks has succeeded in gaining his moment in the spotlight. But the legacy of his action will be the perpetuation of a cycle of hatred and suspicion.
Amira Nowaira at Comment is Free, 21 May 2010
The veil is a ‘war against women’ and Australia should ban it too
It would seem there are some things in Australia we are not allowed to discuss. A ban on the burqa is clearly one of them. But the time has come to get over our fears and cultural fragilities – and grow up. The call to ban the burqa is receiving serious consideration in European parliaments. And it should here, too.
Belgian legislators voted last month to outlaw the burqa in public places. On Wednesday, a bipartisan resolution passed by the French parliament deploring the burqa – on the grounds of “dignity” and “equality of men and women” – was presented to the French cabinet, and a ban is expected later this year. Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada are also grappling with the issue.
But in Australia, in a sign of cultural timidity and intellectual weakness, we seem intent on shunning any meaningful debate about the burqa and its place in a liberal democracy.
Virginia Haussegger in The Age, 21 May 2010
Haussegger quotes Malalai Joya in support of her argument, omitting to inform her readers that the Afghan politician has condemned proposals to ban the veil, on the grounds that it is “against the very basic element of democracy to restrict a human being from wearing the clothes of his/her choice”.
See also “Nile vows to continue fight against the burqa “, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May 2010
New York politicians rally in support of ‘Ground Zero mosque’
New York politicians gathered Thursday afternoon to denounce Tea Party leader Mark Williams and support a mosque and community center planned near ground zero. The politicians were responding to Williams’ blog rant against the mosque Wednesday, in which he said Muslims worshipped a “monkey god.”
“His spewing of racial hatred reminds me … of Adolph Hitler,” Borough President Scott Stringer said at Thursday’s press conference. “We reject him. We reject his bigotry.”
Stringer and other politicians stood together outside the former Burlington Coat Factory building on Park Place, where the Cordoba Initiative hopes to build a $100 million, 13-story community center with Islamic, interfaith and secular programming, similar to the 92nd Street Y.
While the Cordoba House’s location just two blocks north of the World Trade Center has sparked protests from some 9/11 family members and many others, the local politicians said Thursday that the location was fitting. “This is precisely where this kind of center for peace and place of worship should rise up,” City Comptroller John Liusaid.
In addition to Liu and Stringer, State Sen. Daniel Squadron, City Councilwoman Margaret Chin and Councilman Robert Jackson, the Council’s sole Muslim, all spoke in favor of the plans.
Update: See also “Mosque hysteria: All houses of worship are welcome everywhere in New York”, New York Daily News, 21 May 2010
NSW Parliament rejects veil ban bill
The Reverend Fred Nile today tried to introduce a bill to the NSW Parliament calling for a ban on the burqa, a head and body veil worn by some Muslim women. But his motion to have a private member’s bill read and debated failed by three votes to 29 – only he and two Shooters’ Party members voted for it.
The Christian Democrats MP wanted NSW to follow a growing list of European countries that have moved to ban women from wearing the full head and body covering in public.
Mr Nile’s Full-face Coverings Prohibition Bill was modelled on legislation recently passed by the Belgium Parliament. He says concealment of a person’s face – male or female – for any purpose, including terrorism, anarchism or discrimination against women, should be banned.
“We must do all we can to protect women, especially Muslim women, from discrimination and oppression so they live an open lifestyle,” Mr Nile said. “The wearing of the burqa is a form of oppression which has no place in the 21st century.” It also presented a security risk, he said, citing terrorists in the Middle East and Russia who had launched attacks while concealing their identity or weapons under a burqa.
Mr Nile introduced a similar bill in 2006 and 2002, prompting widespread condemnation.
Sydney Morning Herald, 20 May 2010
Catch the video of Reza Aslan commenting on the French plan to ban the veil.
See also “Burqa debate stopped in NSW upper house”, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 May 2010