A Muslim graduate who joined the Metropolitan police in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks but now faces dismissal, says that he has been subjected to racist insults and discrimination in the force. PC Khawaja Hasan, 29, alleges that he has been victimised by colleagues, training staff and his commanding officers.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
You can’t talk to an FBI agent that way, or can you?
Dressed in a navy suit and red tie, his hair parted neatly on the side, Special Agent Charles E. Frahm sat with practiced calm as Muslims rose, one after another, to hurl raw complaints at him. Mr. Frahm, who heads the counterterrorism division of the F.B.I. in New York, was at a banquet hall in the Midwood section of Brooklyn on Thursday night to listen, he had told the hundreds of residents gathered there.
And they responded. They were tired of being held for hours at airports when their names resembled those of suspected terrorists, they said. They were tired of seeing Muslims arrested on immigration charges. They were tired of having their mosques watched, their businesses scrutinized.
“America is our land!” Faruq Wadud, a Bangledeshi man, hollered hoarsely into the microphone as the room broke into a thunderous applause. “We are not foreigners! Our children, this is their motherland!”
Fire destroys mosque in Adelanto, California
ADELANTO — An early Friday morning blaze that destroyed a mosque in a cemetery has prompted the FBI to investigate whether the fire was started by someone motivated by hate.
Laura Bosley, an FBI spokeswoman, said the agency has not determined whether the fire that leveled the mosque at the United Islamic Youth Organization and Cemetery is a hate crime. She said an investigation into the blaze, which caused $225,000 in damage, is ongoing.
The cemetery’s caretakers, Ali and Michelle Khawaja, are hesitant to label the incident a hate crime. Michelle Khawaja said she doesn’t want to believe anyone in the community could be capable of something so cruel. “It stood for community; it stood for brotherhood,’ she said of the mosque. “I’m an American and a convert, and I would like to think that my American brothers and sisters believe in the rights of all people to freely worship.’
The 1,800-square-foot Muslim prayer hall was a place where people went to meditate and grieve over the loss of loved ones. The modest white building with two minarets was more than just a gathering place for the Muslim faithful in this High Desert town; it was a symbol of Islam and its fundamental beliefs, Michelle Khawaja said.
The blaze reduced the simple structure to a pile of smoldering ash and rubble. Authorities have not concluded whether it was started intentionally, said San Bernardino County Fire Department spokeswoman Tracey Martinez.
San Bernardino Sun, 3 June 2005
Se also “Muslim prayer hall burned to ground in California”, CAIR news release, 3 June 2005
Torture in the US gulag
“Guantánamo’s hundreds do not compare with Stalin’s millions, but the gulag is a fair analogy – how else to describe an international network of cells and interrogation centers holding prisoners without charge, for indeterminate terms, beyond reach of any court?”
Editorial in the Nation, 3 June 2005
Interview with Tariq Ramadan
There’s an interesting interview with Tariq Ramadan in the current edition of the French journal Socialisme International. Among other issues, Professor Ramadan deals with the media bias against him, the hostility he provokes among a section of the far left, Islamophobia and racism, relations between Muslims and the left, and his views on Malcolm X and Karl Marx.
Socialisme International, Spring 2005
The journal is not available online but subscription details can be obtained from their website or from John Mullen at john.mullen@wanadoo.fr
Because of the prominent role he has played in the European Social Forum, Tariq Ramadan has been a controversial figure on the French left. Catherine Samary mounted a vigorous defence of Ramadan’s participation in the 2003 ESF (see here and here), though her article does not pretend to offer an overall evaluation of Ramadan’s ideas and political engagement.
Desecrating the Qur’an: The straw that broke the camel’s back
“Some non-Muslims are asking: ‘Why are Muslims so upset about the desecration of the Qur’an while there were no protests when their own fellow Muslims were being tortured and killed?’ There are several responses. First, the Qur’an is a sacred book because it is the Word of God; therefore, it is natural to be outraged by its desecration. Second, of course Muslims are also distressed and outraged by the torture and killing of their fellow sisters and brothers. Third, I believe that the desecration of the Qur’an was the catalyst for protests by Muslims all over the world because after the deaths of thousands of civilians in Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq, the exposure of the Abu Ghraib pictures and the revelations of torture in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay by American soldiers, in my opinion, the desecration of the Qur’an was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Bint Adam writes. Islam Online, 2 June 2005
Bush says Amnesty report ‘absurd’
US President George Bush has dismissed as “absurd” an Amnesty International report that said the US was setting back the cause of human rights. The human rights group described the US Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba as “the gulag of our time”. There have been allegations that guards at the camp had desecrated the Koran, prompting protests in Muslim countries. But Mr Bush said on Tuesday: “The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world.”
Earlier, US general Richard Myers has described Amnesty’s report as “absolutely irresponsible”. How do you handle people who … who aren’t part of a nation-state effort, that are picked up on the battlefield … that if you release them, or if you let them go back to their home countries, that would turn right around and try to slit our throats, our children’s throats?” he said.
Cf. the evidence of former US Sgt Erik Saar who stated that, of the 600 prisoners held at Guantánamo, no more than a few dozen were “hardcore terrorists”. He added: “The US Government portrays Guantánamo as a place where we are sending the worst of the worst, but this is not true. Guantánamo … set a precedent in labelling people as enemy combatants, blurring the line between right and wrong. You can see it as the seed that may well have led to the naked human pyramids in Abu Ghraib.”
Still, Michelle Malkin has read Saar’s account of abuse at Guantánamo, and declares herself impressed by “just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam – to a fault, I believe – the officials at the detention facility have been”.
For Amnesty’s reply to Bush, see here.
Muslims urged to denounce terror
Muslim communities must “shout out” against violent terrorists who “tarnish their religion”, former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson has said. But Muslim Council of Britain secretary general Iqbal Sacranie told BBC News: “British Muslims have repeatedly made clear they condemn acts of terrorism absolutely. Islam categorically forbids the taking of innocent lives.”
It was “odd” Lord Robertson had made this “surprising and unfortunate” call to Muslims rather than to the countries continuing the “illegal war against Iraq … in defiance of world opinion”, Mr Sacranie added. “This war has killed thousands of civilians and given rise in Iraq to the terrible crimes Lord Robertson wants us all to condemn.”
Discover the terrorist-supporting commies
“The detention facilities at Guantánamo, including Camp X-ray and Camp Delta, were constructed specifically to house individuals apprehended in the war on terror. Enemy combatants held at the camp must be foreign nationals who have either received training from al Qaeda, or who have been in command of 300 or more military personnel. They are among the world’s most brutal and committed Islamist enemies of the United States. By incarcerating and interrogating them, the U.S. hopes to gain crucial intelligence that could thwart future terrorist attacks against America and to keep them from returning to the terror war against the United States.”
Well, that’s reassuring. Thank God for Discoverthenetworks.org, is all I can say. They also provide a useful exposé of the Guantánamo Human Rights Commission, succinctly defined as a “human rights group committed to defending Islamic jihadists captured on the field of battle in Afghanistan and being detained at Guantánamo Bay”.
The piece continues: “The GHRC was founded by actress Vanessa Redgrave, a Trotskyite with a venomous hostility towards the state of Israel, and her brother, actor Corin Redgrave. A founder of the Marxist Party and a supporter of the Communist Workers Revolutionary Party, Ms. Redgrave has a long history of supporting terrorists…. GHRC co-founder Corin Redgrave is also a committed Communist and an apologist for terrorists.”
Discoverthenetworks.org, 1 June 2005
Discoverthenetworks deserve credit for exposing this plot against the free world. As a glance at its website reveals, the Guantánamo Human Rights Commission includes among its sponsors such notorious figures as Peter Bottomley, Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, Margaret Drabble, the Bishop of Oxford and other well-known supporters of Islamist terrorism.
Fellow musicians deny Tarik Shah planned to train jihadists
The Bronx martial arts expert busted in an alleged plot to build a secret Al Qaeda training camp is a well-known city jazz musician who has backed greats like Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, friends said yesterday.
Tarik Shah, 42, has played bass at local clubs for years, and fellow musicians said they’ve never heard him espouse an allegiance to Osama Bin Laden.
“This man talks about music. That’s all he talks about,” said pianist Donald Smith, 61, who earlier this month played with Shah at St. Nick’s Pub in Harlem. “The only thing we know is he is a devout Muslim, loves God. He loves his family.”
New York Daily News, 1 June 2005
Last year, Tarik Shah played at a “Fighting for Peace” concert at New York’s Knitting Factory, held to honour the memory of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist killed by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. See here.
Obviously this was just a cunning ruse because, according to an undercover FBI agent, two weeks earlier Shah had been boasting about cutting people’s throats. See Jihad Watch, 1 June 2005