San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency has a policy against political ads on its buses, but an ad being displayed now comes pretty close. The ad says, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”
The pro-Israel ad was purchased by the American Freedom Defense Initiative run by Pamela Geller.
The imam and worshipers at a new Tennessee mosque that hosted its first prayers on Friday after fighting for two years to open said they forgive those who have been enemies of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.
“Love your neighbor is a concept in every religion,” Imam Ossama Bahloul told more than 200 men and women in attendance during his sermon in the mosque that replaces one where the congregation worshiped for 30 years.
To those who opposed the mosque, Bahloul said, “We forgive you all and we welcome you to our facility.”
President Obama on Friday voiced strong support for Huma Abedin, saying the top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been “nothing less than extraordinary in representing our country and the democratic values that we hold dear.”
Obama praised Abedin during remarks at a White House iftar dinner to mark the end of the fasting during the Ramadan holiday observed by Muslims. Abedin has been subject to unproven accusations by some House Republicans, including Michelle Bachmann (Minn.), that she is part of a conspiracy by the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the top reaches of the U.S. government.
U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh went on another anti-Islam tirade Wednesday, calling for an end to “political correctness” in dealing with the “radical strain of Islam” he described as an imminent danger to America.
“It’s a real threat,” Walsh said at a town hall meeting in Elk Grove Village, Ill. “And it’s a threat that is much more at home now than it was right after 9/11.”
“It’s here,” he continued, referring to “radical Islam” in the suburbs of Chicago. “It’s in Elk Grove, it’s in Addison, it’s in Elgin. It’s here.”
Nashville Public Radio interviews Lee Douglas, a right-wing Republican activist who helped to draft a resolution condemning Tennessee governor Bill Haslam and making a case that Islam is bent on world domination. Douglas, a dentist from Brentwood, sees what he calls an “infiltration” of Islam in federal and state government and says “we have a duty as Americans to understand that they intend to take us over and compel us to become Islamic”.
Mitt Romney held a meeting Thursday with a group of right-wing activists that included several leaders who have been vocal supporters of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN)Islamophobic witch hunt, deepening his association with right-wing, anti-Muslim sentiment.
One of the guests at Thursday’s event was Vice President of the Family Research Council Jerry Boykin, who has a long history of Islamophobia, and once said that Islam “should not be protected under the First Amendment.” Most recently, Boykin piled on to Bachmann’s baseless indictment that top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot. “I believe in some aspects of this situation there is support for the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government, that sounds extremist but it is just a fact, it’s a reality,” he said.
Two others in attendance at Thursday’s event – American Values president Gary Bauer and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson – penned a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) defending Bachmann’s witch hunt. In that letter, they argued there is legitimate concern about “senior federal officials or branches of the federal government could be animated or influenced by groups affiliated with, or a philosophy grounded in, radical Islam.”
Congress’s anti-Islam caucus will likely grow in November, and Florida’s Adam Hasner may be its worst new member. Alex Seitz-Wald reports.
Ground will break for the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley in September, according to the construction committee chairman for the contested Muslim place of worship.
An exact date has not yet been set. Hadi Nael, spokesman for the center approved in December 2010, said the first phase of the $4.2 million project could be completed in 2013. The second and final phase could be done two years later, Nael said.
The 24,943-square-foot, two-story mosque on a 4.32-acre site on Nicolas Road will serve as the permanent place of worship for more than 100 local Muslim families who currently gather in a rented space in Murrieta.
An article on illegal boat people by the publisher of Australia’s main Jewish newspaper has ignited a storm of protest, with some critics savaging it for “vilifying Muslims” and promoting “xenophobic, Islamophobic and heartless sentiments.”
Titled “Curb your compassion,” Robert Magid’s article published in last Friday’s Sydney and Melbourne editions of the Australian Jewish News argued that illegal Muslim boat people are queue jumpers who deprive sanctuary to legitimate refugees.
Initial reactions to the appalling violence at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin prominently featured the suggestion that Sikhs had been confused with Muslims by the killer and had suffered “collateral damage” from 9/11. On the face of it, that appeared to be a plausible explanation, as Sikhs in the United States have certainly been attacked by ignorant racists who can’t tell one predominantly non-white faith community from another.
The obvious conclusion is that Sikhs and Muslims should join together to oppose Islamophobia. The right-wing response, however, is to try and set the two communities against each other by suggesting that whereas hostility towards Islam is legitimate and a significant number of Muslims are indeed violent extremists, Sikhs are unfairly tarred with the same brush.