Several hundred people packed Norwalk Concert Hall on Wednesday for a public hearing on Al Madany Islamic Center of Norwalk’s proposed mosque for 127 Fillow St.
Many wore buttons reading “Keep 127 Fillow Street Residential.” Others wore t-shirts reading “All Faiths Can Co-Exist Peacefully Support the Mosque in Norwalk.”
See also The Daily Norwalk, 4 April 2012
The Iowa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-IA) today called on the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate a letter with “very threatening” language and containing a mysterious powder that was sent to a Muslim representative in the Iowa House yesterday.
The letter, sent to Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad Des Moines), was opened by his clerk Tuesday afternoon on the House floor. When a white powder “billowed out” from the envelope, a hazardous materials team was called and the Statehouse was locked down for several hours. The powder was ultimately deemed harmless.
Geller should not be allowed to get away with playing the victim and hiding behind the mask of a “patriot and proud Zionist.”
Geller’s self-righteous campaign to show the world the “true face” of Islam is abhorrent and morally repugnant. Geller, in views she outlines in her blog, has linked Islam to bestiality and rape of minors, compared Muslims to Nazis and asserted that Islam inspired Hitler. The Anti-Defamation League has closely followed her anti-Muslim scapegoating and that of Stop Islamization of America, the organization she leads, and has posted additional examples of her comments on its website.
Terrorism inspired by fundamentalist Islam is indeed a true threat to America, Israel and democracies around the world. But in directing her rhetoric at the entire Islamic faith – indeed, in supporting campaigns to suggest that Muslims should abandon their faith entirely – Geller fuels and fosters anti-Muslim bigotry in society.
Robert G. Sugarman, national chair of the Anti-Defamation League, writes in the The Jewish Week, 3 April 2012
Sugarman was responding to a letter from Geller in which she claimed that the ADL’s national director Abe Foxman “demonizes proud Jews who love Israel and fight for freedom, while he kowtows to the Islamic jihad”. She really is completely off her head, isn’t she?
It seems that the Republican presidential aspirants’ fervor to confront Islam has receded a bit with the decline and fall of Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, but one can likely still count on Rick Santorum to come up with some bon mots on the threat posed by Shariah law. Those who fear that hands will soon be lopped off shoplifters caught in Cleveland appear to be making much ado about nothing, but there is a much broader and more insidious agenda that is really playing out behind the scenes. Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum are all smart enough to know that Islamic law is hardly poised to dominate the U.S. legal system, but they are using it as the wedge issue to deny the patriotism of Muslims in general and fuel the demands to exercise a military option against Iran.
Philip Giraldi on why the US Right promotes fear and hatred of Muslims.
Quran-burning pastor Terry Jones filed a lawsuit today against Dearborn, alleging the city is violating his constitutional right to free speech by asking him to sign a legal agreement ahead of a rally he’s planned for this Saturday outside of a Dearborn mosque.
Training materials used by the FBI for dealing with American Muslims and other Islamic communities have advised agents they can break the law and impinge on some of their targets’ civil rights.
The instructions were contained in confidential materials reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of an internal FBI probe into what sort of training agents were exposed to when dealing with Islam.
One of two new members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has Muslim civil rights groups crying foul.
Zuhdi Jasser, who lauded a controversial New York City police surveillance program that targeted Muslims and helped lead the opposition to an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, has been appointed to the commission, which advises the president, Congress and State Department on religious rights abuses internationally.
“It would have been better to appoint someone who has some measure of credibility with Muslim Americans,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “He has long been viewed by American Muslims and the colleagues in the civil liberties community as a mere sock puppet for Islam haters and an enabler of Islamophobia.”
Religion News Service, 27 March 2012
Update: You can sign the petition “Zuhdi Jasser Does Not Belong on the USCIRF” here.
For several years, the FBI’s San Francisco office conducted a “Mosque Outreach” program through which it collected and illegally stored intelligence about American Muslims’ First Amendment-protected beliefs and religious practices, according to government documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Northern California, Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
The San Francisco FBI’s own documents show that it recorded Muslim religious leaders’ and congregants’ identities, personal information and religious views and practices. The documents also show that the FBI labeled this information as “positive intelligence” and disseminated it to other government agencies, placing the people and organizations involved at risk of greater law enforcement scrutiny as potential national security threats. None of the documents indicate that the FBI told individuals interviewed that their information and views were being collected as intelligence and would be recorded and disseminated.
CLEVELAND — A Middleburg Heights man pleaded guilty to putting a plastic camel with a noose around its neck on the apartment door of a Muslim person.
Christopher M. Sanford, 25, entered a guilty plea to interfering with housing rights of another based on the victim’s race, religion or national origin.
The story of Pascal Abidor, a student from Montreal’s McGill University, and his Constitutional battle with the US government.