Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib have the details.
Category Archives: USA
Michigan gurdwara vandalised with anti-Muslim graffiti
A Sikh house of worship in Sterling Heights under construction was vandalized with what appears to be anti-Muslim graffiti.
The Sikh building, known as a gurdwara, was defaced sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning, a Sikh advocacy group said today. Some of the graffiti reads: “Don’t Builed” and “Mohmed”, which seems to refer to Islam’s prophet, Mohammed. The graffiti also included a Christian cross, a pistol, and the letters R and A. It’s unclear what the letters refer to.
In the West, Sikh men are sometimes confused for being Muslim because they wear full beards and turbans. Over the past ten years, some Sikhs in the U.S. have been victims of violent bias attacks because they’re wrongly perceived to be Muslim.
Sue Myrick retires: So long, and thanks for all the Muslim-baiting
Eric Kleefeld reflects on the record of US Republican politician Sue Myrick, who has just announced her retirement from Congress.
CAIR asks Justice Department to probe Oregon FBI’s ‘coercion’ of Muslim citizens
A Muslim civil rights group wants the Justice Department to investigate the tactics of FBI agents in Portland, Oregon, after two Libyan-Americans from the area recently were barred from returning to the United States.
The two men – Jamal Tarhuni, 55, and Mustafa Elogbi, 60 – traveled separately to Libya after the overthrow of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Tarhuni delivered humanitarian supplies with the group Medical Teams International, while Elogbi went to visit family.
Last month, though, both Libyan-born U.S. citizens were barred from return flights to the U.S. and told the FBI wanted to question them.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said that it has now received three reports of Portland FBI agents’ involvement in travel restrictions for Muslim U.S. citizens in the last six months. The other case involved a man who made headlines last year when he was detained in Britain as he tried to travel to Italy.
Islamophobia – the latest right-wing conspiracy theory
Extremist political conspiracies such as “birthers” and “truthers” may be a dominant theme of post-9/11 America, but in a new book by Arthur Goldwag, he argues that modern conservative groups may be a product of history repeating itself.
In Goldwag’s book, “The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right,” due out on February 7, the author traced the historical origins of rhetoric and ideologies associated with birtherism, Islamophobia, anti-immigration sentiment and other touchstones of modern conservative factions such as the Tea Party movement.
New York protest against police targeting of Muslims
About 150 demonstrators gathered in Foley Square on Friday afternoon to give voice to a growing list of complaints against the NYPD and police commissioner Ray Kelly for targeted surveillance of New York Muslims.
The Friday protest was coordinated by nonprofit Muslim advocacy organization Majilis Ash-Shura of Metropolitan New York and Desis Rising Up and Moving, a Jackson Heights-based organization which advocates for the civil rights of South Asian immigrants. Among the demonstrators were also Occupy protesters and interfaith leaders, as well as some local elected officials. Some speakers called for more accountability by the police; others called for Kelly and Browne to step down.
It was the second rally to protest the department’s Muslim-specific policies in as many weeks. The day before, the Associated Press had written about an internal department document suggesting the department targeted Shi’ite mosques for surveillance. That countered Kelly’s previous assertion that Muslim communities weren’t targeted by religion.
There was also unresolved tension about the commissioner’s appearance in anti-Muslim film The Third Jihad, which was eventually revealed to have been shown to over a thousand officers, contrary to the initial claims of a department spokesman.
Can Geller sink any lower?
Pamela Geller is exploiting the name of a young Muslim woman murdered by her stepfather in order to promote her organisation Stop Islamization of American, falsely claiming that the murder was an Islam-inspired honour killing and without the slightest concern for the distress she is causing to the dead woman’s family. LoonWatch has the details.
Update: See also “Pamela Geller’s ghoulish obsession with ‘honor killings’ takes an ugly turn”, Little Green Footballs, 4 February 2012
Vigil at site of Hilliard arson
Heba El-Hosseiny passes out candles at a unity vigil outside the Hilliard home of Mohamed Soltan, who escaped with his roommate from a fire set there before dawn on Jan. 16. The Council on American-Islamic Relations-Ohio sponsored the event in response to what it views as a hate crime. The house had been painted with anti-Arab and anti-Islamic slurs months earlier. Hilliard police and the FBI are investigating.
Document shows NYPD’s surveillance of Shia Muslims was based on religion
The New York Police Department recommended increasing surveillance of thousands of Shiite Muslims and their mosques, based solely on their religion, as a way to sweep the Northeast for signs of Iranian terrorists, according to interviews and a newly obtained secret police document.
The document offers a rare glimpse into the thinking of NYPD intelligence officers and how, when looking for potential threats, they focused their spying efforts on mosques and Muslims. Police analysts listed a dozen mosques from central Connecticut to the Philadelphia suburbs. None has been linked to terrorism, either in the document or publicly by federal agencies.
Muslim America moves away from the minaret
The National Islamic Center in Washington DC is an imposing building with a towering minaret. One of America’s iconic mosques, it is surrounded by the flags of the Islamic countries which helped pay for its construction in the 1950s.
Its design was influenced by classical and traditional architecture in Egypt. Akbar Ahmed, a professor of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington DC and one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary Islam, says it would be impossible to build such a national mosque today because of the controversy it would arouse.
“It’s a bad time for Islamic architecture,” says Mr Ahmed, former Pakistani ambassador to the UK. “If there was some visionary with money who wanted to build the Taj Mahal in the US, he’d be attacked as a stealth Jihadist.”