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Category Archives: USA
St Louis man who wanted war with Muslims gets five years
EAST ST. LOUIS, IL — An explosives-trained Army veteran who wore a fake bomb during a standoff that followed a phone call to a mosque in which he threatened to “start an apocalypse” was sentenced Friday to five years in prison by a federal judge who called the matter an escalation of the man’s aggression.
U.S. District Judge David Herdon wasn’t swayed by Roman Conaway’s apology during a rambling, 18-minute appeal for leniency, handing the former Walmart worker a prison term longer than the four years and two months prosecutors sought. Conaway’s attorney pressed for a sentence of 2 1/2 years.
EEOC sues Albuquerque hotel over ban on employee wearing hijab
704 HTL Operating, LLC and Investment Corporation of America, doing business as MCM Elegante Hotel in Albuquerque, violated federal law by subjecting a Muslim woman to religious discrimination and to retaliation for opposing the discrimination, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit it filed on September 21, 2011.
In its suit, the EEOC said that the hotel failed to accommodate Safia Abdullah’s request to work wearing a hijab, a head scarf worn by Muslim women for religious purposes. In addition, the EEOC alleges that the hotel either failed to hire Abdullah or discharged her because of her religion and/or because she engaged in the protected conduct of opposing discrimination, including requesting religious accommodation.
Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on religion and retaliation for opposition to discrimination. The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico (EEOC v. 704 HTL Operating, LLC and Investment Corporation of America Civil Action No. 1:11-cv-00845) after first attempting to reach a voluntary settlement through its conciliation process.
“We will vigorously prosecute cases of religious discrimination throughout our district, including claims that involve the employer’s refusal to provide reasonable accommodation for an individual’s religious beliefs,” said Regional Attorney Mary Jo O’Neill of the EEOC’s Phoenix District Office, which has jurisdiction over Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah. “We are particularly concerned when the accommodation requested is easy to provide and the employer appears to have reacted to myths or stereotypes about a religion.”
Texas: Baptist church hosts Brigitte Gabriel
Last night, September 22, the town of Katy, typically known for high school football and achievement in public education, played host to an event featuring the nationally divisive discussion about the perceived peril that Islam poses against traditional Judeo-Christian values in America.
The gathering, sponsored by First Baptist Church of Katy, featured president of ACT! for America Education Brigitte Gabriel speaking on the proposed threats that Islam poses to the United States.
Dr. Randy White, Senior Pastor of First Baptist, said the event was an “educational venture to help First Baptist members and people in Katy understand the radical Muslim agenda out there threatening Judeo-Christian values.”
Attendees shared that Ms. Gabriel spoke in characteristically blunt tones and unsurprisingly held nothing back in presenting her perspective on Islam in America. Painting broad strokes across history and the globe, the ACT! for America Education president argued that radicalism is at the core of Islam and that the radical Muslim agenda has survived for 1400 years and is now persistent here in the United States. Speaking from her perspective as a Lebanese born Christian now living in America, Ms. Gabriel called for political measures to halt the suggested agenda of radical Muslims to enforce sharia law in the United States and repeatedly stated, “I’ve already lost one country, I do not want to lose another.”
Her speech was welcomed with strong applause, and at one point a standing ovation, by a crowd of some 500 attendees from the Katy community.
However, Ms. Gabriel’s visit did not garner positive reception alone. The Houston Press’s Richard Connely decried the event with a tongue-in-cheek article in which he stated: “If you’re wanting to hear a bigoted, pathetically overbroad stereotyping of a religion and a culture, what better place to go to than a church?”
More evidence of FBI’s anti-Islam bias revealed
Following months of denials, the FBI is now promising a “comprehensive review of all training and reference materials” after Danger Room revealed a series of Bureau presentations that tarred average Muslims as “radical” and “violent”.
But untangling the Islamophobic thread woven into the FBI’s counterterrorism training culture won’t be easy. In addition to inflammatory seminars which likened Islam to the Death Star and Mohammed to a “cult leader”, Danger Room has obtained more material showing just how wide the anti-Islam meme has spread throughout the Bureau.
The FBI library at Quantico currently stacks books from authors who claim that “Islam and democracy are totally incompatible”. The Bureau’s private intranet recently featured presentations that claimed to demonstrate the “inherently violent nature of Islam”, according to multiple sources. Earlier this year, the Bureau’s Washington Field Office welcomed a speaker who claimed Islamic law prevents Muslims from being truly loyal Americans. And as recently as last week, the online orientation material for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces included claims that Sunni Islam seeks “domination of the world”, according to a law enforcement source.
Danger Room, 23 September 2011
See also Think Progress, 23 September 2011
Pamela Geller’s new anti-Islam ad describes Palestinians as ‘savages’
Pamela Geller is complaining that New York’s Metropolitan Transport Authority has shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for her latest advert, which claims that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a “war between the civilized man and the savage”, and she is threatening legal action against the MTA. Geller is particularly outraged that the MTA are prepared to accept “repulsive antisemitic, anti-Israel ads” – like this one.
The Gothamist has the details.
Park51 opens its doors to the public
The Associated Press reports. See also the New York Daily News.
‘Knight Templar’ gatecrashes Muslim student event at Princeton, makes threats
A local man claiming to be part of the Knights Templar was arrested on Saturday night after allegedly interrupting a Muslim Student Association welcome back dinner and telling students that “Muslims are going to hell”, according to multiple witnesses and police reports.
While the incident reflects a nationwide spike in bias crimes in the wake of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, MSA members say they are treating it as an isolated event and do not plan to scale back any of their events in response.
The man, Adam Pyle, 26, of Princeton Township, had apparently been present for part of the actual dinner at Campus Club, said Sohaib Sultan, the University’s Muslim life coordinator. Toward the conclusion of the dinner, Pyle left the dining area and allegedly started going through the backpack of Jihad Al-Jabban ’14, the MSA public relations chair.
When Al-Jabban walked over, Pyle explained that he was a Christian but still a member of the “ummah”, the global Muslim community, according to Al-Jabban. Pyle then proceeded to bow and ask MSA members if they were members of the ummah, said MSA vice president Areej Hassan ’13. He also allegedly asked a member, “Why do you hate Jews?” Hassan is a staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.
“I immediately became a little bit nervous about what his intentions were,” Sultan said. “I realized this could be a potentially violent situation.”
Sultan then ushered the 60 to 70 students attending the dinner into a closed room away from Pyle, and an attendee called Public Safety. In the meantime, Pyle allegedly said, “Muslims are going to hell” and “Death to Muslims”, and began walking toward the students, according to Sultan.
“I stood right in front of him and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not going to let [you] go inside’,” Sultan recalled. During the night, Pyle also allegedly made references to the anti-Christ, University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua said in an email.
At 8:57 p.m., Public Safety officers arrested Pyle and charged him with bias intimidation, criminal attempt, disorderly conduct, harassment and defiant trespass, Mbugua said. Pyle will face the criminal charges on Monday in the Borough Municipal Court. Public Safety ordered Pyle to stay away from campus for the next 90 days, and the department intends to ban him permanently.
Daily Princetonian, 21 September 2011
Via LoonWatch
Southern California councilman boasted that he named his dog Muhammad
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. — A Southern California councilman is drawing criticism for mentioning in a public meeting that he named his dog after the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called on Derek Reeve to apologize for his comment at a recent San Juan Capistrano council meeting. The Islamic advocacy group says Reeve mentioned naming his dogs America and Muhammad during a discussion about a new dog park.
CAIR’s executive director in greater Los Angeles says while Reeve has a right to free speech, his “distasteful remark” is unbefitting of an elected official. The city’s mayor and another councilman also criticized Reeve.
The Orange County Register reports that Reeve said he named his dog Muhammad as a political statement.
‘Intelligence analyst’ tells FBI agents to go after Islam
Over at Danger Room, which broke the story about the FBI teaching its agents that “mainstream” Muslims are linked to terrorism, Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman have a video of a lecture by FBI intelligence analyst William Gawthrop from June this year – which rather undermines the FBI’s claim that the notorious counterterrorism course was a “one time only” event that took place in April and was “quickly discontinued”. Ackerman and Shachtman write:
The best strategy for undermining militants, Gawthrop suggested, is to go after Islam itself. To undermine the validity of key Islamic scriptures and key Muslim leaders.
“If you remember Star Wars, that ventilation shaft that goes down to into the depths of the Death Star, they shot a torpedo down there. That’s a critical vulnerability,” Gawthrop told his audience. Then he waved a laser pointer at his projected PowerPoint slide, calling attention to the words “Holy Texts” and “Clerics”.
“We should be looking at, should be aiming at, these,” Gawthrop said.
There is some background information on Gawthrop in the original Danger Room report:
In 2006, before he joined the Bureau, he gave an interview to the website WorldNetDaily, and discussed some of the themes that made it into his briefings, years later. The Prophet “Muhammad’s mindset is a source for terrorism”, Gawthrop told the website, which would later distinguish itself as a leader of the “birther” movement, a conspiracy theory that denies President Obama’s American citizenship.
At the time, Gawthrop’s major suggestion for waging the war on terrorism was to attack what he called “soft spots” in Islamic faith that might “induce a deteriorating cascade effect upon the target”. That is, to discredit Islam itself and cause Muslims to abandon their religion. “Critical vulnerabilities of the Koran, for example, are that it was uttered by a mortal,” he said. Alas, he lamented, he faced the bureaucratic obstacle of official Washington’s “political taboo of linking Islamic violence to the religion of Islam,” according to the website.
For more on Gawthrop see Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion.