The crusade against the “ever growing threat” of Sharia law has marched on into South Carolina. Following the lead of places like Oklahoma, Rep. Wendy Nanney and Sen. Mike Fair introduced a legislative initiative aimed at preventing “a court or other enforcement authority” from enforcing foreign law. The two conservative sponsors of the bill hope to “preempt violations of a person’s constitutional rights” that result from the application of foreign law. Foreign law of course is the new dog whistle for Sharia law.
Category Archives: USA
Dearborn, Michigan: man arrested over attempted terrorist attack on Islamic centre
A California man is in jail on a terrorism charge after he was arrested in Dearborn for allegedly trying to blow up the biggest mosque in metro Detroit, Dearborn officials said today.
The suspect was arrested in the parking lot of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn on Monday, while hundreds were inside the mosque that sits along Ford Rd., police said. He came to the city because of its large Arab-American and Muslim population, police said.
Roger Stockhman, 63, was arraigned Wednesday on one count on a threat of terrorism or false report and one count of explosive-possession of bombs with unlawful intent for possession of Class C fireworks, Dearborn Police said. “He’s very dangerous,” Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad told the Free Press. “We took his threat to be very serious.”
Haddad said the man was previously known to law enforcement officials in other parts of the country. “He’s had a long history of being angry with the United States government,” Haddad said.
Stockhman, in jail on a $500,000 bond, drove from California to Dearborn and was caught with a car packed with high-end fireworks. The FBI has been notified about the incident, Haddad said. “He picked Dearborn as a stop because of the huge Arab and Muslim population,” Haddad said.
Dearborn has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the U.S. and has garnered increased attention in recent years as a center of Islam.
Haddad said that a witness said that Stockhman was planning to blow up the mosque. The suspect “appeared to be acting alone,” Haddad said. “His threat has been mitigated.”
A preliminary examination is set for Friday before Judge Mark Sommers in 19th District Court in Dearborn, police said.
The Islamic Center was holding a funeral at the time the suspect was found in the parking lot, with up to 700 people inside. But the suspect doesn’t appear to have known about the funeral, Haddad said.
Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly said the suspect “had a lot of high end fireworks. It was the max you could buy legally.” They were not “conventional explosives,” O’Reilly said. “But at that level, those things misused are terrific weapons.”
Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said “we thank law enforcement authorities for their quick and professional actions in this troubling incident.”
Detroit Free Press, 30 January 2011
See also CAIR news release, 30 January 2011
Douglas Murray welcomes the EDL as ‘a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism’
On 26 January the Worker-Communist Party of Iran’s front organisation, One Law for All, held a seminar at Conway Hall in London under the title “Enemies not Allies”, the purported aim of which was to repudiate both far-right organisations who use opposition to Islam to promote hatred of Muslims and also left-wingers who have worked with Islamists to resist racism and imperialist war. As the publicity for the seminar put it: “Bigots and neo-Nazis feigning to campaign for rights… ‘anti-racist’ groups promoting fascism… ‘anti-war’ rallies run by supporters of terrorism and dictatorship… Enough!”
The rejection of “bigots and neo-Nazis feigning to campaign for rights” didn’t go down too well with one of the platform speakers, however. Douglas Murray, Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, couldn’t see why it was wrong for more mainstream right-wing Islamophobes such as himself to express solidarity with the likes of the EDL. As Murray put it:
“The English Defence League when they started protesting had banners saying things like ‘Sharia law discriminates against women’, ‘Sharia law is anti-gay’. Well I’m good with both of those sentiments, I’m sure most people in this room are. If you’re ever going to have a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism that would be how you’d want it, surely.”
Muslim birth rate expected to fall over next two decades, study shows
This was the original title to a Fox News piece on the new Pew Research Center report, The Future of the Global Muslim Population.
As Pew’s own summary of the report states: “While the global Muslim population is expected to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, the Muslim population nevertheless is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%, compared with the projected rate of 1.5% for the period from 2010 to 2030.”
But that’s not the message Fox wants to convey to its readers is it? The amended headline now reads: “Muslim population expected to increase by 1 billion people by 2030, study shows.”
New Jersey town requires bigger venue to fit crowd to hear mosque application
BRIDGEWATER — Township officials are looking for a bigger venue to accommodate the anticipated crowd that will attend the next meeting on a proposal to convert the Redwood Inn into a mosque.
Monday’s Planning Board meeting on the Chughtai Foundation’s application to create a mosque had to be postponed when a crowd of more than 400 people filled the two available meeting rooms and spilled out the door of the Municipal Complex, 100 Commons Way.
Newmans Lane resident Susan Haggerty said the proposal for a mosque is “unnerving. This mosque represents more. It represents a coming in and taking over an entire community by the Islamic World.”
Hate-crime case in NYC cabbie slashing upheld
NEW YORK — A judge on Wednesday upheld hate-crime charges against a college student accused of slashing a taxi driver’s neck in an anti-Muslim attack that amplified concerns about tolerance shortly before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Richard Carruthers said a grand jury had had enough evidence to indict Michael Enright. The judge said he planned to set a later trial date on March 30.
The 22-year-old film student has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault as hate crimes in the Aug. 24 stabbing.
Enright asked driver Ahmed Sharif whether he was Muslim, uttered an Arabic greeting and told him to “consider this a checkpoint” before cutting him with a folding knife, prosecutors said. After his arrest, Enright declared himself “a patriot” and told the police officers who arrested him that “you allow them to blow up buildings in this country,” according to authorities.
Enright’s lawyer, Lawrence Fisher, has said the School of Visual Arts student was beset by alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder after a trip to Afghanistan to film a documentary. He plans a psychiatric defense.
Now Wyoming may try to outlaw Sharia too
Last year, Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that would prohibit judges from consulting sharia law in their decisions. A federal judge promptly blocked the ban, saying the case goes “to the very foundation of our country.”
But that’s not going to stop one Wyoming lawmaker from trying for a repeat.
State Rep. Gerald Gay (R) is proposing a similar ballot measure that would prevent judges from using sharia, or Islamic, law in their decisions. Like the Oklahoma measure, it would also block “international” law – which could cause unseen effects for Wyoming’s American Indian population.
And, again like in Oklahoma, Gay admits that sharia has not been a problem in his state. Echoing the works of Okla. State Rep. Rex Duncan (R), he calls it a “pre-emptive strike.” He told the Billings Gazette that he doesn’t want judges using Islamic tenets in cases involving honor killings or arranged marriages.
According to one 2000 estimate by Penn State’s Association of Religion Data Archives, there are fewer than 300 Muslims in Wyoming.
For the background on Gerald Gay, see Mother Jones, 26 January 2011
Hate-crime case in NYC cabbie slashing upheld
NEW YORK — A judge on Wednesday upheld hate-crime charges against a college student accused of slashing a taxi driver’s neck in an anti-Muslim attack that amplified concerns about tolerance shortly before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Richard Carruthers said a grand jury had had enough evidence to indict Michael Enright. The judge said he planned to set a later trial date on March 30.
The 22-year-old film student has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault as hate crimes in the Aug. 24 stabbing.
Temecula City Council unanimously approves plan for new mosque
At the end of what city officials referred to as the longest meeting in city history, the City Council early Wednesday morning voted 4-0 to deny an appeal of the Planning Commission’s Dec. 1 approval of the Temecula mosque plans. The 3:34 a.m. vote means the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley can move forward with the first phase of its mosque project absent any legal challenge.
Before casting his vote, Councilman Jeff Comerchero said he received an e-mail recently from someone who asked him what he would tell his children and grandchildren if he voted to deny the appeal. “I’ll tell them I was proud to sit up here and uphold the Constitution,” he said, garnering applause from the folks who made it to the end of the eight-plus-hour hearing.
Idaho: Muslim harassment case referred to district court
TWIN FALLS, Idaho (AP) – A south-central Idaho judge has ruled there is sufficient evidence to move to district court the case of a man accused of threatening a Muslim woman at a Twin Falls Wal-Mart.
Fifth District Senior Judge Roy Holloway on Friday ruled the case against 42-year-old John C. Larsen can go forward. Larsen faces a felony malicious harassment charge.
Police say that on Dec. 22 Larsen approached the woman, who was wearing a traditional Muslim head covering, in the store and asked if she was Muslim. When the woman said yes, police say Larsen told her he had served in Iraq and had friends killed there and that she didn’t belong in the United States.
Prosecutors on Friday submitted as evidence a gun confiscated from Larsen by a Twin Falls police officer who responded to the store.