Category Archives: USA

Lawsuit filed in Oklahoma against Sharia law ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Oklahoma Muslim filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday to block a state constitutional amendment overwhelmingly approved by voters that would prohibit state courts from considering international law or Islamic law when deciding cases.

The measure, which got 70 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s election, was one of several on Oklahoma’s ballot that critics said pandered to conservatives and would move the state further to the right.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City, seeks a temporary retraining order and injunction to block the election results from being certified by the state Election Board on Nov. 9. Among other things, the lawsuit alleges the ballot measure transforms Oklahoma’s Constitution into “an enduring condemnation” of Islam by singling it out for special restrictions by barring Islamic law, also known as Sharia law.

“We have a handful of politicians who have pushed an amendment onto our state ballot and then conducted a well-planned and well-funded campaign of misinformation and fear,” said Muneer Awad, who filed the suit and is executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma. “We have certain unalienable rights, and those rights cannot be taken away from me by a political campaign.”

Associated Press, 4 November 2010

Man who threatened Illinois mosque is jailed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CIMICA 25-year-old Maryland man was sentenced to one year in prison yesterday after sending email threats to an Illinois mosque, demanding that the mosque close or else he would “eradicate Islam.”

The man, Ilya Sobolevskiy, pleaded guilty in August to obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs, a civil rights violation. He was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Illinois to 12 months in prison and a $3,000 fine. The judge who sentenced him called the threats “an act of terror.”

According to prosecutors, Sobolevskiy was a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2008 when he visited a nearby mosque with a roommate. While there, he exchanged emails with a member of the mosque, who happened to be the webmaster for the mosque’s web site.

Prosecutors say that Sobolevskiy then began emailing the webmaster and posting on the mosque’s web site, demanding to know why the mosque was associated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and why the mosque did not denounce Islamic terrorism. According to a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, his emails became “increasingly frightening.”

They culminated in an email sent May 4, 2008, demanding the mosque shut its doors: “Close down the CIMIC [Central Illinois Mosque and Islamic Center] by May 12th, or it will be closed for you. the muslims that attend it are not to be seen in public with their beards or hijabs. tell them to get rid of such things. failure to comply will result in much tribulations for you and muslims in the region. i am not afraid to do whatever it takes to eradicate islam. WHATEVER it takes.”

Mosque officials reported the email to the FBI, which investigated through its Springfield office.

TPM, 4 November 2010

Sharia hysteria comes to Oklahoma: voters approve Sharia law ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oklahoma became the first U.S. state to ban the non-existent threat of Sharia law yesterday. Nearly 70 percent of voters there approved ballot initiative “Question 755” – or the “Save Our State” constitutional amendment – which bans Sharia from being considered in Oklahoma courts. The ballot states that Oklahoma courts must “rely on federal and state law when deciding cases” and forbids them from “considering or using international law” and “from considering or using Sharia Law.”

The measure’s sponsor, Republican state senator Rex Duncan, called the result a “preemptive strike” against local judges whom he thinks might be “legislating from the bench or using international law or Sharia law.”

Think Progress, 3 November 2010

See also Weblog of Dawud Walid, 3 November 2010

And “Law professor: ban on Sharia law ‘a mess'”, CNN, 3 November 2010

Update:  See “Lawsuit expected Thursday challenging Shariah law vote”, Tulsa World, 3 November 2010

North Carolina: Muslim woman says man cursed, spat at her in Walmart

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oxford, N.C. — A 66-year-old man is facing ethnic intimidation charges after he allegedly verbally abused a female Muslim-American customer at an Oxford Walmart on Tuesday. The woman is speaking out and says she doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else.

The 31-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified for safety purposes, said she went to Walmart to buy a carton of milk. Instead, she says, James Currin Jr., 66, confronted her and asked: “Hey, are you Muslim?” When she said yes, Currin began swearing, spitting at her and told her to go back “wherever you came from,” she said.

“I was frozen with fear. I was startled. I was frightened,” she said. “He’s actually there glaring at me, just going over me from head to toe, head to toe, head to toe. It was a blood-curdling stare.”

The woman says Currin followed her as she walked to the front of the store to find her mother and notify management. Store officials called Oxford police, who arrested Currin and brought him before a Granville County magistrate.

WRAL.com, 29 October 2010

Bill Maher stands by anti-Muslim remarks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bill Maher showed up on CNN to talk about comments he made on Real Time regarding the “alarming” number of “baby Mohammeds” in England. Maher told Wolf Blitzer that he felt no need to “apologize for being a proud Westerner”, or for being worried that “Muslim people in these [Western] societies are having babies” at a faster clip than non-Muslims.

He clarified: “And when I say Westerner, I mean someone who believes in the values that Western people believe in that a lot of the Muslim world does not. Like separation of church and state. Like equality of the sexes. Like respect for minorities, free elections, free speech, freedom to gather. These things are not just different from cultures that don’t have them…. It’s better…. I would like to keep those values here.”

Mediaite, 1 November 2010

See also “Bill Maher’s anti-Muslim fixation”, TPM, 1 November 2010

US clinic denies Muslim doctor right to wear hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hena ZakiA medical clinic in Dallas, Texas has sparked controversy after saying a Muslim doctor applying for a job cannot wear her headscarf if hired.

Dr. Hena Zaki of Plano, Texas said Friday that she was shocked to find a no-hat policy at the CareNow clinic extended to her hijab. “He interrupted the interview and said he didn’t want me ‘to take this the wrong way,'” Zaki said. “Like an FYI.”

The 29-year-old doctor has called for an apology and a change in CareNow’s policy.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has criticized the no-hijab policy, calling it “a blatant violation” of federal law. “It’s obvious it’s a blatant violation,” said the council’s civil rights manager, Khadija Athman. “It’s a very straightforward case of religious accommodation. I cannot see any undue hardship on the part of the employer to accommodate to wear a head scarf.”

CareNow Chairman Tim Miller, however, has refused to apologize, saying in a statement that there is nothing wrong with the policy, which, according to him, “does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin”.

PressTV, 1 November 2009

See also CAIR press release, 30 October 2009

Update:  See “Texas clinic: Headscarf ban was misunderstanding”,Associated Press, 3 November 2009

Neville-Jones repeats attack on multiculturalism, says Livingstone used it to ‘buy votes’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BigPeace.com, the website run by prominent Tea Party supporter Andrew Breitbart, carries an approving report of a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington by the Con-Dem coalition’s minister for security, Pauline Neville-Jones. It quotes her as saying:

“Multiculturalism in its original form meant you were entitled to dignity, to fair treatment and equality, irrespective of your origin. It turned into, well, because you’re Sikh we’ll give you some money so you can be a bit more Sikh; you’re Muslim so we’ll give you a bit more money so you can be a bit more Muslim – more mosques, more this, more that.”

Multiculturalism was “a mistaken policy, and what it’s done on the whole is to entrench difference and compound it”, Neville-Jones stated, adding that “the then mayor of London was an exemplar of this, Livingstone would buy votes that way. Not literally, but certainly to curry favour”.

For an earlier attack on multiculturalism by Neville-Jones see here.

Kentucky school principals will not be disciplined over anti-Muslim email

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CARLISLE COUNTY, Ky. – With a simple click of the mouse, an e-mail was sent on its way Sept. 16. It went from the high school principal to the elementary school principal, then to an entire school faculty. One of the readers, who declined to share her name, remembers reading it, “I was just appalled that school e-mail would be used to send something so hateful.”

It was a forwarded e-mail that read, in part, Muslim women were “slaves” who were “hit” by their husbands. It also claimed Muslims were planning an attack on Americans. “The Muslims are planning a great jihad against America. Arise, be viligant and don’t let it happen,” the woman shared, reading from the e-mail. She read it over and over, each time a new sentence catching her eye like this one: “They have an Army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam.”

The Carlisle County School District has anti-discrimination policy. But Superintendent Dr. Keith Shoulders said the e-mail did not violate school policy because the women in question were not the authors and had simply forwarded it. “The real thing it violates is our technology policy that school e-mail should be used for school work,” Shoulders said Thursday.

No disciplinary action will be taken against the two principals.

The woman we talked to has contacted the ACLU. The group’s William Sharpe confirmed they sent an open records request to the district to obtain the e-mail. Superintendent Shoulders said he had received the request. Sharpe told Local 6 the ACLU wants to investigate further before deciding whether to press on with the case.

WPSD-TV, 28 October 2010