Category Archives: USA

‘Burn a Koran Day’ will go ahead, says Dove World Outreach Center leader

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Burn a Koran Day 2

An evangelical pastor’s plans to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of September 11 will put soldiers’ lives at risk, the US has warned.

Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Centre in Gainesville in Florida, says the event will “remember those who were brutally murdered” and send a warning “to the radical element of Islam”. But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the idea a “disrespectful, disgraceful act”.

Others in the Obama administration weighed in against the proposed burning, including Attorney General Eric Holder, who called it idiotic and dangerous. Mrs Clinton said: “I am heartened by the clear, unequivocal condemnation of this disrespectful, disgraceful act that has come from American religious leaders of all faiths.”

The White House has echoed calls from General David Petraeus, the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, for the event to be cancelled. Spokesman Robert Gibbs said: “Any type of activity like that that puts our troops in harm’s way would be a concern to this administration.”

General Petraeus says the image of the burning could have a similar impact to photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib jail, making targets of Americans around the world. He said it could “endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort” in Afghanistan.

Pastor Jones said he took General Petraeus’s words seriously but decided to push ahead with the burning. He said: “Instead of us being blamed for what other people will do or might do, why don’t we send a warning to them? Why don’t we send a warning to radical Islam and say, don’t do it. If you attack us, if you attack us, we will attack you.”

The Attorney General has met religious leaders from different faiths to discuss how to stem a wave of Islamophobia which has risen since plans were unveiled to build an Islamic cultural centre close to Ground Zero in New York.

“Having spoken to many families across the country over the last few weeks, I have heard many Muslim Americans say they have never felt this anxious or this insecure in America since directly after September 11,” said Ingrid Mattson, head of the Islamic Society of North America.

Sky News, 8 September 2010

See also “Owner of land with Quran-burning sign doesn’t ‘know what the big fuss is'”, Gainesville Sun, 7 September 2010

Feisal Abdul Rauf defends Cordoba House project in NYT op-ed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A proposed Islamic community center near ground zero will include separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and people of other faiths, the imam behind plans for the facility wrote in a newspaper editorial published online Tuesday.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf wrote in the New York Times that the attention surrounding the plans for the $100 million community center just blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks “reflects the degree to which people care about the very American values under debate: recognition of the rights of others, tolerance and freedom of worship.” He said it was critical that Americans “not back away” from completing the project.

“The wonderful outpouring of support for our right to build this community center from across the social, religious and political spectrum seriously undermines the ability of anti-American radicals to recruit young, impressionable Muslims by falsely claiming that America persecutes Muslims for their faith,” he wrote. “These efforts by radicals at distortion endanger our national security and the personal security of Americans worldwide.”

In the nearly 1,000-word editorial, he outlined his vision for the center, referring to it as a “shared space” for the community that will include “a multifaith memorial dedicated to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.” “I am very sensitive to the feelings of the families of victims of 9/11, as are my fellow leaders of many faiths,” he wrote.

Associated Press, 8 September 2010

Timing of Bethpage mosque closure is suspect, mosque leaders claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Masjid al-Baqi closure noticeDuring the 11 years that Masjid al-Baqi, a mosque on Central Avenue in Bethpage, has provided religious services for area Muslims, there have been some tensions with community members: a few neighbors have complained about the cars that spill onto local streets during Friday services and religious holidays and, in late 2001, mosque leaders say that a drunken resident smashed some of the building’s windows with a baseball bat and damaged cars in the parking lot.

In general, however, interactions with the community have been more positive than negative, according to Syed Quadri, the secretary of Masjid al-Baqi. In over a decade, the mosque – despite never acquiring a valid occupancy certificate – has never had any problems with the Town of Oyster Bay, he says.

But that all changed at the start of Ramadan this year, when town officials closed the mosque, citing building code violations.

The two sides disagree over when exactly the mosque was shuttered: the town says it issued a July 29 summons; mosque leaders say they were turned away on August 10, the beginning of Ramadan. But both sides agree that the building inspection came about as a result of more than 100 calls or emails to the town from residents complaining about a second Bethpage mosque that is opening nearby. Some of those residents called for an investigation into Masjid al-Baqi.

The opposition to the new Bethpage mosque, and the ensuing backlash against the existing one on Central Avenue, can be traced back to a mass email that circulated before the closure, according to Quadri, who received a copy of the email from a congregant.

In the email, a resident identified as “Peter”, tries to rally residents against the new mosque:

This is not a Muslim neighborhood; we have no Muslim congregation in Bethpage. We do not want people being bused in from other communities. If you read the articles attached, many of these organizations are on the FBI watch lists. I DO NOT WANT THIS IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD. THEY NEED TO GO ELSE WHERE. THIS IS THE MESSAGE WE NEED TO SEND.

The email included contact information for public officials and references to other mosque opposition efforts in Brooklyn, Staten Island, and at the much-discussed Park51 site, near Ground Zero in downtown Manhattan.

That email – amid the Park51 debate and the accompanying wave anti-Islamic discourse – played a major role in the shutdown, according to Quadri.

“That’s the only reason that influenced their decision,” Quadri said. “We’ve been there 11 plus years, an inspector has come to the property … you can’t say that the town didn’t know about the mosque being there before the email came out.”

Long Island Wins, 7 September 2011

Boston: interfaith group rallies against anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A group of local Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders gathered at the State House yesterday to decry what they described as anti-Islamic rhetoric and violence fueled by the controversy over the proposed mosque near ground zero in New York.

The speakers, who included a rabbi, a Catholic priest, a Quaker, several Protestant ministers, and a Muslim leader, likened the recent stabbing of a Muslim cabdriver in New York City and plans by a Protestant Florida pastor to burn a Koran to the persecution of religious dissidents in Colonial-era Boston. The leaders asked the crowd of more than 100 to place stones at the foot of a statue on the State House lawn of Mary Dyer, a Quaker whom the Puritans hanged in 1660 for defying a law banning Quakers from the colony.

“We cannot and will not remain silent in the face of the surge of fear about, and threats against, Islam and Muslim-Americans,” said the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor of Old South Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in Boston’s Back Bay.

Several speakers likened the opposition to the mosque in New York to the persecution their own faiths endured in the past. Rabbi Eric Gurvis of Temple Shalom in Newton recalled that, 60 years ago, when his congregation tried to purchase land to build a synagogue, attempts were made to stop the sale.

And the Rev. Walter Cuenin, the Catholic chaplain at Brandeis, called on Boston Catholics to remember their forebears were persecuted by Protestants.

Boston Globe, 8 September 2010

Petraeus’s condemnation of Burn a Koran Day is ‘recipe for surrender’, say Islamophobes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Matt Gertz examines the response by Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Frank Gaffney to General Petraeus’s statement that Texas pastor Terry Jones’ plan to burn copies of the Qur’an will undermine efforts to combat terrorism and lead to a violent backlash against US troops.

Media Matters for America, 8 September 2010

Jamie Glazov loves Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at Pajamas Media, in a piece entitled “The disastrous consequences of Muslim inbreeding”, FrontPage Magazine editor Jamie Glazov indignantly rejects accusations of Islamophobia. The subject of the article, he asserts, “is not evidence, as we are often inanely accused of by the left, that we harbor a hatred of Muslims –but very much the opposite. We are operating out of a pro-Muslim disposition and a love of the Muslim people”.

Lawyer who represented Rifqa Bary’s parents sues Pamela Geller

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A former lawyer for the Muslim parents of a girl who ran away from home after converting to Christianity says in a $10 million federal lawsuit that a blogger and a former attorney for the girl defamed him by alleging he has contacts with terrorists and criminals.

Attorney Omar Tarazi is seeking $10 million in a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Columbus to compensate him for damage he alleges was done to his reputation.

Continue reading →

New Republic editor says First Amendment doesn’t apply to Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims and Arabs do not not act in America as they do in the increasingly Islamicized but non-practicing Christian and democratic sovereignties of Europe. Still, I wouldn’t close my eyes or our eyes to the increasing number of both naturalized and native-born citizens who enlist in the Islamic terror networks of our time, here and abroad.

Liberal political theory has virtually ignored the philosophical, legal and ethical questions posed by the threatening demographics of Europe. Is not western society, imperfect as it may be but immensely more liberal than the domains of Islam, obliged to defend its own…and their future. Immigration is key to this discussion, and it’s the one issue that no one wants to discuss.

I want to believe that Muslims are traumatized by the unrelieved murders in Islamic lands…. This intense epidemic of slaughter has been going on for nearly a decade and a half…without protest, without anything. And it has been going for decades and centuries before that.

Why do not Muslims raise their voices against these at once planned and random killings all over the Islamic world? This world went into hysteria some months ago when the Mossad took out the Hamas head of its own Murder Inc.

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Martin Peretz in the New Republic, 4 September 2010

Right-wing evangelist promises to establish ‘9/11 Christian Center’ to counter ‘the lies of Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bill Keller

An Internet evangelist from Florida has begun holding services near ground zero to preach against Islam as debate continues over plans for a nearby Muslim community center.

Bill Keller has gained a following through his Liveprayer.comwebsite, and has promised to establish a “9/11 Christian Center” to counter what he referred to Sunday as “the lies of Islam.”

He began preaching Sunday at the New York Marriott Downtown Hotel, his temporary headquarters. His center is to open by Jan. 1.

Associated Press, 6 September 2010

See also New York Times, 5 September 2010

And New York Daily News, 5 September 2010

Reject Islamophobic myths about ‘honour killings’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gender equity and violence against women are two issues rightfully attracting more attention in the mainstream press, but in the court of public opinion, Islam is seen as an instigator of women’s oppression. Studies show that gender equity is cited as a reason for the public’s mistrust of Islam. Mass media message and biased campaigns – such as the one Ms. Pamela Geller waged in Chicago in August – that link so-called honor killings to Islam miss the opportunity to address what is truly intolerable: Gender-based violence. Such violence refers to crimes committed against females and cuts across numerous faiths, cultures and societies.

According to the 2009 United Nations Human Development report, approximately 5,000 people – the vast majority of them girls and women – fall victim to so-called honor killings annually. So-called honor killings are murders, usually committed against female family members accused of impugning the family honor. These crimes are symptomatic of highly patriarchal systems, where women are held responsible for maintaining personal, family and community honor.

These murders occur in the Islamic World; but, they also take place in other countries, such as India and Pakistan, and victims can be Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Sikh. The killings are often treated as a family matter and become extra-judicial. Even in rare cases in which perpetrators are prosecuted, sentences are often disappointingly light.

When so-called honor killings are linked to Islam, they ignore non-Muslim victims and ascribe the issue to “Islam” when these crimes are a cultural phenomenon with a past that pre-dates Islam. So-called honor killings occurred in ancient civilizations, including Babylonia, Biblical Israel and Rome.

In fact, there is no justification for so-called honor killing in Islamic law or religion. Similarly, there is no scriptural reasoning for these crimes in Hindu or Sikh sacred texts.

John Esposito and Sheila Lalwani at the Huffington Post, 4 September 2010