Category Archives: USA

Myths and ignorance about Sharia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

'Ground Zero mosque' opponents3

Protesters of the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero waved signs there this past Sunday with a single word: Sharia.

Their reference to Islam’s guiding principles has become a rallying cry for those critical of Islam, who use it to conjure images of public stonings and other extreme forms of punishment in countries such as Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan and argue that those tenets are somehow gaining a foothold in the United States.

Blogs are proliferating with names like Creeping Sharia and Stop Sharia Now. A pamphlet for a “tea party” rally last weekend in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. asked: “Why do Muslims want to take over the world and place us under Shariah law?” Former GOP House speaker Newt Gingrich amplified that point in a much-publicized speech a few weeks ago exploring what he calls “the problem of creeping sharia.”

The fact that the word has become akin to a slur in some camps is an alarming development to many religious and political leaders.

Michelle Boorstein in the Washington Post, 25 August 2010

NYT interviews organiser of ‘Burn a Koran Day’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terry Jones

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — If building an Islamic center near ground zero amounts to the epitome of Muslim insensitivity, as critics of the project have claimed, what should the world make of Terry Jones, the evangelical pastor here who plans to memorialize the Sept. 11 attacks with a bonfire of Korans?

Mr. Jones, 58, a former hotel manager with a red face and a white handlebar mustache, argues that as an American Christian he has a right to burn Islam’s sacred book because “it’s full of lies.” And in another era, he might have been easily ignored, as he was last year when he posted a sign at his church declaring “Islam is of the devil.”

But now the global spotlight has shifted. With the debate in New York putting religious tensions front and center, Mr. Jones has suddenly attracted thousands of fans and critics on Facebook, while around the world he is being presented as a symbol of American anti-Islamic sentiment.

“Can you imagine what this will do to our image around the world?” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington. “And the additional danger it will add whenever there is an American presence in Iraq or Afghanistan?”

Mr. Jones who seems to spend much of his time inside a dank, dark office with a poster from the movie “Braveheart” and a picture of former President George W. Bush, appears to be largely oblivious to the potential consequences of his plans. Speaking in short sentences with a matter-of-fact drawl, he said that he could not understand why other Christians, including the nation’s largest evangelical association, had called for him to cancel “International Burn a Koran Day.”

He acknowledged that it had brought in at least $1,000 in donations. But he said that the interviews he had done with around 150 news outlets all over the world were useful mainly because they had helped him “send a message to Islam and the pushers of Shariah law: that it is not what we want.”

New York Times, 25 August 2010

See also Mya Guarnieri’s piece at Comment is Free, 26 August 2010

New York: drunk invades mosque, urinates on prayer rugs, calls worshippers ‘terrorists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A drunk barged into a Queens mosque last night and shouted anti-Muslim slurs as he urinated on prayer rugs, cops and witnesses said.

Evening prayers were disrupted at the Iman Mosque on Steinway Street in Astoria when the unhinged man “came in with a beer bottle in his hands, clearly very intoxicated,” said Mustapha Sadouki, who was attending services. “He fumbled over to our rugs where people were praying” and then committed the despicable desecration, Sadouki said.

The man, identified by cops as Omar Rivera, also allegedly shouted slurs, calling the worshippers “terrorists.”

Two men managed to subdue him. They put him a back room and called 911. Cops took him to a hospital and later charged him with criminal trespass.

“He stuck up his middle finger and cursed at everyone,” said Sadouki, 43. “No one can pray now because the rugs are completely soiled. It was disgusting. He calls us terrorists, yet he comes into our mosque and terrorizes other people. This is a true hate crime.”

New York Post, 26 August 2010

Via LoonWatch

Posted in USA

Mark Steel on the ‘Ground Zero mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mark Steel“To give yourself a stressful and futile day, try telling people there are no plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero. You’ll get nowhere, although the truth is there are plans to build an Islamic centre, with a swimming pool open to everyone, two blocks away from Ground Zero. So if this is a continuation of the terrorist agenda as claimed, it’s been a peculiar plan, and Bin Laden must have started by telling his followers ‘First we will destroy their buildings – and then, oo it’s so deliciously evil, we will get people to swim near to where the buildings were… mwaHAHAHAHAHA’.”

Independent, 25 August 2010

Has Time magazine fallen victim to the stealth jihad?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Is America Islamophobic“Is Time a Muslim magazine?” Phyllis Chesler want to know. She writes:

“I did not think that the pro-Muslim/pro-Islamist and anti-Western propaganda could get any worse—and yet it just has. Time magazine has an August 30 cover story titled ‘Is America Islamophobic?’ Within, the article is titled: ‘Islam in America: It’s part of the fabric of life, but protests reveal a growing hostility to the religion of Muslims.’ … One might wonder why any ‘hostility’ to a productive, historically significant Muslim presence in America exists. Time magazine does not tell us. The article portrays Muslims as innocent victims and American non-Muslims as prejudiced racists…. This article could easily appear in an Egyptian or Syrian magazine.”

Chesler Chronicles, 24 August 2010

Connecticut: members of all faiths gather to oppose Muslim-bashing

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stamford vigil

Stamford, Connecticut — Dozens of people from all religious backgrounds gathered outside the First Congregational Church of Stamford Tuesday night to express support for the local Muslim community.

“I don’t like, as a religious person, as a person of faith, seeing a religion condemned,” said the event’s organizer, Rev. Kate Heichler, president of the InterFaith Council of Southwestern Connecticut. “In the America I grew up in, when someone’s getting picked on you go stand with them.”

Heichler planned the vigil in reaction to recent instances of “Muslim bashing,” which she said are occurring on national and local levels. The controversy over “Park51,” an Islamic Community Center slated for construction two blocks from ground zero, and an Aug. 6 demonstration by members of the Christian group Operation Save America outside a Bridgeport mosque were two incidents that inspired Tuesday’s vigil, Heichler said.

Mongi Dhaouadi, a representative from the Council on American Islamic Relations, drove down from Hartford to attend the event. He said he had been inside the Bridgeport mosque when Operation Save America members yelled that Muslims should give up the Koran for a month. The remark, made on the first night of the holy month of Ramadan, was “very hurtful,” Dhaouadi said.

“We need to use this occasion to turn things around,” he said. “Let us walk away tonight with a commitment. We have so much in common. There are so many problems out there and we can face them all together.”

Religious leaders from the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths read prayers in English, Hebrew and Arabic in front of the crowd. Naveed Khan, a representative from the Stamford Islamic Center, said that acts of hatred and bigotry risk isolating Muslims from their own communities.

“Events such as this today help bridge the gap of our misunderstood religion,” Khan said. “We ask for your support in any times of darkness we may have. And we will, in turn, be in lockstep with our community.”

Several elected officials attended the vigil, including state Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford, and state Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, D-New Haven, who drove down to Stamford from New Haven for the demonstration.

Connecticut Post, 24 August 2010

Campaign against ‘Ground Zero mosque’ inspires far-right vandals to attack Islamic centre in California

Posted on by Bob Pitt

No temple for the god of terrorismVandalism to a Madera Islamic center and signs found on the property are being investigated as a hate crime, the Madera County Sheriff’s Department said today.

A brick was thrown at the building Friday and three signs were found at Masjid Madera, 16634 Road 26, during two other incidences since Aug. 18, said Erica Stuart, Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman. Two of the signs were found on the center’s property Tuesday afternoon.

The signs read “No Temple for the God of terrorism at Ground Zero. ANB,” “Wake up America, the Enemy is here. ANB” and “American Nationalist Brotherhood.”

The Fresno Bee, 25 August 2010

Via LoonWatch

New York Neighbors for American Values – coalition formed to back Park51

Posted on by Bob Pitt

O'Connor, spokeswoman for the September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, speaks in support of proposed Muslim center Park51 in New York
Donna Marsh O’Connor of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows speaks in support of Park51

Muslim, Jewish, Christian and civic groups formed a coalition on Wednesday to back a plan for a Muslim center near the site of the World Trade Center attacks in New York that has sparked heated national debate.

The cultural center and mosque face fierce opposition from conservative politicians and people who consider its location insensitive to families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the September 11 attacks by al Qaeda militants in 2001.

But the newly formed New York Neighbors for American Values, made up of more than 40 religious and civic groups, said the debate was creating fear and division and that it would fight for U.S. constitutional freedoms to be upheld.

“We were not attacked by the Muslim world,” said Donna O’Connor, spokeswoman for September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, whose pregnant daughter was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. “We 100 percent fully support the Islamic cultural center in New York City.”

“We reject the refrain of ‘freedom of religion but not in my backyard,'” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told a news conference to announce New York Neighbors for American Values.

Reuters, 25 August 2010

See also “Bloomberg launches another impassioned defense of Cordoba House”, Huffington Post, 24 August 2010

And “Our view on Ground Zero hysteria: Fear and innuendo drive opposition to NYC ‘mosque’ “, USA Today, 25 August 2010