A Muslim woman who works as a hostess at a Disney-owned restaurant filed a discrimination complaint against the entertainment giant Wednesday, saying they have repeatedly sent her home without pay for refusing to remove her headscarf at work.
Imane Boudlal said she has worked as a hostess at Storyteller’s Café in Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa for two years and began wearing her hijab Sunday but was told she would have to remove it or take a job working out of public view.
As the person who initiated designation of the World Trade Center site as a US national memorial under the US National Park Service, and who has long fought for the respectful treatment of the September 11 victims and the site, I support the “Ground Zero mosque”. As e-mail petitions against the proposed Islamic centre flooded my inbox, out of respect to the victims’ families I did not state my opinion until the recent surge of politicisation against Park 51….
For 30 years, the Tribeca mosque has been a good citizen in the World Trade Center neighbourhood, and has the support of the local community board. In envisioning the mosque’s new metamorphosis as a house of prayer and cultural centre, American-born developer Sharif El-Gamal and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a naturalised American, have a grand vision for intercultural and interfaith relations. Their vision has also sparked a fire storm of Islamophobia, fuelled by unending grief and outrage on the one hand, and political grandstanding that smacks of racism and discrimination on the other….
The World Trade Center was first attacked in 1993 and again in 2001 by fundamentalist minority fanatics who murdered more than 3,000 victims of many faiths and nationalities. Among them was Muslim first responder paramedic and New York Police Department cadet Salman Hamdani, who voluntarily entered the smoking towers to save lives. He was posthumously honoured as a hero….
Recently, I shared a glass of wine with two World Trade Center construction workers, who also participated in the Ground Zero clean-up. They were confident that the Cordoba Initiative would be unable to find construction workers to build the Park 51 centre. Au contraire, I believe that in these troubled times, scores of card-carrying union workers of all races, colours and creeds will welcome the opportunity to work together to build a centre of prayer and cultural understanding in the wake of September 11. That’s New York – and that’s America.
Louise Lo Presti,
New York, NY, US
WTC Section 106 – Consulting Party, US National Historic Preservation Act
Letter in Financial Times, 18 August 2010
The proposal is a deliberate act of provocation against America and Judaeo-Christian civilisation.
The reason that the hijackers were determined to destroy the Twin Towers was because they were seen as a graphic symbol of American enterprise. Once the mosque is erected, it will become a symbol of Islamic triumphalism, an assertion of Muslim power over the West….
Tolerance is a one-way street when it comes to Islam. Muslims constantly demand that our society respects their sensitivities; only last week it was revealed that all meat served in Harrow secondary schools now has to be halal. Yet, as the Ground Zero controversy shows, there is no reciprocal concern shown by Muslims for indigenous cultures.
For all President Obama’s blather about bridge-building, the fact is Islam is an ideology that spells misery, oppression and misogyny wherever it gains power….
The Ground Zero mosque is indicative of a climate of appeasement and self-loathing that has gripped the political class in the West. It is grotesque that, in the name of freedom, our leaders refuse to challenge a doctrine that would destroy our freedoms. Here in Britain, the supine state has allowed domestic terrorism, forced marriages, child sex trafficking, immigration abuses and honour killings to flourish for fear of being labelled “racist”.
In America, the results have been just as deadly, as shown by the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Despite his declared support for Islamic terrorism, US army top brass refused to act against him. Then, in November last year, he shot dead 13 of colleagues.
None of those men would have died if the destructive creed of multi-culturalism had not been so strong. Tolerance in the face of extremism is killing our society. The 9/11 attacks should have galvanised the west. Instead, 10 years later, it is looking like our death knell.
“The folks who want to build this mosque – who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists – those folks don’t have any interest in reaching out to the community. They’re trying to make a case about supremacy. That’s why they won’t go anywhere else, that’s why they won’t accept any other offer.”
“And I think we ought to be honest about the fact that we have a right – and this happens all the time in America. You know, Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaking on Fox & Friends, quoted in the Huffington Post, 16 August 2010
Gingrich is billed as a speaker alongside Dutch far-right Islamophobe Geert Wilders at Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s 11 September rally in New York, which gives you an indication of the sort of company the Republican right is keeping these days.
For a useful summary of the origins of the “Ground Zero mosque” hysteria, see Salon.com, 16 August 2010
Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, outlines his opposition to the “Ground Zero mosque”.
US President Barack Obama has staunchly defended controversial plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York. Mr Obama acknowledged “sensitivities” surround the 9/11 site, but said Muslims have the same right to practice their religion “as anyone else”. “Our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable,” Mr Obama said.
In a speech at a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, Mr Obama waded into the row, saying:
“We must all recognise and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan, Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground. But let me be clear, as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.
“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”
He told the group of US Congressmen, government officials and foreign dignitaries that America’s tradition of religious tolerance distinguishes it from “our enemies”. “Al-Qaeda’s cause is not Islam,” he said, “it is a gross distortion of Islam”.
Until now Mr Obama had not commented on the mosque row, with the White House saying that the matter was a local issue. In voicing his support for the right to build the centre, Mr Obama joins New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had been the only prominent politician to endorse it.
Pamela Geller comments: “Obama came out for the Islamic supremacist mosque at the hallowed ground of 911 attack. He has, in effect, sided with the Islamic jihadists and told the ummah (at an Iftar dinner on the third night of Ramadan, of course) that he believes in and supports a triumphal mosque on the cherished site of Islamic conquest. If you had any doubt who Obama stood with on 911, there can be no doubt in our minds now.”
Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer offers a similarly balanced view: “If the KKK announced plans to build a shrine at the site of the 16th Street Baptist Church, would Obama be talking about religious freedom?”
But what else did Pamela and Robert expect from Obama? After all, he is a Muslim and prays at a mosque in the White House.
The battle over plans to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York is fuelling a surge in anti-Muslim protests across the US, including opposition to new Islamic centres from California to Georgia.
Religious leaders and civil rights activists warn that a tide of Islamophobia that has swept the country since the destruction of the twin towers is being heightened by political exploitation of the New York dispute before nationwide elections and is increasingly bound up with hostility to immigrants and other forms of racism.
They say the outpouring of condemnation at the “outrage” of a mosque close to the “hallowed ground” of the World Trade Centre site also goes hand in hand with the increasing acceptability of what they describe as hate speech.
More than 40 prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders and religion scholars issued a statement today condemning the “xenophobia and religious bigotry” fueling the increasingly strident opposition to a proposed Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero. These leaders from New York City and across the country are specifically challenging the divisive rhetoric of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, who have strongly opposed a center that will promote interfaith relations, combat extremism, and offer community programs for Americans of all religious backgrounds.
“It’s simply wrong for Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin to malign all Muslims by comparing this cultural center and mosque with a radical ideology that led to the horrific attacks of 9-11,” said Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby. “We fail to honor those killed by terrorists when we betray the bedrock principle of religious freedom that has guided our democracy for centuries.”
BRIDGEPORT — About a dozen right-wing Christians, carrying placards and yelling “Islam is a lie,” angrily confronted worshippers outside a Fairfield Avenue mosque Friday.
“Jesus hates Muslims,” they screamed at worshippers arriving at the Masjid An-Noor mosque to prepare for the holy week of Ramadan. One protester shoved a placard at a group of young children leaving the mosque. “Murderers,” he shouted.
Flip Benham, of Dallas, Texas, organizer of the protest, was yelling at the worshippers with a bullhorn. “This is a war in America and we are taking it to the mosques around the country,” he said.
Mustafa Salahuddin, an Ansonia police officer and parishioner at the mosque, calmly watched the protesters from the mosque’s parking area. “This is unfortunate, but it’s a free country,” he commented on the protest. “But I believe Jesus would have been appalled by this.”
Connecticut Post, 6 August 2010
Via LoonWatch
Ads opposing a planned mosque near Ground Zero should soon be seen on city buses after the MTA signed off on their controversial design today.
A lawyer for the New Hampshire group behind the campaign called the decision “a victory not just for free speech but against political correctness and Mayor Bloomberg’s bullying.” Lawyer David Yerushalmi said the ads would be printed up and posted on city buses within the next 10 days.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative sued the MTA in Manhattan federal court last week to force it to accept the ads. They feature an image of an airplane headed toward the burning World Trade Center, along with a high-rise that’s labeled “WTC Mega Mosque” and the words “Why There?”
An MTA spokesman said: “While the MTA does not endorse the views expressed in this or other ads that appear on the transit system, the advertisement … was accepted today after its review under MTA’s advertising guidelines and governing legal standards.”
A spokesman for the mayor – who last week said mosque opponents “ought to be ashamed of themselves” – declined to comment.
See also “SIOA co-founder: kill your liberal relatives and all Muslims”, Daily Kos, 3 August 2010