Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association offers some clarification of his recent proposal that Muslims should be deported from the US. He writes:
“Those who are willing to convert to Christianity and renounce Islam, Allah, Mohammed and the Koran may be welcomed, for they can become not just good Christians but true Americans.”
Via Media Matters.
Getting her driver’s license should have been an exciting rite of passage for a Sussex County teenager, her mother said.
But when Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles workers told the 16-year-old girl to remove her Muslim headscarf – despite an agency policy allowing her to wear it in her license picture – the experience ended in tears and embarrassment.
“It’s a crying shame that a piece of fabric on her head could cause such an uproar,” said the mother, who asked not to be identified to avoid further public attention.
The girl eventually left the DMV with a driver’s license, she said, but the picture showed her visibly upset and crying.
DMV Director Jennifer Cohan said the agency will remind its workers of its policy on religious and cultural issues. Muslim women may wear headscarves that do not cover their faces for their photos, she said.
“We called her and apologized profusely,” Cohan said. “This could have been handled with a little more sensitivity on our part.”
Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller recently took over the running of Stop the Islamization of America. And here is the first fruit of their labours at the head of SOIA – a bus ad campaign.
Troy, Michigan — A 19-year-old college student has filed a federal complaint against the McDonald’s on Crooks Road after she says she was turned down for a job at the restaurant for wearing a hijab, a religious head scarf.
Nasihah Barlaskar said she went to a job interview on March 27 and was surprised when a white female supervisor asked if she intended to wear “that thing” at work, referring to the hijab.
“I said, ‘Yes I do. It’s part of my religion’,” Barlaskar said. “She said I would not be able to wear it (the hijab) while working. I told her I could wear the (McDonald’s) cap over my hijab.”
Barlaskar said she was surprised by the treatment from the supervisor since she has friends who work at other local fast-food restaurants including McDonald’s that allow female employees to wear hijabs.
Barlaskar said she needs to work to help pay for college expenses and to help her family since her father lost his cab driving job last fall. But Barlaskar found out she didn’t get the job when she called the supervisor three days later.
She suspects she didn’t get it because of her decision to wear the hijab at work. “She told me she decided to go with someone else but I think I was discriminated against because of the hijab,” Barlaskar said.
The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission complaint was filed today by the Michigan Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations on Barlaskar’s behalf.
“We urge McDonald’s to take immediate action to bring its hiring policies into compliance with long-established legal guidelines on reasonable religious accommodation in the workplace,” said Dawud Walid, CAIR-Michigan’s executive director.
See also “EEOC complaint filed against Mich. McDonald’s over hijab”, CAIR news release, 13 April 2010
CAIR point out that this is not the first time that McDonald’s has been accused of discriminating against women wearing hijab.
Over at The American Muslim Sheila Musaji provides a consolidated and updated collection of Islamophobic statements, mainly from the USA.
Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association has a solution to the “Muslim problem” in the US:
“First, the most compassionate thing we can do for Americans is to bring a halt to the immigration of Muslims into the U.S. This will protect our national security and preserve our national identity, culture, ideals and values. Muslims, by custom and religion, are simply unwilling to integrate into cultures with Western values and it is folly to pretend otherwise. In fact, they remain dedicated to subjecting all of America to sharia law and are working ceaselessly until that day of Islamic imposition comes.
“The most compassionate thing we can do for Muslims who have already immigrated here is to help repatriate them back to Muslim countries, where they can live in a culture which shares their values, a place where they can once again be at home, surrounded by people who cherish their deeply held ideals. Why force them to chafe against the freedom, liberty and civil rights we cherish in the West?
“In other words, simple Judeo-Christian compassion dictates a restriction and repatriation policy with regard to Muslim immigration into the U.S.”
Via Media Matters.
Democracy Now interviews Professor Ramadan following his arrival in the USA on his first visit since the lifting of the banning order.
Update: You can listen to Tariq Ramadan’s contribution to the 8 April debate on “Secularism, Islam, and Democracy: Muslims in Europe and the West” at Cooper Hall in New York here.
A civilian employee at the Camp Lejeune Marine Base in North Carolina has won his battle to display anti-Islamic decals on his van while driving on the base.
Jesse Nieto, whose son was among 16 sailors killed in the 2000 terror attack against the USS Cole, had used the windows of his car as a place of tribute to his son. He displayed a gold star (a symbol of death in combat), a combat action ribbon, and the message: “Remember the Cole, 12 Oct. 2000.”
But Mr. Nieto also used his vehicle to express his opinion of those who killed his son. Decals proclaimed: “Islam = Terrorism,” “We Died, They Rejoiced,” and a picture of the US flag with the words: “Disgrace My Countries [sic] Flag And I Will [defecate] On Your Quran.”
He also displayed a decal picture of Calvin (from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon) urinating on a cartoon illustration of the Prophet Mohammed. The Mohammed illustration was a re-creation of one of the cartoons that provoked Muslim protests against a Danish newspaper and sparked an assassination plot against the cartoonist.
After seven years with these messages on his car, someone on the base complained. Nieto was ordered to remove them. He removed the most offensive decals, but was later cited again for violating a base traffic regulation that prohibits the display of “extremist, indecent, sexist, or racist messages” on motor vehicles.
Nieto, a Marine combat veteran, decided to fight back. In a lawsuit filed in federal court in North Carolina he claimed a First Amendment free speech right to express his opinion of Islam and Islamic terrorists.
Government lawyers countered that a military base is not an open public forum like a town hall meeting or a public park. The base commander is entitled to enact and enforce reasonable restrictions on speech when open debate or protests might disrupt the military’s mission, they argued.
Nieto’s lawyer, Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, countered that government restrictions of speech must be viewpoint neutral and not just aimed at silencing speech critical of Islam. He argued that the base regulation would not ban decals praising Islam, only those critical of Islam.
Last week, Senior US District Judge Malcolm Howard ruled for Nieto. He said the base regulation was not being enforced in a neutral manner and was therefore unconstitutional as applied to Nieto. “The fact that [Nieto’s] message may be extremely offensive to some is not a sufficient basis for banning [his] decals,” Judge Howard wrote.
Muise said the case was a result of “political correctness run amok” on a military base. “What is refreshing, is that the judge saw through this political correctness nonsense and applied the law straight up,” he said.
Several groups are planning a protest in Northern Virginia on Saturday outside a fundraiser for a Falls Church mosque that they say has been linked to violence.
Democratic Committee Chairman and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and U.S. Reps. Jim Moran and Gerry Connolly, both Democrats from Northern Virginia, are invited guests and featured prominently on the fliers distributed by the mosque. But Kaine and Moran are not attending, according to their spokesmen. A message to Connolly’s office was not returned.
Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers briefly worshiped at the mosque, the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, and one of its former imams, Anwar al-Aulaqi, has been linked to accused terrorists and subsequently denounced by the mosque, one of the largest in the United States.
The annual dinner will take place at the Fairview Park Marriott in Falls Church.
“While brave young American men and women are risking their lives to fight terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, Connolly, Moran and Kaine are yucking it up with them and popping champagne corks here at the Marriott,” said James Lafferty, chairman of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force. “These spineless politicians are owned and operated by the radical Islamists and their sinister front groups.”
Members of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force, Act for America and the Center for Security Policy and encouraging others to call the offices of Kaine, Moran and Connolly and demonstrate outside the dinner.
Last month, some of the same groups protested when the mosque’s imam gave the opening prayer in the House of Delegates. About a dozen delegates, mostly Republicans, skipped the prayer of Imam Johari Abdul-Malik.
Personal information concerning the private lives of almost 1,000 British Muslim university students is to be shared with US intelligence agencies in the wake of the Detroit bomb scare.
The disclosure has outraged Muslim groups and students who are not involved in extremism but have been targeted by police and now fear that their names will appear on international terrorist watch lists. So far, the homes of more than 50 of the students have been visited by police officers, but nobody has been arrested. The case has raised concerns about how the police use the data of innocent people and calls into question the heavy-handed treatment of Muslim students by UK security agencies.