Category Archives: USA

Franklin Graham repeats attack on Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today requested a meeting with Christian evangelist Franklin Graham to discuss his latest remarks attacking Islam.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said it has received a number of complaints from concerned Muslims who watched an interview last night on CNN during which Graham stated in part: “…we have many Muslims that live in this country. But true Islam cannot be practiced in this country. You can’t beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they’ve committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries… I don’t agree with the teachings of Islam and I find it to be a very violent religion.”

SEE: Franklin Graham Repeats Attacks on Islam (Video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByovBdIRV2o

In 2002, Graham said terrorism is part of “mainstream” Islam and claimed the Quran, Islam’s revealed text, “preaches violence.”

In 2001, Graham stood by remarks he made about Islam at the dedication of a chapel in North Carolina. At that event, he said: “We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion.”

CAIR press release, 11 December 2009

Citibank asked to apologise for hijab incident

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Citigroup To Cut Thousands Of Jobs Amidst Posting Huge LossThe Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago) today called on Citibank to apologize to a Muslim woman who was allegedly verbally abused by a security guard at a Gresham, Ill., branch because she wears a religious head scarf, or hijab.

According to the Muslim woman, the guard said it was against Citibank’s policy for customers to transact business wearing head coverings. While another Citibank employee did allow the woman to complete her business, that employee insisted on personally escorting her to the counter and watched over her shoulder as she conducted her transactions.

The guard also reportedly objected to the woman receiving service because it would encourage more of “them” to come into the bank. Throughout the process, which the Muslim customer described as “humiliating,” the guard allegedly made anti-Muslim remarks.

CAIR-Chicago is calling for the apology, a review of Citibank policies related to religious head coverings and for diversity training of bank staff.

CAIR-Chicago press release, 8 December 2009

CAIR report shows rise in anti-Muslim bias incidents

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CAIR report 2009An annual report released today by a prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization shows an increase in the total number of bias-related incidents, but a decrease in anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2008.

The report by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), titled “Seeking Full Inclusion,” offers a summary of incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment reported to the group during the 2008 calendar year. It also examines the use of Islamophobic rhetoric in the 2008 presidential election and highlights a number of issues of concern to the American Muslim community, including watch lists, surveillance of mosques and new FBI guidelines that allow religious and ethnic profiling.

To view the entire “Seeking Full Inclusion” report, go here.

CAIR press release, 3 December 2009

Jewish groups criticise Swiss minaret ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jewish groups have criticised the result of the Swiss referendum in favour of banning the building of minarets on mosques.

The Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities has been vocal against the ban. Dr Herbert Winter, its president, said: “As Jews we have our own experience. For centuries we were excluded: we were not allowed to construct synagogues. We do not want that kind of exclusion repeated.”

British and international Jewish groups have also condemned the result of the referendum.

A spokeswoman for the Board of Deputies said: “We do not seek to interfere in the affairs of other countries but must condemn intolerance wherever it occurs. Swiss Muslims should be made to feel at home in Switzerland, just as we hope that Muslims, Jews and other minorities in this country should be allowed to practise their faiths freely and without restraint.”

She added: “In our own country, we have seen the continuing victimisation of Muslims and other minorities by these groups. These have ranged from intimidatory protests outside mosques, to cemetery desecrations, to arson attacks, and even to murder. The Board of Deputies is appalled by such developments and stands with the vast majority of British society who condemn them.”

The New York-based Anti-Defamation League echoed the sentiments of the Board, and said in a statement: “This is not the first time a Swiss popular vote has been used to promote religious intolerance. A century ago, a Swiss referendum banned Jewish ritual slaughter in an attempt to drive out its Jewish population. We share concerns that those who initiated the anti-minaret campaign may now try to further erode religious freedom through similar means.”

Jewish Chronicle, 2 December 2009

Lord Pearson plays the Islam card to win leadership of UKIP

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pearson with Pamela GellerA millionaire peer was elected leader of the UK Independence Party yesterday after putting “the growing threat of Islamism” and curbing immigration at the heart of his campaign. Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who defected from the Conservatives two years ago, comfortably beat four rivals to assume command of the anti-European Union party.

Lord Pearson, one of two Ukip peers, has protested that the “political class” is complacent about Islamism and claimed that some of “our people” were “strangers in our own land”. The 67-year-old former insurance broker invited the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders in February to screen a controversial film about radical Islam. He has called for a zero net increase in immigration, arguing that the issue was the main concern for many voters.

Independent, 28 November 2009

Pearson has an admirer in Damian Thompson, who writes: “You may think that Ukip’s new focus on the Islamification of parts of Britain is a dangerous strategy. And so it would be, if the party was in other hands. But Lord Pearson is still essentially a libertarian Tory: he would never stoop to sending out dog whistles to wavering BNP racists. His campaign against uncontrolled immigration and Sharia will be rooted in a defence of liberal democracy of the sort that other parties are too gutless to make.”

The photo is of Pearson with another admirer, mad US Islamophobe Pamela Geller, who has hailed his election as “great news“.

Tariq Ramadan ‘a greater threat to Western civilization’ than Osama bin Laden

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes 9-11“To borrow a computer term, if Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and Nidal Hasan represent Islamism 1.0, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the prime minister of Turkey), Tariq Ramadan (a Swiss intellectual), and Keith Ellison (a US congressman) represent Islamism 2.0. The former kill more people but the latter pose a greater threat to Western civilization.”

Daniel Pipes in the Jerusalem Post, 24 November 2009

See also LoonWatch, who comment: “Ellison and Ramadan stand as a strong counter example against Bin Laden and his cohorts for Muslims, especially young Muslims. They see two Muslims, strongly grounded in their faith, belonging to their society and giving back on various levels from the social to the political; instead of deriding them Pipes should be encouraging them.

“As more examples such as theirs increase in the West it will enable Muslims to better fight those minority elements within their faith that seek to cause chaos and violence and that is what really threatens Daniel Pipes who seems to be motivated by the paranoid fear that the ‘enfranchisement of American Muslims…will present true dangers to American Jews’.”

Billboard in Colorado features picture of Obama and asks ‘President or Jihad?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

President or JihadToday, a new birther billboard went up above Wolf Automotive off I-70 in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. The sign has a picture of President Obama wearing a turban, asking, “President or Jihad?” and exhorting, “Wake up America! Remember Fort Hood”.

ThinkProgress spoke with Phil Wolf, the owner of the car dealership. He said that the billboard is his personal project because he believes the American people have a right to know the facts about the president:

“I’m probably like a lot of other people that have asked the question, I want to know who our president is. And to date, I don’t think I know, I don’t think a lot of people know, I don’t think it’s ever been asked – answered…. When this Fort Hood massacre occurred, and I saw the response of our Commander in Chief to this unbelievable, politically correct, nonsense – to me it was just enough.”

Think Progress, 20 November 2009

Islamophobes rally for Rifqa outside courthouse

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geller rallyFathima Rifqa Bary was present only in smiling photographs at a Downtown rally of her supporters yesterday.

The 17-year-old Columbus runaway is in foster care until a Franklin County Juvenile Court judge decides where she should live. The former New Albany High School student says her father threatened to kill her for leaving Islam for Christianity. She ran away from their Northeast Side home in July, fleeing to the Florida home of married pastors whom she met on Facebook.

Mohamed Bary denies his daughter’s accusations, and authorities in Ohio and Florida have found no credible threat to her safety.

But her supporters say the authorities are being ignorant at best and malicious at worst. They say the girl, who goes by Rifqa, will be killed if she is returned to her family because Islamic law mandates it and Muslim ideology is violent and dangerous.

About 120 people gathered in a small park across from the S. High Street courthouse for the rally. A hearing had been scheduled for yesterday but was postponed until Dec. 22.

Speakers included Simon Deng, a Sudanese man who spoke of his enslavement by Muslims as a child, and Nonie Darwish, director of Former Muslims United, based in Granada Hills, Calif. Behind the speaker’s lectern was a banner showing Muslim girls and women who have been maimed or killed for various offenses against faith or family, said conservative blogger Pamela Geller, a rally organizer. “We don’t need another martyr,” she said. “We have to win.”

A general theme at the rally was that Islam is threatening the U.S. Constitution and American freedoms. “My concern is for the way that Islam is creeping into our society and trying to change it,” said Don Berger of the East Side. “So I’m here in support of Rifqa and that she keeps her freedom.” Several at the rally wore T-shirts that read: “Islam is of the devil.”

Columbus Dispatch, 17 November 2009

See also LoonWatch, 16 November 2009

CAIR to blame for Fort Hood killings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ruth Dudley Edwards 2“There’s a climate of fear in the US among the military, law-enforcers, policy-makers, the media, opinion-formers and many ordinary citizens. A major cause is the intimidating Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is dedicated to Muslim empowerment, receives substantial funding from Arab governments and has been accused by federal prosecutors of funnelling money to Hamas.

“So effective and ruthless is CAIR that anyone in authority worries before doing anything that can be misrepresented as anti-Muslim and lead to lawsuits citing religious or racial discrimination. There were plenty of people who might have prevented the psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan from murdering 12 soldiers and a policeman, but were too scared to do so.”

Ruth Dudley Edwards in the Sunday Independent, 15 November 2009