Category Archives: USA

The new untouchables?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“There is an ugly specter haunting this 2008 election, the specter of Islamophobia. Both candidates have so far refused to visit Muslim organizations, but haven’t hesitated to visit Christian and Jewish groups. The message is clear: Muslims are outsiders, beyond the pale, perhaps exotic and even interesting in certain ways, but also dangerous, because being seen with them could have unpredictable political results. In electoral terms, American Muslims are the new untouchables.”

Lawrence Swaim at In Focus, 8 August 2008

Guilt by association for US Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hussein Ibish examines the resignation of Mazen Asbahi, Muslim-outreach coordinator for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign:

“Asbahi resigned on Monday, after just 10 days on the job, because in 2000 he served for a few weeks on the board of an Islamic investment fund with Jamal Said. Said has been allegedly linked to accused fundraisers for Hamas whose recent trial did not result in any convictions, but who remain under a cloud of suspicion.

“This reflects an unreasonable and unfair climate of guilt by association. It is part of a familiar pattern that is one of the main forces hindering the political integration of these communities into American civic life. Asbahi himself is not accused of any misconduct. Rather the issue is his fairly distant association with Said, who himself is disparaged because of the alleged activities of his own associates.

“The problem is that almost anyone who has been engaged in Arab or Muslim political affairs can probably be somehow connected in some manner to someone else somewhere whose views, activities or associations can be called into question in the post-9/11 environment.

“Call it two or three degrees of separation. These distant, usually third-party connections are then magnified out of all proportion and used to unfairly impugn or misrepresent the views and character of the person under attack.”

Comment is Free, 8 August 2008

See also James Zogby at the Huffington Post, 8 August 2008

Update:  And Ahmed Rehab in the Chicago Tribune, 10 August 2008

Billboards announce: ‘Sharia law is hate’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An organization in Florida plans to educate what it perceives as an increasingly culture-tolerant public about the horrific dictates of Islamic law by purchasing billboard space with a simple, but confrontational message: “Sharia law is hate.”

The Central Florida chapter of the United American Committee, a nonprofit group that seeks to educate Americans on the threat of Islamic extremism, is raising money to purchase a six-month contract to display the billboard, which the group hopes will awaken the public to discussing the full extent of Islamic law.

“The UAC’s goal in this project is to raise awareness because most people have no idea what Sharia law is,” Alan Kornman, director of UAC’s Central Florida branch, told WND. “We are confident people will see the billboard and learn on their own what Sharia law is and come to their own conclusions. At the very least, we hope our billboard will spark public debate on this overlooked issue.”

The billboards will also include a link to UAC resources where people can learn more about Islam’s Sharia law, a set of religious codes – both moral and legal; Sharia law recognizes no separation of church and state – that bind both Muslims and Islamic nations.

“Under Sharia law if you are accused of stealing, a hand and foot from opposite sides are amputated. If you are caught having an affair, the woman is stoned to death and the man is given 80 lashes. If you change religions, you can be charged under apostasy laws and given the death sentence by a legal Sharia court. If you want to marry a nine-year-old child, Sharia law condones pedophilia, because Mohammad married Aisha at six and consummated the marriage at age nine. I find these and many more practices of Sharia law despicable and hateful,” said Kornman.

World Net Daily, 8 August 2008

Muslim holiday at US factory provokes Islamophobic backlash

Posted on by Bob Pitt

RWDSU logoThe union that represents workers at a Tyson Foods poultry plant in Tennessee has negotiated a contract that substitutes a Muslim holiday for Labor Day as one of the eight paid holidays at the plant.

The provision, which was proposed by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, has delighted the plant’s Somali workers, who account for hundreds of its 1,200 employees. But it has infuriated many outsiders, leading some to denounce Tyson and the union alike.

“You are a union that is proud of achieving a Muslim holiday and prayer room?” one person wrote the union. “A union in the U.S.A., a country based on Christianity. You call yourselves Americans? Have you forgotten 9/11?”

Another wrote: “You had no right to drop Labor Day. Muslim employees must integrate Labor Day into THEIR lives if they are going to live in America.”

Stung by the criticism, Stuart Appelbaum, the union’s president, said the decision was fully consistent with the spirit of Labor Day.

“We in the labor movement have always understood that unions are only strong when we work to protect the dignity of all faiths, and that includes Muslims,” said Mr. Appelbaum, who also serves as president of the Jewish Labor Committee.

“What we negotiated was the will of the workers,” said Mr. Appelbaum, who added that his was the first union to negotiate a paid day off for a Muslim holiday and that he was sure Tyson would not be the last employer to agree.

New York Times, 6 August 2008

Over at Front Page Magazine Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch warns that this represents one more step down the slippery slope towards the Islamisation of the USA: “The problem is that the accommodation of Islamic holidays and practices abets, however unwittingly, an avowedly supremacist agenda that is directed toward supplanting American laws and mores and imposing Islamic law here.”

And the inimitable Debbie Schlussel writes: “Well, folks, here it is – the beginning (or maybe the middle) of the end of America as we know it…. Since I keep kosher, I don’t eat Tyson Foods products anyway, but I call on you my readers to boycott the company. It’s absurd to replace labor day with the holiday of those bent on our destruction. Any company that does that doesn’t deserve your business.”

Oklahoma Muslim denied job because of Islamic scarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OK) announced today that it has filed an EEOC complaint on behalf of a Muslim woman who was allegedly denied employment at an Abercrombie Kids store in that state because of the applicant’s religiously-mandated headscarf, or hijab.

The woman told CAIR-OK that a district manager claimed he could not hire her because her Islamic headscarf “does not fit the Abercrombie image.”

“Employers have a clear legal duty to accommodate the religious practices of their workers,” said CAIR-OK Executive Director Razi Hashmi. “To deny someone employment because of apparent religious bias goes against long-standing American traditions of tolerance and inclusion.”

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Can Britain survive multiculturalism?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In the modern British politically correct state, multiculturalism runs amok. And the government persecutes and suppresses British culture and tradition, while allowing hate and injustice within radical Islam to flourish.

When former drug dealer and now born again Christian Paul Ray wrote in his blog that the Muslim drug gangs in his hometown of Luton were “savages,” he was arrested on suspicion of a hate crime. “It’s ok for the Muslims to do what they’re doing, and no one arrests them, but then if we start saying and disagreeing with what’s actually happening, then we’re breaching community cohesion and we get arrested for it,” he explained. Ray fled Britain after this interview, because of threats against his life from Muslim gangs.

Whole sections of Britain are now considered dangerous “no-go zones” for non-Muslims.

Sally McNamara is at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation. “When you have a government which is so hampered by political correctness, that they’re unwilling to assert national values of tolerance, of rule of law, of human rights, of women’s rights… then you’re creating mixed messages where you’re saying the extremists can flourish,” she said.

“One of the worst things that is happening in England is that people are being ignored,” Stephen Gash said. Gash helps lead a grassroots group called SIOE, Stop the Islamization of Europe, which has a chapter in Britain. “They’re discriminating against the majority people in Europe now in favor of the Islamists and Muslims.” he added. “The way we’re going, we’re going to be taken back to the stoning age. That’s what’s going to happen to this country.”

It’s clear that multiculturalism and political correctness have backfired badly. The hardcore Islamists have not been assimilated, but the nation’s confidence in democracy and Christian civilization has been sapped, and its will to resist the cultural aggressiveness of radical Islam has been weakened.

CBN News, 27 July 2008

Hate-crime charges in Seattle convenience store attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

King County prosecutors have filed felony hate-crime charges against a Seattle man accused of beating a convenience store clerk while shouting anti-Muslim epithets. Edward Hugh Campbell, who, according to investigators, claimed to be a member of a non-governmental, terrorist-fighting “volunteer army,” faces a single count of malicious harassment for the July 3 assault at a Fremont convenience store.

Court documents say that Campbell, 46, entered the store and began yelling anti-Muslim and anti-Arab slurs at the store clerk. Campbell, who was noticeably intoxicated, then smashed a beer can against the clerk’s face, causing severe cuts around the victim’s left eye.

During the altercation, a customer called 911 as another customer restrained Campbell in the store, in the 400 block of North 36th Street. The clerk was rushed to the hospital by ambulance.

Responding officers took a statement from Campbell, who claimed the clerk “was a Bin Laden sympathizer” who “did not respect (Campbell’s) military uniform.” That uniform, according to police reports, included head-to-toe green camouflage, which Campbell was wearing at the time of his arrest. Campbell is not thought to be an active member of any armed service.

Seattle Post Intelligencer, 29 July 2008

Judge tosses Savage’s suit against Islamic group

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Savage NationSAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage against an Islamic civil rights group over its use of a portion of his show in which he called the Quran a “book of hate.”

Savage sued the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, for copyright infringement and racketeering in a lawsuit late last year, claiming the group violated his rights by using a segment of his “Savage Nation” show in a letter-writing campaign to get advertisers to boycott the program. In the broadcast used by CAIR, Savage also called the Muslim holy book “a throwback document.”

In her ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said people who listen to a public broadcast are entitled to use excerpts for purposes of comment and criticism. She also said no evidence was presented to show that advertising on the show’s broadcast was affected by CAIR’s actions.

The racketeering element of the lawsuit alleged that CAIR was not a civil rights group, but a political organization with ties to terrorist groups. CAIR denies those claims, saying it opposes terrorism and religious extremism.

In an interview with The Associated Press after he filed the lawsuit in December, Savage said he was referring to Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his violent brand of Islamic extremism in the broadcast, not about the religion in general.

Savage’s attorney, Daniel Horowitz, told the San Francisco Chronicle he plans to file a new racketeering suit.

Associated Press, 26 July 2008

See also “Suit against ‘Savage Nation’ radio host tossed”, San Francisco Chronicle, 26 July 2008

Two Muslim women file suit, say McDonald’s banned headscarves

Posted on by Bob Pitt

McDonald's headscarf banDEARBORN, MICH. — Two Muslim women say the manager of a McDonald’s restaurant refused to hire them and insulted them during job interviews because they wear traditional Islamic dress.

Toi Whitfield, 20, of Detroit, and Quiana Pugh, 25, of Dearborn, filed a lawsuit Thursday in Wayne County Circuit Court against McDonald’s, the owner of the local franchise and its unnamed manager. Their representative said they are considering filing civil rights complaints with the federal and state governments.

“I applied for the McDonald’s position maybe two weeks ago and he simply (told me) I had to make a choice and remove my hijab, or I would not be able to establish employment there,” Pugh said.

The restaurant in question sits amid one of the largest concentrations of commercial businesses for Arab-Americans in the country. Like many of the national chain fast-food establishments in the area, it has long served some halal food, which conforms to Muslim dietary requirements. “This manager must have just stepped off of some spaceship to think he can do this in this back yard, in Dearborn,” said Nabih Ayad, a civil rights lawyer who represents the women.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations-Michigan, said that he has eaten at McDonald’s restaurants in Turkey that cater to Muslims and employ them, including numerous women who cover. “It is extremely disturbing that such discrimination could take place at a location which does not mind collecting Muslim dollars, yet places restriction on Muslim women who wear hijab.”

Whitfield said the manager told her she could not wear her headscarf because, “It gets too hot back there.” “I hope that they learn from their mistakes,” she said. “They should not discriminate against people. Everyone should have an equal chance to work at McDonald’s.”

Detroit News, 25 July 2008