Category Archives: USA

US air base ex-guard convicted of hiding Muslim name

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Southeast Washington man who did not disclose his Muslim name on an application for a job as a private security guard at Andrews Air Force Base was convicted yesterday of making a false statement. Darrick Jackson, 38, left his Muslim name off the application, prosecutors said, to conceal his ties to a local imam known for inflammatory comments.

Jackson, whose first trial ended last year with a hung jury, was tried again this week in federal court in Greenbelt. After deliberating for about a day and a half, the jury found Jackson guilty. He faces up to five years in prison.

Jackson was trying to avoid being linked to Abdul Alim Musa, prosecutors said. Musa has led a mosque in Southeast for almost 20 years and is known for his provocative comments about the United States, Israel and other subjects.

In an interview last night, Musa said the prosecution was “hassling Muslims.” “We regard all of this as just harassment, just the federal government playing around,” Musa said.

Washington Post, 28 June 2008

Posted in USA

Exploiting the Muslim-Jewish divide

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“There’s a disturbing trend in this 2008 election. We are witnessing the manipulation and exploitation of Muslim-Jewish differences by political candidates in pursuit of votes. As advocates for our respective communities, we believe it’s in America’s interest that it stop.

“It appears that the political logic of the candidates and their handlers calls for winning Jewish American support at the expense of Muslim American voters. This takes the shape of aggressive outreach to the Jewish community while Muslims go ignored. That strategy may be politically expedient, but it is inherently flawed. Muslims see their exclusion as a betrayal of American values, and many Jews are alarmed by the parallels to their own historical political exclusion.

“American Jews are all too familiar with institutionalized bigotry. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Rep. John Rankin opposed the immigration of Holocaust survivors, and he opposed integration. In that McCarthyite, anti-Communist era, politicians clamped down against those who they thought threatened the changing fabric of America – namely, Jews. Now, Muslims are on the receiving end of similar suspicions, this time in the name of fighting terrorism.”

Salam Al-Marayati and Steven B. Jacobs  in the Los Angeles Times, 26 June 2008

Muslim physicist says feds retaliated against him

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abdel-Moniem El-GanayniPITTSBURGH — An Islamic nuclear physicist on Thursday accused the U.S. Department of Energy of revoking his security clearance in retaliation for his criticism of the government’s treatment of Muslims.

Moniem El-Ganayni had worked at the Bettis Laboratory in the Pittsburgh suburb of West Mifflin for 18 years. He was fired in May after the department revoked his security clearance, according to a federal lawsuit filed on his behalf Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Department of Energy denied El-Ganayni the right to appeal the revocation by saying its reasons are classified and could violate national security if made public. El-Ganayni is demanding that he be allowed to contest it before a “nonpolitical, neutral arbiter as mandated by DOE regulations.”

“Everything I strived for all my life came to an end without a chance to defend myself,” said El-Ganayni, 57, an Egyptian who moved to the United States in 1980.

Bettis Laboratory works on the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, a joint Navy-Energy Department program responsible for nearly all aspects of U.S. nuclear-powered warships. El-Ganayni’s security clearance granted him access to classified information needed for his job.

El-Ganayni has been active in Pittsburgh’s Muslim community, helped establish one of the area’s first mosques and is a past president of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh. He has given speeches critical of U.S. foreign policy, the war in Iraq and attempts by the FBI to recruit Muslim tipsters inside mosques. El-Ganayni has also ministered to Muslim prison inmates.

El-Ganayni has never received a negative report or evaluation from Bettis Laboratory, and even after the revocation process began, his superiors made it clear they would like to have him back, said Vic Walczak, the ACLU’s Pennsylvania legal director.

“The Energy Department knows it cannot admit that it revoked Dr. El-Ganayni’s clearance because he has been an outspoken critic of the U.S. government’s treatment of Muslims, so it is hiding behind ‘national security’ to avoid having to explain itself,” Walczak said.

El-Ganayni said he was questioned twice since October, when the Energy Department said disclosing the reasons for the revocation would hurt national security.

According to the lawsuit, officials with the Energy Department and FBI asked about El-Ganayni’s speeches, his views on suicide bombings and the Quran, and a conflict he had with the Pennsylvania prison system over a decision to bar him from raising funds for a Muslim religious feast.

Associated Press, 27 June 2008 

See also ACLU press release, 26 June 2008

Update:  See “Muslim physicist leaves U.S. after losing security clearance”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 28 November 2008

Obama snubs US Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.

Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.

“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message’.”

When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.

While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Mr. Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations – unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts – have been ignored. Last week, two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred by campaign volunteers from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit.

In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.

“This is the ‘hope campaign’, this is the ‘change campaign’,” said Mr. Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota. Muslims are frustrated, he added, that “they have not been fully engaged in it.”

New York Times, 24 June 2008

See also Amy Chozik’s article in the Wall Street Journal, 23 June 2008

Posted in USA

Radical Islam main threat to US economy says McCain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In an interview with Fortune, Republican presidential candidate John McCain was asked what the single gravest long term threat to the U.S. economy was. This is not an easy question, with so many choices and all. Is it the housing crisis or the credit crisis? What about the huge deficit the country is running, or the rising cost of energy? How about Social Security? McCain didn’t select any of those options; instead, he said that radical Islam was the single biggest threat to the U.S. economy. Pardon me a moment while I let this sink in a bit…nope, still don’t see it…”

InvestorCentricBlog, 23 June 2008

The ‘politics of inclusion’ takes a hit

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hebba Aref and Shimaa AbdelfadeelA disgraceful thing happened at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena earlier this week.

Americans were discriminated against by other Americans who thought head scarves would send the wrong message about their candidate’s religious affiliation. In other words – the soft bigotry of Islamophobia is finally ready for its close-up in the Obama campaign.

Hebba Aref was born in the United States 25 years ago to Egyptian immigrants. She is a lawyer and a taxpaying citizen. Ms. Aref is also an American Muslim, though there is some debate in this country whether her religious affiliation undermines her claim to be a “loyal American.”

Ms. Aref and her friend, Shimaa Abdelfadeel, were among the 20,000 Americans who made the pilgrimage to downtown Detroit to cheer for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in person.

For months, Mr. Obama has been traveling the country, assuring audiences that the success of his campaign is proof America is turning the corner on the politics of racial and religious suspicion. Mr. Obama promises that he’ll be an exemplar of a more inclusive politics. He insists that the old divisions of race, gender and religion that polarize our politics today will not find favor during an Obama administration.

So the question must be asked: Why were two Muslim women wearing hijabs told by Obama campaign workers that they couldn’t sit behind the candidate during a televised speech because of the “sensitive political climate”? On what planet would such cowardice and discrimination be consistent with a politics of inclusion?

The Obama campaign issued an apology as soon as the incident was reported: “It is offensive and counter to [our] commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run,” the campaign statement read. “We sincerely apologize for this behavior.”

Fair enough, but how did lowly campaign workers decide that Muslim head scarves weren’t ready for prime time with Barack Obama? Could it be that the Obama campaign’s almost pathological fear of being associated with Islam when so many Americans continue to believe the candidate is a “secret Muslim” has trickled down to the ushers?

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 20 June 2008

See also “Obama calls 2 Muslim women to apologize for snub at rally” in the Detroit Free Press.

Meanwhile the inimitable Debbie Schlussel is witch-hunting Hebba Aref and Shimaa Abdelfadeel with accusations of terrorist sympathies and antisemitism.

Pa. lawmaker’s anti-Muslim comment derails measure

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daryl MetcalfeHARRISBURG, Pa. — State lawmakers Wednesday held up voting on a resolution in recognition of a Muslim group’s upcoming convention after a legislator protested that “the Muslims do not recognize Jesus Christ as God.”

Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican from Butler County, north of Pittsburgh, said he opposed the House’s formal recognition of this weekend’s 60th annual convention in Harrisburg of the U.S. chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. “The Muslims do not recognize Jesus Christ as God and I will be voting negative,” he said on the House floor.

The two-page resolution, sponsored by Speaker Dennis O’Brien, a Republican from Philadelphia, noted that the convention’s mission was to “increase faith and harmony and introduce various humanitarian, social and religious services.”

The remarks by Metcalfe drew a rebuke from Democratic Rep. Jewell Williams of Philadelphia. “We should be careful in making these remarks and we should support all people in America,” Williams said.

A Jewish lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Babette Josephs of Philadelphia, also protested and said she would seek to have Metcalfe’s remarks stricken from the official record. She said Metcalfe’s position places a religious test on House resolutions, which generally clear the chamber quickly and unanimously.

“I wonder what I would not also qualify for – being on the floor myself?” she said later. “Having the right to vote? Having the right to practice my religion? That’s what I was responding to. And we have other people who are not Jewish and not Christian on the floor – some elected, some not.”

Associated Press, 19 June 2008

See also “CAIR: Penn. Muslims ask legislature to reject religious ‘litmus test'”, CAIR press release, 19 June 2008

Friendswood principal backed in Islam flap

Posted on by Bob Pitt

About 200 Friendswood residents, divided over a junior high principal’s decision to let an Islamic group make a presentation to students last month, packed Tuesday night’s school board meeting as the governing body considered whether to ban any future religious presentations by outsiders.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Houston sought permission to address the mostly Anglo student body at Friendswood Junior High after a Muslim student was stuffed head-first into a trash can by a classmate. Principal Robin Lowe agreed to the 40-minute PowerPoint presentation on the basic beliefs of Islam, which drew howls of protest from some parents, talk radio hosts and Christian clergy.

Last week, Lowe requested and received a new central administration job because she felt the controversy made continuing at the junior high impossible, Superintendent Trish Hanks said.

Most who spoke Tuesday blasted the school board and Hanks for not supporting Lowe.

“I ask that you as a board take certain actions — reinstate Robin Lowe with a suitable and public apology,” said longtime Friendswood resident Tom Burke, drawing a loud burst of applause and whoops of approval from the audience. “Pledge to listen to the wishes of the large, but all too silent majority, and close your ears to the vocal minority. This community has been embarrassed. You can turn that around and make yourselves and your community proud.”

Other speakers, however, accused CAIR of having links to terrorism.

Houston Chronicle, 10 June 2008

See also “R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Religious persecution, not lessons in tolerance and diversity, should spark outrage”, Houston Chronicle, 7  June 2008

Robert Kennedy assassination – ‘the beginning of Islamic terrorism in America’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Alan Dershowitz on the shooting of Robert Kennedy: “I thought of it as an act of violence motivated by hatred of Israel and of anybody who supported Israel. It was in some ways the beginning of Islamic terrorism in America. It was the first shot.”

Boston Globe, 5 June 2008

“Sirhan, a Christian Palestinian immigrant, said he was angry at Kennedy because he supported Israel in the 1967 war over the rights of the Palestinians. This was an instance of one Christian killing another Christian for political, not religious, reasons. Why does Dershowitz conflate Palestinian with Islamic, other than to spread fear of Muslims?”

Letter in the Boston Globe, 9 June 2008