Category Archives: USA

Trial under way in Muslim charity case

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Holy_Land_FoundationDALLAS — A group that was once the nation’s largest Muslim charity went on trial on terrorism-support charges Tuesday, with federal prosecutors saying it hoped to destroy Israel and the defense claiming leaders sought advice on staying true to their humanitarian mission.

The trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development is expected to last several months and caps an FBI investigation that lasted more than a decade. The organization and five of its top officials are charged with aiding terrorists, conspiracy and money laundering.

Prosecutor James T. Jacks said in his opening statement that the foundation was created to raise money for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The charity’s leaders lied about their purpose “because to tell the truth is to reveal what they were all about – the destruction of the state of Israel and replacing it with a Palestinian Islamic state,” he said. Some of the money went to support the families of suicide bombers, according to authorities.

Defense attorneys say Holy Land supported humanitarian efforts in Palestinian neighborhoods and did not knowingly aid Hamas. “Holy Land had nothing to do with politics. Its focus was on children in need,” Nancy Hollander, lawyer for Holy Land chief executive Shukri Abu Baker, said in her opening statement.

Associated Press, 24 July 2007

Muslim workers at Nebraska meatpacking plant suffer religious harassment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OMAHA, Neb. —  Supervisors at a meatpacking plant have fired or harassed dozens of Somali Muslim employees for trying to pray at sunset, violating civil rights laws, the workers and their advocates say. The five- to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. The workers at the Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island say they quit, were fired or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has drafted a complaint to be filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The petition compiles testimony from at least 44 workers.

Jama Mohamed, 28, said he was fired in June for leaving a production line to pray. Supervisors would not allow him a break, he said. “Some of them took the (prayer) mat from me; they started shouting, they started telling me to stop it, and one of them grabbed me by the collar of my shirt,” Mohamed said through an interpreter. Mohamed said he was then called to an office, where a supervisor fired him.

Associated Press, 22 July 2007

Victim of US bloggers’ cartoon hits back

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shakeel BhatWith his clenched fists, wild eyes and gnashing teeth he has become the face of Muslim fury, protesting against the enemies of Islam. Shakeel Ahmad Bhat has been on the frontline of political activism in Srinagar, India, for more than a decade. His constant presence, captured by photographers and beamed across the world, has caught the imagination of rightwing bloggers who have dubbed him Islamic Rage Boy and turned him into an internet phenomenon.

But the 30-year-old Kashmiri activist is puzzled, not angered, by his overseas fame. In his first interview with a British newspaper, he says he is carrying out Allah’s wishes. From his home in Fateh Kadal, Malik Angan, he says: “I am not happy with people joking about me or making me into a cartoon, but I have more important things to think about. My protests are for those Muslims who cannot go out onto the streets to cry out against injustice. This is my duty and I believe Allah has decided this for me.”

A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ibrahim Hooper, says: “I find the term Islamic Rage Boy offensive, as would anyone who applied the term to their own faith. It’s an Islamophobic product by Muslim-bashers on internet hate sites.” He compares the cartoon to the anti-semitic imagery of 1930s Nazi Germany. “The cartoon is part of an overall growth of anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country. Someone is trying to link Islam with violence and anger and profiting from it.”

He quotes a recent Newsweek poll, which paints a complicated portrait of US attitudes towards Muslims: 63% of Americans surveyed believe most Muslims do not condone violence and 40% believe the Koran does not condone violence, but 28% believe it does and 41% felt Muslim culture glorifies suicide. Mr Hooper says: “While the majority is not hostile towards Muslims, there is a minority who are, and cartoons like this do not help. You cannot combat one form of extremism with another.”

Guardian, 23 July 2007

Muslims eat children

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Although the recent WND report of al-Qaida terrorists allegedly baking a young boy and serving him as a meal to his relatives was too horrific for some to believe, a major Christian ministry is citing another example – and also claims such a practice has its roots in the historical stories of Islam.”

World Net Daily, 19 July 2007

And yes, that “major Christian ministry” is Patrick Sookhdeo’s Barnabas Fund.

See also Lawrence of Cyberia, 21 July 2007

Salmond response to airport attack ‘boost for radical Islam’ says academic

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scotland UnitedAlex Salmond has boosted the cause of radical Islam in Scotland in his response to the Glasgow Airport attack, a leading Scots academic on religious affairs has claimed.

In a fiercely controversial commentary, Tom Gallagher, the chair of Peace Studies at Bradford University, said that Salmond had courted “radical voices” in the Muslim community following the attempted bombings, lending them a false layer of legitimacy. He also accuses Salmond of deliberately setting out to exploit the attack to win favour with Muslims in Scotland, comparing the First Minister’s style at one point to former Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The comments triggered a furious backlash last night, with claims they amounted to Islamophobia. Salmond’s aides meanwhile described them as “ridiculous”.

Gallagher’s attack, published on the website Open Democracy, was aimed primarily at the Scottish leader of the Muslim Association of Britain, Osama Saeed, who was also an SNP candidate in this year’s Scottish elections. Saeed was among the most prominent figures to speak for the Muslim community following the bombings, which he unreservedly condemned. However, Gallagher accuses Saeed of being an “unapologetic advocate of the hardline Islamism” and accuses him of deceiving Scots following the attack by hiding his real agenda. He attacks Salmond for giving Saeed a platform.

He said: “The Muslim community has been done a great disservice by the SNP which has courted the more radical voices in the community and the result is that it will alter the balance of power in the Muslim community. I’m all for Muslims playing a full role in Scottish life but I think we need to do all we can to question those who just want Muslims to be oppositional and to have international loyalties.”

Saeed has now accused Gallagher of Islamophobia, saying there was no basis for the academic’s attack. He added: “What he is arguing is that everyone who believes in Islam needs to have some kind of witch-hunt placed over them.”

Scotland on Sunday, 22 July 2007

Predictably, Gallagher finds support at the virulently anti-Muslim US website Jihad Watch.

For Osama Saeed’s comments, see Rolled Up Trousers, 22 July 2007

Jews help Muslims fight for right to build mosque in Missouri

Posted on by Bob Pitt

When Rick Isserman found out last month that St. Louis County wouldn’t allow a group of Muslims to build a new mosque in south St. Louis County, the story sounded too familiar.

Forty-eight years earlier, Isserman’s grandfather, Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman, fought to move his congregation, Temple Israel, from the city to the county, where the Jewish population had been relocating for some years. The city of Creve Coeur cited zoning problems and tried to block the move, but the rabbi and his flock took the case to the Missouri Supreme Court and prevailed.

The case, Congregation Temple Israel v. City of Creve Coeur, produced what is considered a landmark religious-freedom decision that says Missouri municipalities can invoke only health or safety issues in denying a religious group the zoning required to build houses of worship.

In the spring, the St. Louis County Council refused the Islamic Community Center’s request to rezone a 4.7-acre parcel it bought a year before for $1.25 million. The Muslims – mostly Bosnian immigrants – planned to build a second mosque and community center in addition to the current mosque and center off South Kingshighway in St. Louis.

When Khalid Shah, a member of the mosque and a friend of Isserman’s, told him about the council’s decision, the 53-year-old Department of Agriculture employee began making the connection to his family’s legal legacy. “I’m fighting the same battle as my grandfather 50 years ago,” Isserman said. “It’s a different community and a different place, but it’s the same issue.”

St Louis Post-Dispatch, 16 July 2007

The case for mistrusting Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… despite friendly and long-lasting relations with many Muslims, my first reaction on seeing Muslims in the street is mistrust…. The fundamental problem is this: There is an asymmetry between the good that many moderate Muslims can do for Britain and the harm that a few fanatics can do to it…. And the plain fact of the matter is that British society could get by perfectly well without the contribution even of moderate Muslims…. their cheap labor that we imported in the 1960s in a vain effort to bolster the dying textile industry, which could not find local labor, is now redundant. In other words, one of the achievements of the bombers and would-be bombers is to make discrimination against most Muslims who wish to enter Britain a perfectly rational policy.”

Theodore Dalrymple in the Los Angeles Times, 8 July 2007

US Christian tells Muslim women what they can wear

Posted on by Bob Pitt

At Comment is Free Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, defends Jack Straw’s offensive and insensitive statements on the niqab:

“Straw defended women’s right to wear less intrusive headscarves; yet he also argued that something is seriously wrong when, in conversation with another person, one cannot engage in face-to-face interaction. Straw was saying that to wear the nijab is a decision to close yourself off from everyone around you….

“As he pointed out, wearing the nijab is not commanded by the Koran and represents a cultural choice, not a religious duty. So long as other ways are available for Muslim women to cover their heads, agreeing not to wear the nijab is a way of signifying one’s membership in a liberal society at minimal cost to one’s religious commitments.”

So, problem sorted then. Though some of us might note the quite stunning arrogance of Christians like Wolfe lecturing adherents of another faith on the nature of their religious duties.

Interviewed in yesterday’s Daily Mail, the Tories’ new shadow minister for community cohesion, Sayeeda Warsi, answered this sort of arrogance rather well: “… when Jack Straw stood up and said, ‘You should not wear the face veil’ I thought, oh my gosh, we now have white men standing up and telling us what to do. And I really thought that men should just butt out of women’s wardrobes.”