Category Archives: USA

Suit filed to stop building of Florida mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Pompano Beach man who opposes a planned mosque in his neighborhood filed a lawsuit in state court Tuesday against three Islamic groups supporting the project.

Rodney Wright claims the mosque would bring an extremist form of Islam to his neighborhood. He wants a judge to order the Islamic Center of South Florida not to build it, saying the mosque would be a “nuisance” that would lower his property value, according to Broward Circuit Court records.

Islamic community leaders say Wright is misrepresenting their religion and beliefs. The Council on American-Islamic Relations Florida, a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes the understanding of Islam, is among the groups being sued.

The Islamic Center plans to build the 29,400-square-foot worship center and school. The city approved a zoning change for the project at 1501 NW 16th Ave. last year. The new worship center would replace an existing mosque on Northeast Sixth Street.

The Islamic Center, the Council on American Islamic Relations and CAIR Florida Inc. are named in the lawsuit. A representative of the Islamic Center could not be reached for comment.

Altaf Ali, executive director of the Florida Chapter of CAIR, said Wright’s claims are false. “It’s unfortunate that in this day and age, that you will find such a frivolous lawsuit being filed,” he said.

Wright’s attorney, Larry Klayman, said his client “feels strongly that the mosque is a security threat and it’s going to disrupt the entire neighborhood.” “It is the goal of the [Islamic Center] to spread radical Islam throughout the United States,” the lawsuit says.

Wright is getting support from the Rev. O’Neal Dozier, the minister who spoke out against the project last year, calling Islam a “dangerous and evil cult.” Dozier is not a party to the suit.

Florida Sun-Sentinel, 2 May 2007

Methodists back Muslims over mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mount Zion chapel (2)After years of searching for a place to worship, Muslims in the northern English town of Clitheroe have won planning permission to transform a former Methodist chapel into a mosque.

Local Methodists and other faith groups have been among the mosque’s supporters, standing alongside their Muslim neighbors as they faced vocal opposition and even racial abuse from those who campaigned against the proposed mosque.

“This is a basic issue of human rights,” said the Rev. Christopher Cheeseman, superintendent minister of the Clitheroe Methodist Circuit. “These are people of faith who wish to find a place to worship.”

Cheeseman and fellow Methodists, along with other local Christians, Jews and Buddhists, have made it their business to counter the efforts of the far-right British National Party in Clitheroe. Many feel the party has exploited divisions in this community over the new mosque, deliberately fanning the flames of racial hatred for their own political gain.

During local elections in 2003, British National Party campaign fliers depicted the town dominated by a domed mosque with minarets, even though the new mosque and community center plans contain no alterations to the exterior of the church building.

The Rev. Dale Barton, interfaith officer for the Lancashire Churches Together organization, said the basic right to religious freedom is at stake in Clitheroe. He recalled attending an independent inquiry about the mosque application where openly racist insults were directed against local Muslims. Deeply disturbed by what he saw and heard, Barton said it was “the most racist meeting I’ve been to in my entire life.”

A spokesperson for the local council told United Methodist News Service the council had received a number of letters opposed to the mosque proposal that were so racist and offensive they couldn’t be made public.

United Methodist Church news report, 1 May 2007

Mark D. Tooley is not happy: “the Christian clerics who promoted the mosque sometimes seemed blissfully unaware of the demographic trends that prophesy their own potential demise in Britain and in an increasingly Islamicized Europe. Amid their quickness in painting mosque opponents as semi-fascist, they showed little sadness over a once vibrant Christian church becoming a place of worship for Allah….. do Christian leaders who celebrate the removal of the cross from a church in favor of the Islamic crescent really honor their own faith? Or have they succombed to a new religion in which politically correct multiculturalism has displaced the Deity?”

Front Page Magazine, 3 May 2007

Muslim woman sues judge over veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

DETROIT – A Muslim woman whose small-claims court case was dismissed after she refused to remove her veil sued the judge Wednesday, saying her religious and civil rights were violated. Ginnnah Muhammad, 42, of Detroit, says in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit that Judge Paul Paruk’s request to remove her veil – and his decision to dismiss her case when she didn’t – was unconstitutional based on her First Amendment right to practice her religion.

Muhammad wore a niqab during the October hearing in Hamtramck, a city surrounded by Detroit. She was contesting a $2,750 charge from a rental-car company to repair a vehicle that she said thieves had broken into. Paruk told her he needed to see her face to judge her truthfulness and gave her a choice: take off the veil while testifying or have the case dismissed. She kept it on.

Associated Press, 28 March 2007

Fox reports parody about Muslims as real news

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Last week in the town of Lewiston, Maine, a group of Somalian Muslim middle school students were the subject of a cruel prank when their peers placed a ham steak next to them in order to personally offend the students. School officials filed a report because the students considered the act to be a hate/bias crime. This actual story was then spoofed by a parody site called Associated Content, which made up quotes and details, such as the school’s intention to “create an anti-ham ‘response plan’.”

On Tuesday, Fox & Friends reported these parody quotes and details as actual news. Poking fun at the students, hosts asked whether ham was “a hate crime … or lunch?” and showed screen shots of ham sandwiches, starving Somalians, belching, animal noises, and mock “reenactments” of the incident. Ironically, the hosts assured viewers several times, “We’re not making this up!”

Think Progress, 27 April 2007

Update:  See “Fox sued for airing fake ‘ham sandwich’ story”, Think Progress, 2 July 2007

Update 2:  See “‘Gullible’ Fox & Friends escape lawsuit for repeating yet another false news story”, Media Matters, 6 June 2008

Giuliani plays the Islamic terror card

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Maybe Rudy Giuliani could be forgiven for trying out various stump speeches on his Republican audiences now that his campaign for President is up and running. But the message he is delivering as he tours New Hampshire needs to be rejected, indeed repudiated, because as Barak Obama noted Giuliani’s stump speech reached a new low in American political discourse. Reports just in from New Hampshire (4.24.07) suggest that Giuliani thinks the issue he has been pushing may be pure electoral gold: the fear which he believes American voters have of Islamic Terrorism.”

Counterpunch, 26 April 2007

Virginia Tech shootings – it was the Muslims wot done it

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Debbie Schlussel“Here’s what we know about the murderer of at least 32 students and maimer of at least 28 more at Virginia Tech, today: The murderer has been identified by law enforcement and media reports as ‘a young Asian male’. The Virginia Tech campus has a very large Muslim community, many of which are from Pakistan (per terrorism investigator Bill Warner). Pakis are considered ‘Asian’…. Why am I speculating that the ‘Asian’ gunman is a Pakistani Muslim? Because law enforcement and the media strangely won’t tell us more specifically who the gunman is. Why? Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.”

Right-wing US pundit Debbie Schlussel offers her insights into the Virginia Tech campus shootings.

debbieschlussel.com, 16 April 2007

BBC News reports: “Police have named a student who shot dead at least 30 people at a US university as Cho Seung-hui, a 23-year-old from South Korea.”

Pipes in search of ‘moderate Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes5“When I suggest that radical Muslims are the problem and that moderate Muslims are the solution, the nearly inevitable retort from most people is: ‘What moderate Muslims?’ … My response: Moderate Muslims do exist. But of course, they constitute a very small movement when compared to the Islamist onslaught.”

Daniel Pipes in the New York Sun, 17 April 2007

Given that Pipes categorises the Progressive Muslim Union as “really another Islamist organization – but with a hip tone”, you can see that there are very few Muslims who qualify for the appellation “moderate”, as far as Pipes is concerned. The one “moderate Muslim” Pipes does enthusiastically endorse is Irshad Manji – who, not entirely coincidentally, is a great admirer of the state of Israel.

Florida mosque burns – arson suspected

Posted on by Bob Pitt

TAMPA – The fire melted the mosque’s photographs, burned the thick, green carpet down to bare concrete. A pile of singed prayer rugs sat on the floor. Bookcases along a wall held dozens of scorched Korans. Outside, investigators discovered a can of gasoline, said Hillsborough Fire Rescue spokesman Ray Yeakley.

Someone deliberately set fire Thursday morning to the Islamic Education Center of Tampa, a mosque tucked into a neighborhood of tidy suburban homes in Town ‘N Country, according to Hillsborough Fire Rescue and the FBI. Whether hate fueled the fire remained under investigation, said FBI Special Agent Dave Couvertier.

The arsonist found the building empty when the blaze began about 9:30 a.m. Fire crews say someone poured gasoline in a window and set it ablaze. A neighbor called 911, and fire crews controlled the fire within 20 minutes, Yeakley said.

The fire stunned Hamid Faraji, one of the center’s leaders. He wondered why someone would burn a place of worship. But, he said, the fire won’t disrupt religious services. “Even if we had a tent and had to operate out of a tent, I don’t believe something as materialistic as that should stop education,” said Faraji.

There’s been trouble before at the mosque, a block building on Rockpointe Drive. In July 2005, burglars vandalized the building. They burned two pictures on the wall. No one was arrested. There also have been two minor break-ins – the most recent was nine months ago – where people shifted things around inside the building, said Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for the Tampa office of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

There are those with concerns about the mosque, said Bruce Tokarski, 26, a neighbor. “Some of the neighbors seem kind of freaked out about it,” he said. “I think there’s a racist assumption that just because they’re Muslim they could be involved in, you know, terrorism.”

Tampa Bay Times, 13 April 2007