Five Orthodox Jewish teens have been slammed with hate-crime charges in the brutal beating of a Pakistani immigrant in Brooklyn. “They hit me in the face with brass knuckles four or five times while somebody held my hands,” said the victim, Shahid Amber, 24, a gas station attendant. “Then they all beat and kicked me. They were screaming ‘Muslim m-f-r. You m-f-g Muslim terrorists. Go back to your country’.”
Category Archives: USA
Federal charges urged in hate attack on NY Muslim
A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on the Justice Department to bring federal charges against a number of teens who attacked a Muslim man in Brooklyn, N.Y., Sunday evening.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said prosecutors are calling the attack a hate crime. The victim, who will require reconstructive facial surgery, said: “They were saying you Muslim terrorist…get out of the country.”
A court hearing for two of the alleged attackers is scheduled for Friday in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
“The viciousness of this attack, coupled with the allegations of bias-motivated slurs should be sufficient to bring federal hate crime charges against the alleged attackers,” said CAIR Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar.
Iftikhar said that CAIR yesterday called on religious and political leaders to repudiate the growing Islamophobia in American society that can lead to such attacks.
‘They are here to take over our country’ – US Baptist warns of Muslim threat
The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures are known for their warnings of doom and gloom, but even Jeremiah – arguably the gloomiest Old Testament sage – would have tipped his hat to the Rev. David Clippard at the Missouri Baptist Convention’s annual meeting here this week.
Clippard reserved his strongest words for what he said he considered paramount for all Americans: the threat of Islam. “Today, Islam has a strategic plan to defeat and occupy America,” he told the 1,200-strong crowd of delegates (called “messengers”), pastors and lay people, many of whom cheered his words.
Clippard said the Saudi Arabian government and royal family had funded teaching positions and 138 Muslim student centers on university campuses across the United States, three in the University of Missouri system in Columbia, Rolla and St. Louis. “What they are after is your sons and daughters,” Clippard said. “They are coming to this country in the guise of students, and the Saudi government is paying their expenses.”
Clippard said that Muslims were hoping to take over the United States government one city at a time, and that they were starting with Detroit, where there is already a large Muslim population. “They are trying to establish a Muslim state inside America, and they are going to take the city of Detroit back to the 15th century and practice Sharia (or Islamic) law there.”
Muslim bashing sets off furore in US
A Hernando County commissioner said Tuesday that he is “in total agreement” with a letter his wife wrote calling Islam a “hateful, frightening religion.”
“Overall, worldwide, it certainly is,” said Commissioner Tom Hogan Sr. “Don’t you read your own paper?” He went on to say, “There’s a saying out there, and there’s some truth to it, that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. It’s their thing.”
The Hogans are widely considered the first couple of Hernando County’s Republican Party, and both have helped lead the party since the 1960s. Their comments earned wide condemnation Tuesday from political colleagues.
Local Muslim leaders reacted with shock and dismay, with one Islamic advocacy group saying it will call for Hogan’s ouster from the County Commission.
“We’re deeply concerned about the hateful and racist nature of these comments,” said Ahmed Bedier, executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, promising to call on Gov. Jeb Bush to remove Hogan from office.
“They can call it whatever they want to,” Mary Ann Hogan responded Tuesday. “I’m calling them barbarians.”
St Petersburg Times, 31 October 2006
Update: “CAIR-FL: Gubernatorial candidate asked to remove Muslim-basher”, CAIR press release, 3 November 2006
Update 2: See “FL gubernatorial candidate drops Islamophobe”, CAIR press release, 3 November 2006
Brooklyn attack victim speaks out
Police are calling it a vicious hate crime. The victim is Pakistani and his alleged attackers are a group of Jewish teenagers. The victim is at Bellevue Hospital where he is recovering. He tells us the doctors here have informed him that he will require reconstructive facial surgery.
“They were saying you Muslim terrorist..get out of the country,” Shahid Amber said.
Those are the words that 24-year-old Shahid Amber says preceded a violent attack by a mob of teenagers – an attack prosecutors are now calling a hate crime. “One of them spit in my face and then when I wipe the spit off my face, I opened my eyes and saw brass knuckles,” he said.
The incident happened Sunday night in the Midwood section of Brooklyn right outside a Dunkin’ Doughnuts near the corner of Avenue M and East 15th Street.
Shahid Amber, who is Pakistani, was standing outside eating ice cream when witnesses say he was surrounded by a group of Jewish teenagers who attacked him. This man saw it happen. “He was Pakistani, he came inside with all the blood on his face…” the man said.
US right-winger condemns Bush, appeals for defence of Western civilisation
Over at World Net Daily, Barbara Simpson accuses President Bush of being soft on Islam:
“His continued mantra about the ‘religion of peace’ and his ongoing efforts to be welcoming to Muslims, insults the intelligence of those who see the reality of the danger from militant Islam. It’s also insulting for our president and the administration to treat American citizens as children who need to be taught tolerance and acceptance when the reality of the war against us is clearly evident. ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see.‘ In this case, our blind leaders bring us to the abyss.
“It’s too easy to view the battle between Islam and the West as military. The truth is more insidious. In fact, many imams have spoken openly that they’ll accomplish their mission via immigration and procreation. Every country in Europe faces this and as the population grows by Muslim birth rates and immigration, Muslims demand their culture be accepted. While Europeans are beginning to chafe under the pressures, it may well be too late to stop the tide….
“There’s a difference between emigrating to a country to become part of it and moving there to change the culture. What will it take for us to admit that? Why don’t we proudly protect the culture of Western civilization and value it for what its meant to human rights, freedom and equality – the best in the history of the world?
“We’re in a religious war, fought on one level by passive integration through large families and massive immigration and on another level by the ancient barbarity of beheadings, torture and terrorist attacks on civilians.”
‘This focus on the niqab is a distraction’ – Salma Yaqoob on the veil ‘debate’
This focus on the niqab is a distraction
By Salma Yaqoob
Morning Star, 30 October 2006
THE debate on Muslim integration continues unabated. Since Home Secretary John Reid’s comments about mythical Muslim “no-go” areas over a month ago, the Muslim community have been the subject of an avalanche of commentary from politicians and the media. Overwhelmingly negative and one-sided, most of this “debate” is thinly disguised Muslim bashing.
I was pleased, therefore, to be approached by the Morning Star to give my thoughts on a more genuine debate that has taken place on the issue of the veil in the letters page. Given the Star’s impeccable record of opposition to US imperialism and racism, I know that whatever the differences that may arise, I am having a conversation with friends.
Most of those who have written in support of Jack Straw’s comments have no time for either his record as foreign minister or his opportunism. But they do think the wearing of the veil is a legitimate topic for discussion. What is wrong with having a debate about religious strictures regarding Islamic dress for women, especially when such strictures have been used as a tool for women’s oppression?
To a significant degree, I agree with them. There is nothing wrong with having an informed discussion or critical debate about the veil or any other aspect of Muslim life. Indeed, how can non-Muslims understand lived Islam without such a dialogue? And how can Muslims and, especially, Muslim women, tackle the abuses of Islam within the community without such discussion and debate?
Pentagon advisor: West Point should weigh Muslim applicants carefully
The number of Islamic cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, has increased dramatically in the past year; however, a prominent foreign policy expert and graduate of West Point says America’s oldest military academy needs to be very careful when considering Muslim applicants who seek admission to the school.
Recently, the U.S. Military Academy announced that it has opened its first space dedicated to Muslims – a worship hall, complete with a pulpit facing Mecca. In 2001, there were only two Muslim cadets at West Point; but this year there are 32, which is ten more than were enrolled last year.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Bob Maginnis feels West Point officials should exercise caution when considering Muslim applicants who might embrace jihad. “That’s where your leadership have to make the determination as to who to allow into the military academy,” he says.
Maginnis thinks it would also be wise for academy officials to consider the implications of creating a worship space for followers of Islam on the military leadership training school’s campus. He says here, again, West Point’s leadership needs to think about “whether or not the sanctioning of a religious service of that nature would serve the overall best interest” of America and the U.S. military.
Muslim Brotherhood rejects taxi cab slur
In the US over the past few days a popular anti-Muslim scare story has concerned the alleged refusal of Somali taxi drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to pick up passengers carrying alcohol.
The right-wing blog Power Line opined that “the airport taxi controversy exposes one template for the Islamist imperial project forcing the acceptance of Sharia law by the infidels”. And, basing itself on an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Little Green Footballs announced: “Muslim Brotherhood behind airport taxi controversy.”
In response, the Muslim Brotherhood has issued a statement denying that it was in any way involved:
Women who wear the niqab are the same as terrorist bombers, says Hirsi Ali
Another plug for the provocateur Ayaan Hirsi Ali, currently pursuing her career in a right-wing US think-tank. She offers the following helpful contribution to the “debate” over the veil:
“… what increasingly alarms me is the emergence of a post 9/11 generation of young women in the West who are out to make a statement by wearing the niqab. They enjoy all the western freedoms but choose to flaunt the veil. They are the female equivalent of the radical young men who travel to Pakistan and come back wanting to blow up trains.”