Category Archives: USA

US Report: anti-Muslim hate crime jumps 52 percent

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A report released by a prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group indicates that anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States increased by more than 50 percent in the past year, from 93 cases in 2003 to 141 in 2004.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) report – the only annual study of its kind – outlines 1522 incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment in 2004, the highest number of Muslim civil rights cases ever recorded in the Washington-based group’s annual report. (Hundreds of anti-Muslim incidents reported immediately following the 9/11 attack were detailed in a separate report.) According to the study, called Unequal Protection,” that figure is a 49 percent jump over the preceding year.

CAIR said factors contributing to the sharp increase in reported incidents included the lingering impact of post-9/11 fears, increased awareness of civil rights issues in the Muslim community, a general increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric, growth in the number of local CAIR chapters reporting cases, and abuses associated with the implementation of national security policies.

(The complete report may be viewed at: http://www.cair-net.org/asp/2005CivilRightsReport.pdf)

CAIR news release, 11 May 2005

‘Muslim Brotherhood – of terrorists’ (according to MEMRI)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MEMRI executive director Steven Stalinsky expresses indignation at reports that the US government has opened channels to the Muslim Brotherhood. He objects that the “pro-jihad terrorist ideology of the Brotherhood” makes it “difficult to understand how anyone in the US would consider a dialogue with the group”.

Front Page Magazine, 10 May 2005

Not so difficult, I’d have thought. In Egypt, under any fair system of election, the Muslim Brotherhood would almost certainly form the largest parliamentary party. Its offshoot Hamas has just polled well in the Palestinian Authority local elections, defeating Fatah in the larger towns. The US State Department has evidently woken up to the fact that it’s a bit counterproductive to call for democracy in the Middle East while at the same time denouncing as jihadists, terrorists and enemies of western civilisation the very forces that democracy will most likely bring to power.

Islamophobia may indeed be a racist tool of western imperialism but, in the form promoted by Steven Stalinsky, Daniel Pipes, Jihad Watch et al, it in fact runs counter to the interests of US foreign policy as understood by its more pragmatic exponents.

The Muslim threat to Western Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“I would encourage all responsible-minded people to get up to speed on what’s going on in the Netherlands, and in Western Europe generally. The country I cherished a few years ago as the most liberal in the world has an increasingly large – and increasingly alienated – population of extreme reactionaries who despise, and seek to destroy, its liberalism.”

Andrew Sullivan’s chum Bruce Bawer on the Muslim threat to Europe.

The Daily Dish, 9 May 2005

Soldier lifts lid on Guantanamo abuse

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A former US soldier who worked on interrogations at Guantanamo Bay has written a damning expose of the brutal, degrading treatment he says was meted out to prisoners there. Sgt Erik Saar’s book, Inside the Wire, comes with the US military’s treatment of prisoners in the spotlight due to court hearings over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. In an interview with the BBC, Sgt Saar says that bizarre, sexual abuses at the prison camp set dangerous precedents that paved the way for mistreatment of US detainees in Iraq.

BBC News, 9 May 2005

Report to show sharp jump in anti-Muslim hate crimes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On Wednesday, May 11, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will hold a noon news conference in the nation’s capital to release its 10th annual report, titled “Unequal Protection,” on the status of Muslim civil rights in the United States.

The Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group’s report – the only annual study of its kind – will show a significant increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes during 2004 and an 11-year high in the total number of reported cases. (States with the largest numbers of reported incidents include California, New York, Arizona , Virginia, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey, and Illinois.)

The report’s authors believe at least some of the sharp rise in anti-Muslim incidents can be attributed to growing Islamophobia in American society. That disturbing phenomenon will be addressed at a CAIR conference, called “Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism: Causes and Remedies,” to be held this weekend in Washington , D.C. SEE: http://www.cair-net.org/2005conference/

CAIR news release, 9 May 2005

Turkey: The road to Sharia?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“As Turkey drifts toward Islamization, some serious questions arise: Is Turkey even our ally? Is Turkish accession to the EU in America’s interests? Does the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which leads Turkey’s government, threaten Turkish secularism? What policy should the Bush administration pursue toward Turkey?”

Right-wingers discuss the terrible threat posed by the AKP – one of the most moderate Islamist parties in existence.

Daniel Pipes opines: “… while radical Islam in many ways parallels fascism and communism (the brutal drive to power, the totalitarian goals, the intent to defeat the West), it differs in one key way – radical Islam rides a wave of international popular support the other movements never had. This creates a dilemma for the Bush administration, whose urgent push for democracy turns out to enable Islamists to reach power. Worse yet, Washington is beginning to whitewash the Islamists, and even the terrorist organizations among them. The government of Recep Tayyip Erdoðan presents the most advanced and difficult form of this dilemma, however. Though many wish to avert their eyes from his Islamist background, foreground, and future, that ideology defines his prime ministry. Is the U.S. government going to sit by, applauding, as he creates the Islamic Republic of Turkey?”

Front Page Magazine, 6 May 2005

Celebration in Harlem as girl held in terror inquiry is released

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It began with two 16-year-old immigrant girls arrested at dawn, detained far from home, and, in a chilling government assertion, called would-be suicide bombers who posed “an imminent threat to the security of the United States.” But now, after holding the girls for six weeks in a Pennsylvania detention center, the government has quietly released one of the girls and is allowing the other to leave the country with her family.

New York Times, 7 May 2005

‘War on error’ – Merryl Wyn Davies on ‘Kingdom of Heaven’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It is a film with no historic context because it is all about today. As usual, Scott attempts to import a confused liberal’s wish fulfilment into history. But along the way what Hollywood actually gets is what it always sells: a vindication of the American Dream, which, in this instance, provides a fig leaf for pre-emptive democracy building.”

Merryl Wyn Davies reviews “Kingdom of Heaven”.

Scotsman, 7 May 2005

Robert Spencer, however, denounces it as “a dream movie for those guilt-ridden creatures who believe that all the trouble between the Islamic world and the West has been caused by Western imperialism, racism, and colonialism, and that the glorious paradigm of Islamic tolerance, which was once a beacon to the world, could be reestablished if only the nasty white men of America and Europe would back off”.

Front Page Magazine, 3 May 2005

Update: Spencer denounces what he calls “the dhimmi Merryl Wyn Davies piece” – evidently oblivious to the fact that Merryl Wyn Davies is a Muslim.