US Muslim groups have launched a class action lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft and federal immigration officials over the detention of hundreds of Muslim men.
Four groups said they had filed the suit to protest against last week’s controversial round-up of men from Arab and Muslim nations without permanent residency status in the Los Angeles area.
“People keep asking me what we learned from September 11, 2001 and the deaths of 3,000 of our fellow citizens. I’m tempted to say: Absolutely nothing…. Among the many unlearned lessons of Day-Which-Will-Live-In-Infamy-II – the necessity to control our borders, the need for a patriotic renewal and the importance of combatting multiculturalism – the most significant is the nature of Islam. You will note that I do not say militant Islam, or radical Islam, or Islamic extremism or other such weasel words – but Islam, period.”
On the first anniversary of 9/11, Don Feder offers a balanced assessment of its causes.
“It turns out that the Islamic Middle East, just as the Israelis have been begging us for years to figure out, has got itself trapped in a deep, deep swamp of near-psychotic Jew hatred.”
David Tell applauds MEMRI for providing an insight into the thinking of Muslims in the Middle East.
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson drew criticism Friday from Arab-Americans for describing Islam as a violent religion that wants to “dominate and then, if need be, destroy.” Robertson made the comment Thursday on his “700 Club” television program after watching a segment about Muslims’ views on terrorism.
Co-host Lee Webb asked Robertson why he thought Muslim immigrants would want to live in the United States “if they have such contempt for our foreign policy.” Robertson replied: “Well, as missionaries possibly to spread the doctrine of Islam.” He went on to say that Islam “is not a peaceful religion that wants to coexist. They want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then, if need be, destroy.”
Hussein Ibish, spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a Washington-based civil rights group, said: “The rhetoric is exactly the same as traditional anti-Semitism. All you can do is change the word ‘Jew’ to ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’.”
The Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) today wrote to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert asking that Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, be removed from his position because of bigoted anti-Muslim comments at a Nov. 19 meeting with local Georgia officials. Chambliss told 30 local officials in Valdosta, Ga., that to combat terrorism a Georgia sheriff could be turned loose to “arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line”.
ADC President Ziad Asali, wrote to Speaker Hastert that, in spite of Rep. Chambliss claims that this remark was a “joke”, and that “if anybody’s offended by it, I feel very apologetic toward them”, he should no longer continue as chairman. “ADC feels that Rep. Chambliss is unfit for the chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security in light of these comments,” Asali wrote, “and we ask you to removed him from this position. Joking or not, they reveal a level of insensitivity and intolerance which is completely inappropriate given the concerns attached to this important position.”
Asali’s letter to Speaker Hastert points out that “Having the chair of this crucial House Subcommittee making remarks of this kind sends the worst possible message to the Arab-American and Muslim communities in the United States, to the Arab and Muslim worlds, and to society in general about the level of intolerance and anti-Muslim bigotry that is considered acceptable in the U.S. Congress.”
“We feel that the important work of this Subcommittee may well be undermined by the taint of Rep. Chambliss’ outrageously bigoted remarks,” Asali concluded.
“We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”
Ann Coulter’s response to 9/11.
Daniel Pipes writes: “Fears of a Muslim influx have more substance than the worry about jihad. West European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene.”