A federal judge agreed Thursday to give the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro more time to complete construction and occupy its new building on Veals Road on the southeast side of town.
U.S. District Judge Kevin Sharp extended a temporary restraining order until Aug. 15 after another federal judge last week ordered Rutherford County to restart the inspection process on the mosque.
MOUNT JULIET, Tenn. — Several workers said they were shocked after they were sent to the restroom to pray and not long after they lost their jobs.
Several Muslim employees at the CEVA Logistics in Mt. Juliet said they were discriminated against because of how and where they chose to spend their breaks.
“I’ve lived here for 19 years in America. I grew up here. I don’t think I should be treated in this way,” said Abdir Ahman
Nine Muslim employees said they were fired Wednesday from the plant for using their breaks to pray during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.
Republican politicians’ attack on a Muslim State Department official echoes the Communist witch-hunts of an earlier era, argues former CIA station chief and GOP supporter Robert Grenier
Forty-two religious and secular organizations united on Thursday in condemning conservative lawmakers’ allegations that Muslim-American individuals connected to the U.S. government may be trying to spread the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.
They directed their criticisms at Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Thomas Rooney (R-Fla.) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), who recently wrote to various government agencies and asked them to investigate the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. In their letters, the lawmakers targeted top State Department official Huma Abedin and several advisers to the Department of Homeland Security.
The Huffington Post examines the cases of Mohamed Elibiary, Mohamed Magid and Dalia Mogahed.
Elibiary, who serves as an advisor for the Department of Homeland Security, says of Michele Bachmann and her colleagues:
“They feel like there’s no consequences to what they’re doing, no negativity, and they just wrap themselves in the flag like they’re the only uber-patriots out there. There are real peoples’ lives that are affected. This is a witch hunt to just make sure that we ruin every Muslim who is serving in any capacity in the government, period.”
See also “Well paid Islamophobe Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy’s crusade against American Muslims”, Straight Record, 25 July 2012
EDMOND, Okla. — There is a controversy in Edmond involving the expansion of a local mosque. The small mosque, which has been in Edmond for 20 years, sits across from the University of Central Oklahoma. Officials have requested permits to expand the building to five times the size it is now.
When neighbors were notified about the expansion plan, letters of complaint began coming in. In a hand-written note the writer asked planning commissioners to look at recent events in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and “what our grandchildren are going to face.” In one letter the sender called the mosque near UCO, “a headquarters for terrorist affiliate organizations.”
State Sen. David Storobin has joined the hopeless fight against a mosque being built in Sheepshead Bay – a battle that’s been repeatedly quashed in the courts and has left political insiders believing that the newly minted legislator is more concerned with winning votes than helping mosque opponents.
Storobin fired off a letter to Mayor Bloomberg last week, claiming that the house of worship is thumbing its nose at city laws and threatens its neighbors’ lives. “This may pose a danger to public safety,” Storobin (R–Brighton Beach) wrote as he bashed the city for allowing work on a house of worship continue.
Yet political insiders say Storobin is using the mosque fight to strengthen his image as a right-wing conservative – something that will help him in the race for a new Midwood district peopled with conservative Orthodox Jews. “He thinks being further to the right is more helpful to him in getting elected than being for diversity is,” said political analyst Hank Sheinkopf.
A prominent Phoenix tea party leader who believes Muslims cannot be trusted to be loyal to the United States and should not be working for the federal government is incensed with U.S. Sen. John McCain’s defense of a top State Department official and is eying a recall drive against Arizona’s senior senator.
Wes Harris, the founder and chairman of the Original North Phoenix Tea Party, said he plans to take out a recall petition against McCain. While Harris has many problems with McCain, a mass email he sent out focused solely on the senator’s recent defense of Huma Abedin, a top aide to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Harris accused Abedin of having ties to an Islamic extremist group, and he objected to the fact that a Muslim was working for the State Department in the first place.
Harris said he believes Muslims’ loyalty to the U.S. is questionable because their ultimate loyalty is to the Quran and Islam, which he described as “more a fascist type of organization.”
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — A Texas man accused of making terrorist threats against a local mosque has turned himself in to U.S. Marshals. Twenty-four-year-old Javier Alan Correa arrived with his attorney to surrender to federal authorities on Monday.
Correa was indicted last month for allegedly calling in a bomb threat to the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro last September, just prior to the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on America. The curse filled message left on a machine at the center said “there’s going to be a bomb in the building.”
“Gaffney has turned up so many ‘Muslim infiltrators’ in government or civic positions that it is difficult to keep track. If a Muslim runs for political office, or even wants to get involved in their local community, or establish any sort of institution, whether they are a Republican or a Democrat, outrageous charges of ‘creeping Sharia prononent’, ‘stealth jihadist’, ‘Muslim Brotherhood plant’, etc. are made by Islamophobes.”
Sheila Musaji examines the record of the man who inspired Michele Bachmann’s Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy theory.
The American Muslim, 21 July 2012
See also Matt Duss, “Frank Gaffney’s latest boogeyman inspired Bachmann’s witch hunt”, Think Progess, 19 July 2012