The 9/11 museum’s Muslim problem

Debra BurlingameJust weeks before the museum’s opening, tensions are rising over a video to be included in the exhibit, denials of media requests, and a board member’s allegedly anti-Muslim sentiments, Dean Obeidallah reports.

Daily Beast, 28 April 2014

The National September 11 Memorial Museum board member in question is Debra Burlingame (pictured), who is the sister of Charles Burlingame, the pilot of the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.

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Baroness Cox tells Israeli audience that ‘Islam is using the freedoms of democracy to destroy it’

Baroness Caroline Cox of Queensbury warned about the growing threat of political Islam in Britain and Africa at an event hosted by the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security at Tel Aviv University and The Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies on Monday.

“Islam is using the freedoms of democracy to destroy it,” as some of its adherents try to “inhibit criticism,” said Cox, speaking at the Green House next to the university. In England, if you criticize Islam, you are called a racist, she said.

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Yet another Islamophobe standing for ‘non-racist’ UKIP

Robert Bilcliff is standing as a candidate for the UK Independence Party in the local elections in Tamworth. The Mail on Sunday reported that Bilcliff’s response to the legalisation of same-sex marriage last month was to post a comment on Twitter reading: “Sad day for all us straight people.”

The Mail also reported that in a Facebook post in July 2012 Bilcliff “made a joke against Muslims”. Bilcliff told the paper: “I am not racist and never have been. I have many friends of different nationalities but I enjoy a joke every now and again.”

The Mail didn’t quote the “joke”, so here it is:

Robert Bilcliff anti-Muslim Facebook post

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Muslim leaders denounce police over raids in Czech capital

Muslim leaders in the Czech Republic on Monday accused the police of abusing their power after armed officers raided Islamic institutions in Prague over the weekend, detaining 20 people during Friday Prayer at a mosque and a community center, and arresting the publisher of a book that law enforcement officials say incites xenophobia and violence.

A spokesman for the Czech police, Pavel Hantak, declined to identify the publisher or the book. He told the Czech news media that he did not want to help promote a book that disseminated racism, anti-Semitism and violence against what it called “inferior races.”

The police said the publisher was a 55-year-old Czech citizen who had the book translated into Czech. He has been charged with promoting hate speech, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Muneeb Hassan Alrawi, the head of the Association of Czech Muslim Religious Communities, said in an interview on Monday that law enforcement officials had indicated that the book behind the raids was “The Fundamentals of Tawheed” by Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, a Jamaican-born imam, who has been banned from entering Australia and Britain and expelled from Germany because of what his critics call extremist views.

Mr. Alrawi said that several copies of the book had been confiscated by the police during a raid Friday at the headquarters of the Islamic Foundation, a community center in Prague, the Czech capital.

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Florida Senate OKs bill banning use of foreign law in family court cases

Foreign laws would be banned in Florida courts for certain family-related cases, under a bill the Senate sent to the House on Monday.

The Senate voted 24-14 to approve the proposal (SB 386) by Umatilla Republican Alan Hays, who has pushed various versions of the measure the past few years. The bill would restrict courts and arbitration tribunals from applying foreign law and legal codes to matters of divorce, alimony, division of marital assets, child support and child custody.

The proposal is more defined than last year’s effort, which got House support but failed to advance in the Senate. The House companion (HB 903) has reached the floor but has yet to be scheduled for debate.

Hays said the bill will do nothing to impede international trade, a prior concern of business groups, and won’t cast a negative message upon anyone from another country. “For those people who want to come to America we welcome them, but when you come to America you’re going to be governed on American laws and when you come to Florida you’re going to be governed on Florida laws,” Hays said. “We dare not apologize for that, folks. This is a very good bill. It’s an all American bill.”

But the bill has been criticized as anti-Muslim and targeted at Sharia religious law followed in some Islamic countries.

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Gilligan recycles 7-year-old anti-Muslim story as new shock-horror revelation

Express Muslims Tell Us How to Run Our SchoolsFor the last few weeks the Sunday Telegraph has been running a series of witch-hunting articles on the so-called “Trojan Horse plot” in Birmingham. The author of the reports, not entirely unexpectedly, is the discredited stitch-up artist Andrew Gilligan.

In the absence of any real evidence of the existence of such a “plot”, Gilligan has followed his usual method of hyping up the material he has managed to gather and loudly proclaiming that his charges have been proved. His repeated uncritical references to the transparently forged letter that provoked the furore in the first place – the most he is prepared to concede is that it contains “a number of inaccuracies” – give us an indication of Gilligan’s commitment to journalistic honesty.

The latest report by Gilligan is headlined “Guide to school Islamisation, by ‘ringleader’ of Trojan Horse plot”. He assures Telegraph readers that  a “document” produced by the Muslim Council of Britain in 2007, and co-authored by Tahir Alam, offered “a detailed blueprint for the radical ‘Islamisation’ of secular state schools which closely resembles what appears to be happening in Birmingham”.

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Plymouth Islamic education centre hit in £10,000 arson attack

Piety arson attack

An arson attack is thought to have caused £10,000 worth of damage to a recently refurbished Islamic education centre in South Devon.

People arrived at the Plymouth Islamic Education Trust centre (Piety) on April 19 to discover “raw sewerage pouring into the street” after a fire damaged the building’s exterior wall and sewage pipes. CCTV footage from the early hours of the morning suggests that the damage was caused by two individuals setting fire to wheelie bins beside the centre.

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Paul Weston arrested on suspicion of religious or racial harassment

Paul Weston arrestedA European election candidate has been arrested on suspicion of “religious or racial harassment” in a Hampshire city.

Liberty GB candidate Paul Weston had been reading a Winston Churchill quote describing Islam as “militant” and “retrograde” through a megaphone outside Winchester’s Guildhall on Saturday afternoon.

Standing on the steps of the Guildhall, he addressed passers-by with an excerpt from former Prime Minister Churchill’s book The River War, written in 1899 while he was a British army officer in the Sudan. Police were called after complaints from members of the public, and the 50-year-old, from Dorset, was told to disperse but failed to do so.

A spokesman for Hampshire Constabulary said: “He was further arrested on suspicion of religious or racial harassment. He has been bailed pending further enquiries to report back to police on May 24.”

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Edinburgh: Security guard ‘found bacon in mosque’

Chelsea Lambie on IslamA security guard at the Central Mosque told a court he was left feeling “very bad” after finding bacon had been thrown into the building and placed on the main door handles. Usman Mahmood, 34, said it “hurt my feelings to have this meat in my sacred place” as he gave evidence at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

He said he had opened the mosque for worship at around 6am on January 31 last year and had gone to his office to watch CCTV. Mr Mahmood told the court: “I saw persons running towards the main entrance and when I went upstairs I saw a piece of meat hanging on the window of the worshipping area and two pieces on the entrance door handle.”

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Australia: Far right targets Muslims with hate campaign

ADL logoAustralia’s violent far right has begun to stir again, targeting Muslims in a campaign that has erupted into conflict with Islamic radicals involving at least one shooting, death threats and intimidation.

The worst of the anti-Muslim drive is led by the Australian Defence League, joining a small but widening base embracing the Australia First Party, a registered political party that contests local, state and federal elections, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and skinheads.

A newly formed Australian branch of Greece’s fascist Golden Dawn has been supported by Australia First. Golden Dawn has a history of violence, uses Nazi symbolism and regards Adolf Hitler as a “great personality”.

Australia’s far right has drawn heavily on foreign mentors. The ADL grew from Britain’s violently anti-Muslim English Defence League, with others linked to an international network of fascists and white supremacists.

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