The Local interviews Sami Debah of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF).
US right runs with ‘John Brennan-is-a-Muslim’ theory
Salon reported earlier this week that disgraced former FBI agent and anti-Islam activist John Guandolo had claimed that John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, is “unfit for duty” because he is a secret Muslim.
Guandolo stated that “Brennan did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on behalf of the United States when he served in Saudi Arabia” and it “was the culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him” by foreign operatives.
You might have thought that Guandolo’s accusation was so off-the-wall that even his fellow Islamophobes would distance themselves from this paranoid nonsense. But no. In a follow-up article Salon reports that Guandolo’s theory has been enthusiastically adopted by sections of the US right.
Extremists vandalise old Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem
Suspected Jewish extremists scrawled anti-Arab graffiti on the headstones in an ancient Muslim cemetery in west Jerusalem, police and witnesses told AFP on Thursday.
“The words ‘price tag’ and Stars of David were scrawled on around a dozen tombs in the Muslim cemetery in Mamilla in central Jerusalem,” a police spokeswoman told AFP, saying an inquiry had been opened.
An AFP correspondent at the scene said the vandals had also written “Mohammed is dead” and “Maale Rehavam” on the tombs some of which date back to the 12th century.
OC settles with ACLU to allow head scarves for Muslim defendants
After six years of litigation, Orange County settled a religious discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of a Muslim woman who was forced to remove her traditional head scarf while she was in a courthouse holding cell, the ACLU announced today.
Orange County officials will no longer require Muslim women in custody to remove their head scarf, known as a hijab, said attorney Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
Said plaintiff Souhair Khatib of Anaheim: “I praise Allah and thank Him that I live in a country where I can practice my religion freely. While not everyone understands Islam or what it requires of me, I’m grateful that the U.S. government protects my right to fulfill my duty to Allah, whether at work, on a public street or, yes, even in a sheriff’s holding facility.”
Law enforcement officers will be trained about ordering Muslim women to remove hijabs, and the county will pay $85,000 in damages, fees and court costs.
Pink News apologises to Islam Channel
The right-wing press has been running articles, evidently inspired by the Quilliam Foundation, accusing Muslim TV channels of inciting hatred against the LGBT community. (See “Muslim fanatics spouting on British TV: Extremists use fringe stations to call for terror, murder and the torture of gay people” in the Daily Mail and “Preachers of hate who spread their violent word on British TV channels” in the Sunday Telegraph.)
These reports in turn prompted a poorly worded piece to appear this week in Pink News which clearly led its readers to believe that Islam Channel had been promoting homophobic hate speech on air.
CAIR seeks probe of FBI ‘retaliation’ in Minnesota
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate an apparent act of retaliation against a local community leader by FBI agents at the Minnesota field office.
CAIR says the alleged retaliation, in the form of an FBI visit to the home of the director of the civil rights group’s Minnesota chapter Lori Saroya , followed just two business days after public disclosure by that chapter of an FBI investigation into alleged intimidation tactics used on a local Somali Muslim by two agents.
Pat Robertson claims Islam is ‘demonic’ and ‘not a religion’ but an economic and political system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyXQjevYw1Y
Controversial conservative Christian Pat Robertson doubled down Tuesday on claims that Islam is not a religion.
According to Right Wing Watch, Robertson, an elder statesman of the evangelical movement, made the inflammatory claim during an episode of his TV program, “The 700 Club.”
“Every time you look up – these are angry people, it’s almost like it’s demonic that is driving them to kill and to maim and to destroy and to blow themselves up,” Robertson said of Islam. “It’s a religion of chaos.”
He went on to say, “I hardly think to call it a religion, it’s more of – well, it’s an economic and political system with a religious veneer.”
Chipping Norton: No arrest after mosque threat
CHIPPING NORTON: No one has yet been arrested for a threatening phone call that led to a planned mosque being stopped.
The town’s small muslim community had won permission to open the mosque in a former shop in Hitchmans Mews.
But following the decision landlord Georg Wissinter, 79, received a call saying the mosque would get “very hot” if it went ahead. He pulled out of the scheme on Friday.
Oxford Times, 14 February 2013
See also “Chipping Norton mosque threat claim investigated”, BBC News, 14 February 2013
Why has Marine Le Pen been invited to Cambridge?
Conrad Landin challenges the decision to invite the Front National leader to address the Cambridge Union.
Four Beitar fans arrested for arson of team offices
Police arrested four people late on Tuesday night suspected of torching the offices of Beitar Jerusalem last Friday amid furor over the team’s decision to sign two Muslim players from Chechnya. The fire early last Friday morning caused extensive damage to the offices and destroyed team memorabilia.