Ahmed Kilani exposes the ludicrous inaccuracies in an Islamophobic TV report entitled “The Muslim Recruitment Drive” that was recently broadcast on the Australian current affairs show Today Tonight.
Sydney schoolboy was beaten ‘for being a Muslim’
A schoolboy from Sydney’s north was brutally bashed and verbally abused by more than 20 students for being Muslim, the boy has claimed. Hamid Mamozai, 15, was allegedly hit up to a dozen times by two fellow students at Asquith Boys’ High School on Wednesday as several more cheered and hurled racial abuse from the sidelines.
“[They were saying] hit him more, hit him more, he deserves it, you terrorists, go back to where you came from, go blow something up,” Hamid told Channel 10. He said he was kneed in the face four of five times and hit up to 15 times in the face. Hamid was taken to hospital unconscious and with internal bleeding but suffered no serious injuries.
Najia, Hamid’s sister, said he had been subjected to racial abuse at the school for up to two years and was “emotionally and mentally sick” because of it. “The boy is scared … he doesn’t get out of the house,” she said.
His mother, Hosna, who fled war-torn Afghanistan 20 years ago, said she had repeatedly complained to the school to no effect. “I just want to know why this is happening, why the principal doesn’t care that students are being bullied, why don’t they stop it? I want other parents to know why this is happening,” she said.
Asquith Boys’ High declined to comment last night. In response to inquiries from the Herald, a spokesman for the Department of Education said one student had been suspended for 20 days and the police had been informed. Teachers provided immediate assistance to Hamid and called his family and an ambulance when the incident occurred, the spokesman said. Hamid and his family have been offered counselling and the school has arranged to meet with Mrs Mamozai this morning.
“Racism is not tolerated by Asquith Boys’ High School, which disciplines students engaged in such behaviour and supports students subjected to it,” the spokesman said. “Disciplinary action has been taken against students who have previously used racist language to the injured student. Due to the police investigation, it is inappropriate to comment further on the incident at this stage.”
‘Knight Templar’ gatecrashes Muslim student event at Princeton, makes threats
A local man claiming to be part of the Knights Templar was arrested on Saturday night after allegedly interrupting a Muslim Student Association welcome back dinner and telling students that “Muslims are going to hell”, according to multiple witnesses and police reports.
While the incident reflects a nationwide spike in bias crimes in the wake of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, MSA members say they are treating it as an isolated event and do not plan to scale back any of their events in response.
The man, Adam Pyle, 26, of Princeton Township, had apparently been present for part of the actual dinner at Campus Club, said Sohaib Sultan, the University’s Muslim life coordinator. Toward the conclusion of the dinner, Pyle left the dining area and allegedly started going through the backpack of Jihad Al-Jabban ’14, the MSA public relations chair.
When Al-Jabban walked over, Pyle explained that he was a Christian but still a member of the “ummah”, the global Muslim community, according to Al-Jabban. Pyle then proceeded to bow and ask MSA members if they were members of the ummah, said MSA vice president Areej Hassan ’13. He also allegedly asked a member, “Why do you hate Jews?” Hassan is a staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.
“I immediately became a little bit nervous about what his intentions were,” Sultan said. “I realized this could be a potentially violent situation.”
Sultan then ushered the 60 to 70 students attending the dinner into a closed room away from Pyle, and an attendee called Public Safety. In the meantime, Pyle allegedly said, “Muslims are going to hell” and “Death to Muslims”, and began walking toward the students, according to Sultan.
“I stood right in front of him and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not going to let [you] go inside’,” Sultan recalled. During the night, Pyle also allegedly made references to the anti-Christ, University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua said in an email.
At 8:57 p.m., Public Safety officers arrested Pyle and charged him with bias intimidation, criminal attempt, disorderly conduct, harassment and defiant trespass, Mbugua said. Pyle will face the criminal charges on Monday in the Borough Municipal Court. Public Safety ordered Pyle to stay away from campus for the next 90 days, and the department intends to ban him permanently.
Daily Princetonian, 21 September 2011
Via LoonWatch
Southern California councilman boasted that he named his dog Muhammad
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. — A Southern California councilman is drawing criticism for mentioning in a public meeting that he named his dog after the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called on Derek Reeve to apologize for his comment at a recent San Juan Capistrano council meeting. The Islamic advocacy group says Reeve mentioned naming his dogs America and Muhammad during a discussion about a new dog park.
CAIR’s executive director in greater Los Angeles says while Reeve has a right to free speech, his “distasteful remark” is unbefitting of an elected official. The city’s mayor and another councilman also criticized Reeve.
The Orange County Register reports that Reeve said he named his dog Muhammad as a political statement.
Aussie TV report’s false depiction of Muslims
Ahmed Kilani exposes the ludicrous inaccuracies in an Islamophobic TV report entitled “The Muslim Recruitment Drive” that was recently broadcast on the Australian current affairs show Today Tonight.
Dudley planning committee accused of ‘bigotry, racism and Islamophobia’
Plans for a new mosque and community centre in the West Midlands have been turned down for the second time. Dudley Council refused permission on Monday for the buildings, which would feature a 35ft (10m) high minaret.
Dr Kurshid Ahmed, chairman of the town’s Muslim association, said the decision was “Islamophobic”. The council said its decision was based solely on planning reasons as the scale and design of the building would be out of keeping with buildings in the area.
The council originally refused outline planning permission for the Hall Street mosque in February 2007 on the basis the land had already been designated exclusively for employment use under the council’s unitary development plan. A planning inspectorate overturned the council’s reason for refusing outline planning approval in July 2008. The council fought the decision in the High Court in July 2009 and lost.
Full plans for a mosque and community centre went before Dudley planning committee on Monday night but were rejected.
Dr Ahmed said: “Obviously I am disappointed but certainly not surprised because decisions in Dudley planning committee are driven by the influence of bigotry, racism and Islamophobia.” Dr Ahmed said he was aware that the proposed buildings had been described by some councillors as “an alien feature” and “a blot on the landscape”.
He added: “There’s not really any planning consideration as the two comments that you’ve just referred to suggest, so it is a decision based on people’s prejudices against Islam. They don’t want to see a mosque or they see it as a blot, they see it as completely out of character, which means that they are still living in some historical context and don’t see the globalisation of today and Dudley as part of that.”
Dr Ahmed said it was evidence that council policy was being determined on the basis of anti-Muslim prejudices and described it as “institutional Islamophobia”.
See also Dudley News, 20 September 2011
Update: Kurshid Ahmed’s charge of Islamophobia is reinforced by the news that Gavin Boby of the far-right Law and Freedom Foundation (aka “Mosquebusters”) is involved in the anti-mosque campaign. For details see here, here and here.
‘Intelligence analyst’ tells FBI agents to go after Islam
Over at Danger Room, which broke the story about the FBI teaching its agents that “mainstream” Muslims are linked to terrorism, Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman have a video of a lecture by FBI intelligence analyst William Gawthrop from June this year – which rather undermines the FBI’s claim that the notorious counterterrorism course was a “one time only” event that took place in April and was “quickly discontinued”. Ackerman and Shachtman write:
The best strategy for undermining militants, Gawthrop suggested, is to go after Islam itself. To undermine the validity of key Islamic scriptures and key Muslim leaders.
“If you remember Star Wars, that ventilation shaft that goes down to into the depths of the Death Star, they shot a torpedo down there. That’s a critical vulnerability,” Gawthrop told his audience. Then he waved a laser pointer at his projected PowerPoint slide, calling attention to the words “Holy Texts” and “Clerics”.
“We should be looking at, should be aiming at, these,” Gawthrop said.
There is some background information on Gawthrop in the original Danger Room report:
In 2006, before he joined the Bureau, he gave an interview to the website WorldNetDaily, and discussed some of the themes that made it into his briefings, years later. The Prophet “Muhammad’s mindset is a source for terrorism”, Gawthrop told the website, which would later distinguish itself as a leader of the “birther” movement, a conspiracy theory that denies President Obama’s American citizenship.
At the time, Gawthrop’s major suggestion for waging the war on terrorism was to attack what he called “soft spots” in Islamic faith that might “induce a deteriorating cascade effect upon the target”. That is, to discredit Islam itself and cause Muslims to abandon their religion. “Critical vulnerabilities of the Koran, for example, are that it was uttered by a mortal,” he said. Alas, he lamented, he faced the bureaucratic obstacle of official Washington’s “political taboo of linking Islamic violence to the religion of Islam,” according to the website.
For more on Gawthrop see Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion.
No such thing as good Islam, Baptist theologian argues
In his column for the Florida Baptist Witness newspaper, religion professor Mark Coppenger discusses the two schools of thought on Islam: one that contends that Islam is a “great religion with awesome accomplishments” and the other that it is a “false and dangerous ideology”.
Of those two schools, Coppenger argues, “I’m urging folks to matriculate in the later. In fact, I’m not convinced the former should be accredited.”
He discounts the fact that majority of Muslims are not aggressive and oppressive: “You don’t define a faith by the behavior of its slackers or its observants who lack the numbers and power to fully advance their agenda, as is currently the case with Muslims in the West.”
And then gives his own reasons why Islam is a bad religion doomed to ruin: “When you start with an adulterous warrior-profit, who is literally anti-Christ (though touting a non-biblical version of Jesus), mix in generous helpings of totalitarianism and the marginalization/persecution of women and non-Muslims, and cultivate tribalism, legalism, and victimism, you have a recipe for disaster.”
Coppenger, who is professor of Christian apologetics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, makes no apologies for his condemnation of Islam: “… let’s not be cowed by charges of ‘Islamophobia’ when we rehearse the unmatched, bloody record of Muslim terrorist attacks… Such talk may not be our calling or your cup of tea, but it has its place if I read my Bible right.”
Professional Islamophobe angry the FBI discontinued anti-Muslim counterterrorism training
Adam Serwer replies to Robert Spencer.
Brooklyn College professors condemn NYPD’s spying on Muslims
Professors at Brooklyn College have become the first city employees to publicly condemn the NYPD’s spying on local Muslims.
In a September 13th resolution, Brooklyn College’s Faculty Council denounced the spying on Islamic students, suggesting that the police department targeted them without any proof that they were engaging in terrorist activity.
“The Faculty Council opposes surveillance activities by the NYPD and affiliated agencies on our campus either directly or through the use of informants for the purposes of collecting information independent of a valid and specific criminal investigation,” the resolution read.
Meanwhile, the department has come up with a unique way to legally justify its spying. According to a former top police official, it has established its own internal review committee to determine whether prior evidence or indications existed that anyone under surveillance had been planning to break the law.
But this is hardly an independent committee. It reportedly consists of Police Intelligence head David Cohen, the former CIA spook and current NYPD spy mastermind; Chief Thomas Galati, the Intelligence Division’s commanding officer who at Cohen’s direction in 2007 violated diplomatic protocol by making the arriving Iranian delegation to the United Nations sit on the tarmac of at Kennedy airport for 40 minutes while he conducted a weapons check – to the chagrin of the waiting Secret Service, Port Authority Police and the State Department Security Service; Stu Parker, whom the official described as “of counsel” to Cohen, although he is not listed in the NYPD roster; and the department’s Deputy Commissioner of Legal Affairs, Andrew Schaffer.
This committee begs the question of whether there is any oversight over the NYPD’s domestic spying program outside the police department. Three of the committee’s four members belong to the Intelligence Division, which means they are monitoring themselves. The fourth, Schaffer, is not regarded as a department heavy hitter.
The Brooklyn College Faculty Council urged the college administration to issue its “own public statement outlining their opposition to on campus surveillance… as well as detailing their knowledge of or involvement in this surveillance and information gathering.
“We call on the administration to demand publicly that the NYPD inform those groups and individuals that have been the subject of this surveillance of the fact of the surveillance and the nature of the information gathered,” it said.