Category Archives: State Oppression

Bomb alert over Muslim jogging in weight vest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A shocked student was stopped and searched by armed cops after he was mistaken for a suicide bomber – while out jogging in a WEIGHT VEST.

Stunned Goudarz Karimi, 25, was simply on a mission to get fit when he was forced to remove the 30kg personal training vest so it could be checked for explosives. Officers were called by a concerned member of the public who reported seeing a man wearing what he thought was a bomb suit.

The shocked Iranian was then advised by police to wear his coat over the outfit when using it in the future. He said: “I’m 100 per cent sure that if I was blond with Caucasian skin type nobody would have noticed and said anything about it, but I am of dark skin complexion and from Iran and I’m sure that is related to it.”

Oxford University student Goudarz, who was training in the city at the time, added: “I felt a bit like my rights were violated. The police told me to take my vest off and to go home and I don’t see why I should.”

Sun, 5 October 2011

NYPD spied on city’s Muslim partners

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reda ShataThe New York Police Department’s intelligence squad secretly assigned an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police, dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series by The New York Times about Muslims in America.

Sheikh Reda Shata was among those singled out for surveillance because of his “threat potential” and what the NYPD considered links to organizations associated with terrorism, despite having never been charged with any crime, according to secret police documents obtained by The Associated Press.

This was life in America for Shata: a government partner in the fight against terrorism and a suspect at the same time.

During his time at the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge since 2002, he welcomed FBI agents to his mosque to speak to Muslims, invited NYPD officers for breakfast and threw parties for officers who were leaving the precinct. As police secretly watched Shata in 2006, he had breakfast and dinner with Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion and was invited to meet with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Shata recalls.

“This is very sad,” Shata said after seeing his name in the NYPD file. “What is your feeling if you see this about people you trusted?”

Associated Press, 5 October 2011

US Supreme Court clears way for Muslim woman to sue over headscarf removal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Supreme Court will let a Muslim woman sue Southern California jailers for making her take off her head scarf in a courthouse holding cell.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Orange County, Calif., officials, who were sued in 2007 by Souhair Khatib.

Khatib had gone to the Orange County Superior Court to ask for more time to complete her community service. But a judge ordered her jailed, and jailers forced Khatib to remove her head scarf.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments that holding cells aren’t covered by a federal law protecting the religious practices of prisoners. They also ruled Khatib had the right to wear the scarf unless jailers could show it was a security risk.

Associated Press, 3 October 2011

Lawyers seek to prevent NYPD from destroying Muslim surveillance records

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Civil liberties lawyers will seek to impose a restraining order on the NYPD in federal court Monday to stop the destruction of any evidence related to the alleged surveillance of Muslim communities since the September 11 attacks.

They also hope to initiate an investigation into the allegations, made by the Associated Press in a recent series of reports, which the NYPD have rejected as false.

Attorneys overseeing the so-called Handschu agreement — a 40-year case that has continuously shaped the extent to which police can conduct surveillance and can maintain records of surveillance — will go before Judge Charles Haight, who has long presided over the Handschu case.

According to attorney Jethro Eisenstein, the AP’s claims that the NYPD kept records of the activities of law-abiding Muslims in restaurants, mosques and other places indicated a violation of the existing Handschu guidelines.

“They very specifically prohibit the retention of information that’s been gleaned from that kind of visit to public places, unless it involves either unlawful activity or potential terrorist activities,” he said. He added the AP’s claims that the NYPD was “shredding” evidence, added urgency to the need for a restraining order.

WNYC News Blog, 3 October 2011

Express website carries call for murder of Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sometimes the most obnoxious aspect of the coverage of Islamic issues by right-wing newspapers is the sickening online comments their articles provoke. Two days ago the Express published a short report on the Swiss parliamentary vote in favour of banning the veil. The one comment it has so far attracted openly calls for Muslims to be killed. Despite the comment being reported, the admins at the Express website evidently have no interest in removing it.

Express comment on Swiss veil ban

Swiss MPs back SVP motion banning veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SVP racist posterSwiss MPs have approved a far-right move to impose a ban on the burqa or other face coverings in some public places, including on public transport.

With 101 votes against 77, the lower chamber of the house approved the motion, which was titled “masks off!”, on Wednesday. The draft bill will still have to be examined by the upper chamber.

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Wilders calls for referendum on minaret ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The anti-Islam PVV wants to hold a referendum on the building of new minarets in the Netherlands, along the line of the Swiss vote, party leader Geert Wilders said on Wednesday. Wilders said he is to submit draft legislation to parliament to pave the way for a public vote.

“Minarets hurt the eyes. They are the towers of a rising desert ideology,” the Telegraaf quoted Wilders as saying. Minarets have nothing to do with religion, he said. Rather, they are meant to be an “imperialist and ideological sign of domination’.

Dutch News, 21 September 2011

French court issues first fine over niqab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A French police court on Thursday issued its first fines against two women charged with wearing the full-face covering Islamic niqab.

Police have issued several on-the-spot fines since the ban came into effect in April but these are the first court-issued fines, with the women vowing to appeal their case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.

Hind Ahmas, 32, was ordered to pay a 120-euro fine, while Najate Nait Ali, 36, was fined 80 euros. The court did not order them to take a citizenship course, as had been requested by the prosecutor.

The two women arrived too late to attend the court’s deliberations. One of the women had not been allowed into the court in May because she refused to take off her niqab to show her face.

Yann Gre from the Don’t Touch My Constitution association that is defending the two women who were arrested in May in front of the town hall of Meaux, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Paris, said that they would appeal. If the fines are confirmed by a higher court, they will take their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, he said. “This law forbids women in niqab from leaving their homes and going out in public. It’s a kind of life-sentence to prison,” he said.

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‘Intelligence analyst’ tells FBI agents to go after Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

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.