Category Archives: State Oppression

Detroit congressman calls for investigation into border harassment of US Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, is asking for a federal investigation into allegations that border control agents are unfairly targeting Muslim Americans traveling between the United States and Canada. In a statement today, Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said he was “contacting the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to initiate an investigation of these allegations.”

Conyers called for an investigation after the Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations said Thursday it had received a rash of complaints from American Muslims about their treatment at border crossings. “We welcome Congressman Conyers’ concern regarding reported violations of American Muslims’ civil liberties and look forward to his leadership in addressing this issue in the Congress,” said a statement Friday evening from Dawud Walid, executive director, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Michigan

The travelers said they were detained for questioning for unreasonable amounts of time and asked if they knew terrorists. “I had an American passport, and I was put in a cell for four hours,” Ann Arbor teacher Kheireddine Bouzid, who is of Algerian descent, told reporters at a CAIR-Michigan press event on Thursday. “They asked me if I could give them the names of any terrorists.”

Detroit News, 25 March 2011

Update:  “CAIR applauds Rep. Conyers’ call for probe of border harassment”, CAIR press release, 26 March 2011

Ketron amends anti-sharia bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bill_KetronTennessee lawmakers are rewriting a bill that described Islamic law as a threat to U.S. security and seemed to equate peaceful Muslim practices with terrorism.

State Sen. Bill Ketron and House Speaker Pro Tempore Judd Matheny, both Republicans, offered the revision after questions arose about the proposed bill’s constitutionality. “The revision reflects our original intention to prevent or deter violent or terrorist acts, but does so without any room for misinterpretation regarding the language’s affect on peaceful religious practices,” said Ketron.

Muslim and civil liberty organizations strongly criticized the original bill, saying its focus on Shariah law unfairly targeted Muslims and equated religious rituals such as dietary restrictions with terrorism. The bill now contains no references to Islam, but will allow Tennessee to prosecute those who offer financial or material support to known terrorist entities.

“I think it’s a victory for common sense and legislative restraint,” Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Tennessean. “This is a win for Tennessee’s Muslim community.”

Religion News Service, 25 March 2011

See also John Esposito and Sheila Lalwani, “Fear of sharia in Tennessee”, Comment is Free, 25 March 2011

Update:  See “Ketron Shariah bill not fixable”, Daily News Journal, 27 March 2011

Former marine in legal challenge to no-fly list

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A suburban man who describes himself as a patriotic, honorably discharged marine is one of 17 plaintiffs in a lawsuit involving the government’s no-fly list.

Abe Mashal is Muslim and says FBI agents told him he ended up on the list because he exchanged emails with a Muslim cleric they were monitoring. While Mashal is Muslim, his wife is Christian, and he says the e-mails were seeking advice on raising kids in a mixed-faith home.

Homeland Security will not confirm whether he’s on the no-fly list, let alone why.

Last April, Mashal went to Midway Airport to catch a flight to Spokane, Wash. He never got past the ticket counter. “I turned around, I didn’t even hear ’em coming and I’m surrounded by 30 TSA agents and Chicago police. She comes out and says, ‘You’re on the no-fly list, you can’t fly on any plane and the FBI is on there way here to speak with you,'” Mashal said.

Mashal says what followed was a series of interviews by FBI agents. They talked to him, his relatives, his friends and even a business client.

Two months after he learned he was on the no-fly list, Mashal says a pair of FBI agents sat him down at a local hotel. He says they told him if he worked as an informant, they would make sure he could fly again.

“They wanted me to go undercover at different mosques. They told me there are informants all over the area and they want me to find out about certain people for them. The strange part is, I’m not actively involved in any mosques. I’ve probably been to church with my wife more in the last year than the mosque,” Mashal said.

Mashal says he told the agents he didn’t think a married father of four should be moonlighting as an FBI informant.

In October, he received a letter from Homeland Security stating there would be no changes or corrections made to his status on the no-fly list. So, a few months back when the Mashal family wanted to go to Disney World, they drove. “They’re people out there that are bad and if this is the method they’re using to find them, it’s not effective and we’re not safe,” said Mashal’s wife Jessica.

The FBI and Homeland Security both declined to comment due to the pending lawsuit which was filed on behalf of Mashal and others by the American Civil Liberties Union.

ABC7Chicago.com, 21 March 2011

See also “Terror suspects in U.S. seek to clear names”, Associated Press, 21 March 2011

Resisting the Islamification of Alaska

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Alaskan lawmaker hopes to guard against Islamic Sharia law by prohibiting state courts from honoring foreign law that violates Alaskan or U.S. constitutional rights.

Though the bill’s language does not specifically target Sharia, Rep. Carl Gatto, R-Palmer, said the legislation is a reaction to what he sees as the growing use of international law codes in courts that have robbed people of their constitutional rights.

In a hearing before the House State Affairs Committee, Gatto’s chief of staff Karen Sawyer said Sharia is an example of the type of transnational law that has appeared in family law, divorce and child custody cases nationally, though she knows of instances of it appearing in Alaska courts.

“Sharia is clearly offensive to the U.S. Constitution,” Sawyer said. “It is the foremost foreign law that is impacting our legal system.” Sawyer added that countries following Sharia law do not allow freedom of religion or equal rights to women.

Gatto called the law a preventative measure necessitated by the religious beliefs of recent immigrants. “As a kid, we had Italian neighborhoods, Irish neighborhoods … but they didn’t impose their own laws,” Gatto said. “When these neighborhoods are occupied by people from the Middle East, they do establish their own laws.”

Associated Press, 17 March 2011

See also “Alaska lawmaker smears American Muslims”, CAIR press release, 18 March 2011

Ban the Muslim veil, says Dutch MP

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MP Jeanine Hennis from the ruling free-market liberal party VVD is calling for a ban on wearing Muslim headscarves by public servants. The politician says that all religions are equal in her eyes and that the ban should include all religious symbols.

Ms Hennis made her comments in an interview with freesheet De Pers. “When do you wear the headscarf? I’d like to instigate a debate on the matter – an open discussion on the separation between church and state,” she said. The VVD MP said she’d also like universities and schools to participate in the debate but that the Christian parties stand in the way of bringing the subject into the open. “They regard it as an infringement on freedom of religion,” she added.

RNW, 15 March 2011

See also Dutch News, 15 March 2011

Appeals court reinstates case by Californian Muslim woman forced to remove headscarf in courthouse

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A federal appeals court unanimously reinstated a lawsuit Tuesday filed by a Muslim woman who accused Southern California jailers of violating her religious freedom when they ordered her to take off her head scarf in a courthouse holding cell. An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also said plaintiff Souhair Khatib had the right to wear the scarf unless jailers can show it was a security risk.

Khatib filed the lawsuit in 2007 against Orange County. She had been jailed for several hours in November 2006 after a judge revoked her probation for a misdemeanor welfare fraud conviction. A trial court judge and a three-judge appeals court panel previously dismissed the lawsuit, saying holding cells aren’t covered by a federal law protecting the religious practices of prisoners. They held it was impractical in transitory settings such as a holding cell to honor religious practices normally allowed in more permanent institutions such as prisons.

But the 9th Circuit judges rejected that argument while allowing the case to proceed. The court did say the county can still argue that security concerns required Khatib to remove her head scarf, if it can prove the order “was the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government interest.”

Khatib and her husband had appeared in Orange County Superior Court to ask for an extension of a deadline to complete community service, which was a requirement of their probation. They were jailed in a cell adjacent to the courthouse. During booking, jailers ordered a tearful Khatib to remove her head scarf, and she spent the rest of her time in the cell covering her head with a vest.

Associated Press, 15 March 2011

Sarkozy hails France’s ‘magnificent’ Christian heritage – one month before ban on Muslim veil takes effect

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sarkozy with nunsPresident Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of an officially secular republic, hailed France’s Christian heritage Thursday as his right-wing party questioned Islam’s role in society.

Sarkozy’s speech in the Catholic pilgrimage town of Puy-en-Velay came one month before France is due to formally begin a ban on the wearing of full-face Muslim veils in public places and amid controversy over religious identity.

Critics of the president and his majority party, the centre-right UMP, have argued against stirring dangerous prejudices and endangering France’s strictly secular identity by calling for a national debate on religion.

But Sarkzoy, who faces a tough challenge from a rejuvenated far-right in next year’s presidential election, remains undeterred, and reached out to Catholic voters in a way designed to annoy his left-wing critics.

“Christianity left us a magnificent heritage of civilisation. As a secular president, I can say that,” he said, speaking in a town that for centuries has been a way station for pilgrims heading to Santiago de Compostela. “This heritage comes with obligations, this heritage is a privilege, but it presents us above all with a duty: It obliges us to pass it on to future generations, and we should embrace it without doubt or shame,” he said.

Sarkozy’s renewed celebration of Christianity came as the leadership of his UMP party was trying to start a national debate on religious practice, and in particular on the place of France’s more than five million Muslims.

Last year’s debate on national identity raised political tension to boiling point and saw France widely criticised, particularly as it came as Sarkozy targeted foreign-born Roma Gypsies for expulsion. Opponents accused the leader, who is struggling in the polls, of stirring racial divisions in a bid to win votes from the far-right National Front, now gaining ground under its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, Marine.

Sarkozy appears to be returning to the fray. Last month he declared that multiculturalism had been a “failure” and said that he wanted to see develop a “French Islam, not an Islam in France.” Now, UMP secretary general Jean-Francois Cope has called a meeting on April 5 to discuss religious practice “particularly that of the Muslim sect”.

On April 11, a law banning face-covering garments like the niqab or the burqa will come into effect, forcing the tiny minority of French Muslim women that wear them to remove them or face arrest and fines.

AFP, 3 March 2011

See also “Sarkozy’s Islam debate opens rift in French ruling party”, FaithWorld, 4 March 2011

France: veil ban comes into force in April

Posted on by Bob Pitt

France veil 2From Saudi tourists window-shopping on the Champs-Élysées to Muslim women in a departure lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport or the few young French converts on suburban estates, any woman who steps outside in France wearing a veil that covers her face will be breaking the law from next month.

France’s bitterly divisive debate on Muslim women’s clothing took a new turn when the legal details of the controversial “burqa ban” were published in a decree by the prime minister. From 11 April women will be banned from wearing the niqab – full-face Muslim veil – in any public place, including while walking down the street, taking a bus, at a bank, library or shop, or in a cinema or theatre. It will be illegal for a woman in niqab to visit the Louvre, or any other museum, take a train, visit a hospital or collect her child from school.

Face veils will be outlawed virtually anywhere outside women’s own homes, except when they are worshipping in a religious place or travelling as a passenger in a private car, although traffic police may stop them if they think they do not have a clear “field of vision” while driving. Women wearing niqab will be fined €150 (about £130) and be given a citizenship class to remind them of the republican values of secular France and gender equality. Any third party found to have coerced a woman into wearing the face covering, for example a husband or family member, risks a €30,000 fine and a year in prison.

Guardian, 4 March 2011

Voices against Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

IRR reportsThe Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes this week two timely reports on the nature, impact and campaigns against Islamophobia across Europe.

‘Islamophobia and progressive values’

This unique report draws attention to the specific role that a discourse on progressive values is playing in shaping Islamophobia. Dr Sabine Schiffer (Institute for Media Responsibility, Erlangen), Murat Batur (Kanafani Inter-Cultural Initiative, Vienna), Nadia Fadil (Centre for Sociological Research at the Catholic University of Leuven) and Marwan Muhammad (Collective Against Islamophobia in France) outline the general parameters of hatred towards Muslims. They examine the combination of intellectual currents – from the extreme-Right to those of the liberal intelligentsia – which are creating a closed circuit of thought and ensuring that Islamophobia is now the respectable face of European racism. (Download the report here (pdf file, 764kb)

‘Islamophobia, human rights and the anti-terrorist laws’

This report reveals how Islamophobia serves a function as propaganda for war. But anti-terrorist policies and emergency laws have also had the effect of turning Muslim communities all over Europe into ‘suspect communities’. Asim Qureshi (Cageprisoners) and Luk Vervaet (Committee for the Freedom of Association and Expression) consider the relationship between Islamophobia and the war on terror, focusing particularly on the ways in which the human rights of Muslim communities, refugees and migrants are being breached by counter-terrorism measures. (Download the report here (pdf file, 604kb)

Liz Fekete, editor of the two reports, said today: ‘There is no time to spare if we are to win back progressive values from those who have hijacked them in order to promote a reactionary monocultural creed, based on hatred towards Muslims’.

These reports are the proceedings of two IRR seminars held in London on the theme of ‘End the Isolation: building solidarity networks against racism and Islamophobia in Europe’ at Garden Court Chambers, Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 20 October 2010.

The first seminar on ‘Islamophobia and Progressive Values’ was the concluding networking meeting of the IRR’s Alternative Voices on Integration Project, which was funded by the European Programme for Integration and Migration of the Network of European Foundations.

IRR news report, 3 March 2011

France: education minister demands that Muslim mothers on school trips leave hijab at home

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Education Minister Luc Chatel has weighed in to complicate the lives of Muslim women in France even more, in addition to the debate on Islam before the 2012 presidential election, which is being hijacked by the far right with increasing frequency. In an excessively zealous application, in the name of secularism, of the old 2004 law that bans “any symbol that displays one’s religion” in schools, he has asked Muslim moms who want to accompany their children on field trips to leave their veils at home, whether they be the full version or simple headscarves.

ANSAmed, 3 March 2011