“The problem isn’t Islam. It’s your movement to demonize Islam in the liberal left.” Rabia Chaudry calls out US comedian/TV host Bill Maher.
Update: See Omar Baddar, “5 things Bill Maher got wrong in latest Islam rant”, Huffington Post, 13 May 2014
And Fatimah Mazhar, “Why Bill Maher’s Islamophobia is way more dangerous than right wing bigotry”, Carbonated.tv, 13 May 2014
Beginning a few years after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a squad of detectives, known as the Citywide Debriefing Team, has combed the city’s jails for immigrants – predominantly Muslims – who might be persuaded to become police informants, according to documents obtained by The New York Times, along with interviews with former members of the unit and senior police officials.
See also “New York police recruiting Muslim informants: NY Times”, Reuters, 11 May 2014
Update: See “CAIR asks DOJ to probe NYPD’s coercion of Muslim immigrants to become spies”, CAIR press release, 11 May 2014
Republican Louis Tafoya is running against New Mexico State Rep. Georgene Louis (D), but Tafoya is raising eyebrows by sharing some anti-Muslim statements and links on his Facebook page.
Tafoya’s Facebook page includes a link titled, “Pedophilia & Islam,” noted Progress Now New Mexico. Tafoya also shared a post on Facebook that all religions can get along, except for Muslims.
The GOP candidate refused to comment about his Facebook posts, but Khadija Chudnoff, a member of the University of New Mexico’s Muslim Student Association, told KRQE, “New Mexico deserves somebody who is going to check their facts before they click, ‘share,’ on their Facebook page. This is something a teenager would do. It’s not something someone searching for political office should be doing.”
Over at the ever-excellent Loonwatch, Garibaldi writes: “Western journalists and media outlets have been extremely irresponsible in lazily describing Boko Haram as an ‘Islamist’ and or ‘Islamic’ group…. This is a good place to remind readers that ‘Islamist’ is quite often used as a blunt polemical hammer that dumb downs our understanding and quite often conflates fringe and even cult-like groups such as Boko Haram with ‘Islam’ as a whole.”
Garibaldi notes the media’s very different reporting of the Lord’s Resistance Army: “In a clear double standard the LRA’s (its leader Joseph Kony is fond of describing himself as a ‘devout Christian’) relation to Christianity is rarely mentioned in media reports. When it is mentioned there is a painstaking effort to relate how bizarre, cult-like and deviant the LRA’s ideology is from mainstream Christianity. Most news outlets and agencies refer to the LRA as a ‘rebel army’.”
Anti-Muslim hate speech on the Internet is commonplace and can motivate some people to commit acts of violence against Muslims, according to a report released Tuesday (May 6) by Muslim Advocates, a legal and advocacy group in San Francisco.
“When you have threatening comments online and they go unchecked, people start thinking it’s acceptable,” said Madihha Ahussain, an attorney and the report’s lead author. “And it doesn’t take long to figure out that what becomes acceptable online becomes acceptable in the real world.”
The report contains examples of hate speech and how it can lead to violence, as well as how victims of online hate speech can report it and counter it. The report aims to help educate parents, students, youth, community leaders, Internet companies and policymakers on how to counter online hate speech.
Ahussain said that anti-Muslim websites give like-minded people a place to gather and at the same time win new supporters through their posts. As an example, Ahussain cited the Facebook page of anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller, which she said grew from roughly 19,000 followers in July 2013 to some 78,000 people as of late April.
Juweria Khalid said she was a frequent Macy’s shopper, never missed their popular one day sales and this past October was no different, but little did she know how that day would change her life.
Khalid said after she already purchased a bracelet from the jewelry department, she spotted some earrings she also liked. Since she was already headed to the children’s department to shop for her two-year-old and 10-month-old, Khalid decided to pay for all of her items together on the 7th floor.
With her arms were full of bags from previous purchases, Khalid said she placed the earrings in her purse, fully intending she insists, to pay for her items. That’s when she was stopped by Macy’s loss prevention guards.
“I took out the jewelry and said to them I’m not stealing it. I’m going to buy it on the 7th floor. They never listened to me,” said Khalid.
Khalid was taken to the now infamous detention area of Macy’s, which she described to us as nothing short of a jail with bars. The Muslim woman, who wears a hijab, a Muslim head scarf, was forced to remove it. “They kept me locked there for hours. They never allowed me to take calls. My husband kept on calling like nine times,” explained Khalid.
Despite insisting she would pay for her items, which her attorney said added up to less than $100, Khalid said she was forced to pay a $500 fine with her Macy’s credit card. The NYPD was called, then Khalid charged with petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.
Khalid has now been vindicated, a judge dismissed her case for insufficient evidence. But it appears the damage has already been done. Khalid was eight weeks pregnant at the time of the ordeal. She lost her baby just days after. Khalid and her doctors believe because of the stress she suffered.
When 13-year-old Noorah Abdo went with her family in August to the Boomers amusement park in Livermore, the ride she especially looked forward to was the go-karts.
But when she got to the ticket window, she was told her head scarf, which she wore for religious reasons as a Muslim, violated the park’s no-headwear safety policy for that ride.
Her father, Nasir, protested, proposing to cover Noorah’s head with a helmet or a hoodie, but said a manager told him there were no exceptions. They were shown a policy statement, which read, in part, “If fashion, religious expression or your hair style is more important to you than safety, that’s fine. You can do what you want with your life. You just can’t do it at our park.”
Just 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.
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.
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.
The government and the culture of the United States are being infiltrated and undermined by “a warring religion,” and the Muslim Brotherhood is behind the drive, conservative political activist Cathie Adams warned those attending Tuesday’s meeting of the Texas Patriot Tea Party.
Adams, a former state chair of the Republican Party of Texas, is president of Texas Eagle Forum, the Lone Star arm of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. Adams said she has studied in Israel and worked with Jewish people, as well as studying the reach of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. and around the world.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational Islamic political organization that has the stated goals of establishing Islamic Sharia law as “the basis for controlling the affairs of state and society” and unifying “Islamic countries and states, mainly among the Arab states, and liberating them from foreign imperialism.”
But Adams said that the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda includes creating a worldwide Islamic state, including the U.S., by overturning the laws and constitutions of other countries and replacing them all with Sharia law. It’s motto, she said, is “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
Adams told her audience on Tuesday not to be taken in by claims that Islam is a peaceful religion, adding that just listening to public statements by Muslim leaders and reading the tenets of Islam provides ample evidence to the contrary.
Sharia law, Adams said, tells Muslims everything on how to live, and that it is “held by every Muslim,” not just extremists. “How do you know who is going to turn radical when every Muslim embraces Sharia law?” she said.
Adams said that while Islam teaches Muslims not to lie to other Muslims, on the other hand it demands that Muslims lie to non-Muslims when necessary to protect and promote Islam. “If it’s a Muslim telling you something, you really don’t know if it’s the truth or a lie,” she said.
And while Muslims are “extremely hospitable when you are under their roof,” as required by their religion, that hospitality ends as soon as you leave their home. “Walk out of their home and you can be shot in the back,” Adams said.