ALLEGAN, Mich. — A federal judge has dismissed a conservative Christian advocacy group’s lawsuit against a Muslim rights organization over the cancellation of a speech by an anti-Muslim speaker at a southwestern Michigan school.
The Thomas More Law Center sued the Council on American-Islamic Relations in 2012, saying its Michigan director violated the free speech rights of then-state Rep. Dave Agema and others involved in the event at Allegan High School.
After nearly seven months, federal prosecutors have decided to move forward with charges against one of two men charged with conspiring to build a portable, remote-controlled device designed to deliver fatal doses of radiation to Muslims – or “medical waste,” as the plotters called their intended targets.
Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, [pictured] was charged in an indictment last week with attempting to produce a radiological device, conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and distribution of information related to weapons of mass destruction. Another suspect, Eric Feight, 54, was named in the original complaint but was not indicted. Both were arraigned last June.
According to sources who spoke with the Times-Union of Albany, Feight and his lawyers are working on a plea agreement in exchange for testimony against Crawford.
The case has been under investigation by a Joint Terrorism Task Force since at least April 2012, when Crawford went to a Schenectady synagogue, Congregation Gates of Heaven, and “asked to speak with a person who might be willing to help him with a type of technology that could be used by Israel to defeat its enemies while they slept.”
Crawford, with Feight’s help, had designed a device he described as “Horoshima on a light switch.” The device, he explained, was a “weaponized radiation device” that would deliver a deadly dose of radiation.
“[T]he target(s) and those around them would not immediately be aware they had absorbed lethal doses of radiation and the harmful effects of that radiation would not become apparent until days after the exposure,” court documents say.
Over at Atlas Shrugs, Pamela Geller directs us to an article which she describes as a “thoughtful and stunning indictment of the latest tribulation in our legal battle against the de facto sharia ban on Robert Spencer and me in the UK”. The article, entitled “The end of free speech in Britain”, reveals the welcome news that last week a British court rejected Geller and Spencer’s appeal against the home secretary’s decision last June to ban them from entering the UK.
The name of the author, Abhijit Pandya – described by Geller as “one of our British solicitors” – may be familiar. That’s because Pandya has established his own reputation for frothing-at-the-mouth Islamophobia. Back in 2011, when he stood as the UK Independence Party candidate in the Leicester South parliamentary by-election, Pandya wrote a blog post in which he described Islam as “morally flawed and degenerate” and declared his agreement with Geert Wilders’ view of the faith as a “retarded ideology”. He added: “Islamic culture inherently rejects the Western way of life, more specifically the Protestant work ethic that has successfully built the economies of the West.”
The local paper, the Leicester Mercury, published an editorial condemning Pandya’s blog post as “a wildly inflammatory rant which boiled down to a crass and nasty characterisation of Muslims as lazy, intolerant spongers who are a threat to the British way of life. It was not part of a reasoned debate about multiculturalism, but a series of sweeping, unsubstantiated generalisations which demonise the Muslim community.”
So, clearly, Pandya was an entirely appropriate individual to act as Geller and Spencer’s legal representative in the UK.
Alabama’s school board voted 5-2 on Friday to recommended 11 social studies textbooks, effectively dismissing complaints from critics who said the texts favored Islam over other religions.
The vote is only a recommendation since local school districts still get to decide which texts their students will read, Department of Education spokeswoman Erica Pippins said. The board was originally scheduled to vote in December, but then decided to review the texts again after receiving complaints. Members of Act for America and the Eagle Forum of Alabama said the books devoted too much content to explaining Islam and not enough on Christianity and Judaism.
“Why is so much text devoted to Islam?” Larry Houck, the founder of Act for America’s Birmingham chapter, wrote in a letter to the school board. He said the books “proselytize for Islam.”
Residents of a Muslim community near York remain concerned for their safety even after a neighbor – who had denied shooting weapons nearby and shouting threats, obscenities and racial slurs before Christmas – pleaded guilty in court.
“Any time someone fires weapons and uses racial slurs, it is a problem,” said Saeed Shakir, mayor of the Islamville community northeast of York. “We are no different than anyone else. We treat people with respect, and we expect to be safe in our homes and on our property.”
Some residents at Islamville, a rural enclave of hundreds of Muslims who have lived there for more than three decades, consider the actions of Joshua Allan Casey, who is white, terrorism and hatred toward the group over religion and race.
In the Dec. 21 incident, Islamville residents called York County Sheriff’s deputies after hearing gunfire and someone yelling racial slurs. When deputies found Casey, 37, walking out of the woods nearby, they smelled alcohol on his breath, according to a sheriff’s report.
A Muslim woman now living in Malaysia struck a blow to the U.S. government’s “no-fly list” when a federal judge ruled Tuesday (Jan. 14) that the government violated her due process rights by putting her on the list without telling her why.
Muslims and civil rights advocates say the no-fly list disproportionately targets Muslims, and they hope the ruling will force the government to become more transparent about the highly secretive program.
“Justice has finally been done for an innocent woman who was wrongly ensnared in the government’s flawed watch listing system,” Elizabeth Pipkin, a lawyer representing Rahinah Ibrahim, said in a statement.
A coalition of American Muslim and Arab-American organizations based in Michigan today call on the Michigan Republican Party to condemn recent hostile comments made about American Muslims by Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema.
Agema recently posted on his Facebook account: “Have you ever been to a Muslim hospital? Have you heard a Muslim orchestra? Have you seen a Muslim band march in a parade? Have you witnessed a Muslim charity? Have you seen Muslims shaking hands with a Muslim Girl Scouts (sic)? Have you seen a Muslim Candy striper? Have you ever seen a Muslim do anything that contributes positively to the American way of life?”
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) examines the double standards in media coverage of violent extremism and political conflicts.
The Rutherford County Board of Zoning Appeals last night approved a cemetery on the Veals Road property of the Murfreesboro Islamic Center.
Mosque leadership appeared before the board in December seeking permission to bury their dead on the land. But on a three-to-two vote board members postponed making a decision. Some members expressed concerns about traffic congestion at the site and about possible environmental impacts.
The Daily News Journal reports that, after hearing a presentation by a Mosque attorney highlighting on soil depths and traffic studies, the board approved the cemetery by a narrow 3 to 2 vote.
A federal judge has denied Bridgewater’s request to delay a court order directing township officials to reconsider plans for a proposed mosque without applying an ordinance that Muslims said was used to undermine their project.
U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp on Monday rejected the township’s motion to stay his Sept. 30 order while officials appeal. In his latest ruling, Shipp said Bridgewater “has not sufficiently established that it has a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal.”
The township is now planning to seek a stay of Shipp’s original order from a higher court, said Marc Haefner, an attorney representing the municipality.
That order instructed the Bridgewater Planning Board to resume consideration of the mosque proposed by the alFalah Center without the use of that controversial ordinance. Public hearings on the proposal are scheduled to begin Jan. 21.