Category Archives: USA

Canadian city pulls Geller ads

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Edmonton bus with Geller ad

EDMONTON — The city will re-examine the way controversial Edmonton Transit ads are approved after pulling anti-Muslim bus placards offering to help Muslim girls threatened with honour killing.

“The minute I found out about these ads, I called over to Charlie Stolte, our general manager of Edmonton Transit Service, and showed my displeasure,” Coun. Amarjeet Sohi said Tuesday. “They target one group, and in my mind they were very discriminatory and racist, and there’s no place for that kind of bigotry on city property.”

The posters on the back of five buses were taken down Tuesday, eight days after they went up.

They show a photo of young women above the caption “Muslim girls honor killed by their families. Is your family threatening you? Is there a fatwa on your head? We can help.” There’s a link to FightforFreedom.us, which warns about the “encroachment of Islam on western civilization.”

The site is operated by SIOA (Stop Islamization of America), which put up the same material in Tampa, Fla. It has also run ads on buses in New York, San Francisco and Miami aimed at people facing family threats who wanted to leave Islam, and fought plans to build a mosque near New York’s destroyed World Trade Center site.

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Interfaith prayers at Delaware Islamic Center as 3 teens charged in vandalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamic Society of Delaware vandalism (2)Three 16-year-old boys were arrested and charged Monday evening in last week’s vandalism at the Islamic Center of Delaware in Ogletown, state police said Monday night.

Word of the arrests surfaced as Delaware residents of many faiths gathered for a prayer service at the Islamic Society’s multi-purpose hall in a show of community solidarity.

The president of the Islamic Society of Delaware said the incident showed the power of a community to push back against intolerance. “We can make our town … our state … a better place,” Mahamed Allimulla said to a crowd of more than 150 people that filled every seat in the Islamic Society of Delaware hall.

Among them were Jews, Christians and Sikhs who spoke to the crowd. They each said they value interfaith efforts in Delaware, and that the incident would spark renewed commitment to teaching the community about religious tolerance.

The damage was discovered Friday morning as members arrived at the mosque on Salem Church Road. The main sign identifying the Islamic Society of Delaware was knocked down, a digital sign was damaged with rocks and a white picket fence was broken into pieces, with a cross made of some broken fencing.

Although a makeshift cross was part of the vandals’ work, police did not add a hate crime to the charges leveled Monday. Each of the three youths was charged with felony criminal mischief resulting in damage of more than $5,000, and each was charged with second-degree conspiracy, Sgt. Paul G. Shavack said.

Authorities did not consider the crude construction of a cross – typically considered a Christian symbol – to be proof that the incident was an anti-Islamic or religion-motivated vandalism spree, he said. “We have no evidence that it was a hate crime,” Shavack said.

“After a thorough and comprehensive joint investigation by the Delaware State Police and FBI,” he said, “there was no evidence to suggest that this act of vandalism was directed, targeted or focused on the Islamic Society of Delaware or the Islamic community.” Rather than a hate crime, Shavack said, “it was a random act of stupidity by teenagers.”

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Emerson’s ‘Jihad in America’ film panned

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jihad in America The Grand Deception“Resembling the anti-Communist, red-baiting films of the 1950s, Jihad in America: The Grand Deception effectively sums up its intentions with its title. This documentary co-directed by Rachel Milton and Steve Emerson (the latter is the executive director of the organization Investigative Project on Terrorism) is a broad indictment of Islam, seemingly implicating every person of that faith as a potential violent jihadist determined to destroy America.”

The Hollywood Reporter isn’t greatly impressed by Steve Emerson’s witch-hunting film.

Vandalism at Islamic Society of Delaware

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamic Society of Delaware vandalism

Worshippers making their way to morning prayer found the entryway to the Islamic Center of Delaware vandalized.

The fences to their driveway had been torn down, a wooden sign had been knocked to the ground and an electronic sign was damaged with rocks and possibly mud tossed at it. A cross was fashioned from the debris and placed on the electric sign along Salem Church Road near Newark.

“This is very hard. This is very shocking for us,” said Mahamed Allimulla, president of the Islamic Society of Delaware. “We’re just trying to realize why this happened.”

Allimulla said the damage was done sometime between midnight and 5:30 a.m. today. State police were out investigating the damage this morning. Allimulla said he would be contacting federal authorities as well.

Although police have not commented on the incident, Allimulla said he believes this to be a hate crime and wondered if the people who did the damage had been casing the organization, since Friday is the day of Jumma prayer, drawing about 1,000 people for the afternoon service.

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Few takers for Geller’s hysterical campaign against Bill de Blasio

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stop Red Bill ad

It seems that Pamela Geller’s attempt to whip up hysteria among New Yorkers over the threat posed by Bill de Blasio’s mayoral candidacy isn’t going very well. She complains that at her press conference yesterday “there was no media present, with the exception of Jennifer Fermino from the NY Daily News”.

And Fermino evidently wasn’t too impressed with what she heard. Her report refers to Geller as an “Islam hater”, “anti-Islam blogger” and “pro-Israel flamethrower” – entirely accurate descriptions which Geller denounces as an attempt to “defame and smear” her.

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ACLU leads call for federal investigation of NYPD mosque surveillance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NYPD Muslim surveillanceA coalition of 125 civil rights, religious and community groups has written to the Department of Justice, calling for a federal investigation into the blanket surveillance of mosques and other Muslim outlets by the New York Police Department (NYPD).

The coalition, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), is calling on the attorney general, Eric Holder, to use his powers to launch a federal civil rights investigation into NYPD practices. Once any investigation is completed, the Department of Justice could, if it chose, take civil legal action to put a stop to the controversial surveillance dragnet.

“For over a decade, the NYPD has engaged in unlawful religious profiling and suspicionless surveillance of Muslims in New York City,” the letter says. “The NYPD’s biased policing practices hurt not only Muslims, but all communities who rightfully expect that law enforcement will serve and protect America’s diverse population equally, without discrimination.”

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Is Russia turning Muslim?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daniel Pipes says it is. A few days ago he contributed a typical scaremongering piece to the Washington Times, using the recent right-wing nationalist riots in Moscow as a peg on which to hang the claim that Russia faces a real prospect of “Muslims becoming a majority in the 21st century – a demographic revolution that would fundamentally change the country’s character”.

Moscow’s nationalist rioters, Pipes seemed to be suggesting, were not wrong in fearing a Muslim threat to “their” country, even if their violent response was regrettable.

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