Man confesses to Missouri mosque and clinic fires, prosecutors say

Jedediah StoutA Missouri man has confessed to twice trying to set a Planned Parenthood Clinic on fire and also admitted to setting a blaze that destroyed a mosque in the same town in 2012, federal prosecutors said in court documents filed on Monday.

When Jedediah Stout, 29, was charged Friday with two arson attempts at the Joplin, Missouri, clinic on October 3 and 4, authorities made no mention of his suspected involvement in an August 6, 2012, blaze that gutted the Islamic Society of Joplin mosque.

But in a motion filed on Monday seeking Stout’s continued detention, federal prosecutors said he also had confessed to the mosque blaze and an earlier fire at the mosque on July 4, 2012, that caused minor roof damage. Stout remains in custody pending a Tuesday hearing.

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Do Muslim women need saving?

Do Muslim Women Need Saving“This book seeks answers to the questions that presented themselves to me with such force after 9/11 when popular concern about Muslim women’s rights took off. As an anthropologist who had spent decades living in communities in the Middle East, I was uncomfortable with disjunction between the lives and experiences of Muslim women I had known and the popular media representations I encountered in the Western public sphere, the politically motivated justifications for military intervention on behalf of Muslim women that became common sense, and even the well-meaning humanitarian and rights work intended to relieve global women’s suffering. What worldly effects were these concerns having on different women? And how might we take responsibility for distant women’s circumstances and possibilities in what is clearly an interconnected global world, instead of viewing them as victims of alien cultures? This book is about the ethics and politics of the global circulation of discourses on Muslim women’s rights.”

Lila Abu-Lughod introduces her forthcoming book Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Daily Beast, 22 October 2013

Allen West attacks ICNA billboards, claims US is threatened by ‘dangerous triumvirate of progressive socialism, secular humanism, and Islamic totalitarianism’

Allen West website banner

Former Republican Congressman and outspoken conservative commentator Allen B. West has expressed his disapproval at an Islamic billboard sign campaign.

West posted his thoughts on the group’s “Why Islam?” billboard evangelism campaign Saturday on the former Florida congressman’s website. According to West, he saw the Why Islam? billboard while driving from an event at the Five Star Veterans Center in Jacksonville, Fla.

“As I drove home after the event heading to South Florida, ’round about Cocoa Beach I gazed over in amazement at a disturbing electronic billboard sign. I thought perhaps my eyes were just tired. However, as we got further down the road near Vero Beach, I saw the sign again,” wrote West. “So how was it that I gazed upon two electronic billboards promoting an ideology that translates into the word, ‘surrender?'”

West proceeded to write that the billboards were an example of the “dangerous triumvirate of progressive socialism, secular humanism, and Islamic totalitarianism.”

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Jacob Bender is first Jew to lead chapter of Muslim advocacy group CAIR

Jacob BenderJacob Bender is set to be the voice of Philadelphia-area Muslims, to take on discrimination they encounter in workplace and in the public sphere, and to fight expressions of hate. And his Jewish faith, Bender believes, can only help him do the job effectively.

“The Muslim community is under attack from Islamophobic forces, and it is the obligation and responsibility of people of good will to stand up and say this is a bigoted attack,” Bender said. “This is fully in keeping with my life goals.”

The Council on American Islamic Relations’ Philadelphia branch announced the appointment of Bender as its executive director October 15. Bender is the first Jew, and the first non-Muslim, to serve as director of a CAIR branch.

“The needs of the Muslim community are really the needs of any minority community in the United States,” said Iftekhar Hussein, chairman of CAIR-Philadelphia’s board of directors. “Jacob, being Jewish, understands that from his own background.”

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De Blasio tells Muslims he’ll end broad NYPD spying if elected

Muslims for Bill de BlasioNEW YORK — Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio told a group of Muslim supporters Wednesday that they won’t have to live in fear of being under constant surveillance if he’s elected mayor.

As WCBS 880’s Jim Smith reported, de Blasio, the front-runner in the Nov. 5 general election, said that, on his watch, NYPD surveillance tactics would only be authorized to follow up on specific leads and that the police force would be under the supervision of a new inspector general.

“The efforts of surveillance have to be based on specifically specific information, and obviously you need to go through a careful vetting process,” de Blasio said during a rally at Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn.

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Virginia Beach councilman who opposed mosque has close links to anti-Muslim hate group

Act! for America logoA few weeks before last month’s vote on the city’s first mosque, Councilman Bill DeSteph received a 25-page PowerPoint presentation. It came from the leader of the local chapter of ACT for America, a group concerned about radical Islamists in the United States, and alleged the proposed mosque had ties to Muslim extremists.

DeSteph, the only council member to vote against the mosque on Sept. 24, later said he had information that the facility was a threat to national security, but he declined to give details. He said he passed the information to the federal government.

That PowerPoint, other correspondence obtained by The Virginian-Pilot through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews show that DeSteph used information from the local ACT leader to help make his decision on the mosque, and that ACT hoped he would be a political voice in Richmond for its agenda. DeSteph, a former naval intelligence officer, is running as a Republican for the 82nd District seat in the House of Delegates.

Since then, DeSteph has mostly refused to comment on the mosque, citing what he calls an “ongoing investigation.” Last month, the FBI wouldn’t comment on DeSteph’s allegations. The FBI has not responded to a request for additional comment because of the partial federal government shutdown.

This is not first time DeSteph has raised questions about mosques or Islam. In 2010, he wrote to New York City officials objecting to plans for a Muslim community center near the World Trade Center site. The letter was nearly identical to an online petition from ACT.

At the time, DeSteph was dating the daughter of the founder of the national ACT group, Brigitte Gabriel, an author and activist. Gabriel and ACT Executive Director Guy Rodgers, a former field director for the Christian Coalition and a political consultant, live in Virginia Beach.

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A week is a long time in counterjihadism: A balance sheet of Stephen Lennon’s break with the EDL

Lennon Nawaz and CarrollA week ago when Stephen Lennon announced, at a press conference organised by the Quilliam think tank, that he and Kevin Carroll had resigned from the leadership of the English Defence League, his game plan seemed obvious.

It looked as though Lennon intended to use Quilliam to provide a cover of legitimacy for his entirely spurious break from far-right extremism, and then set up a more mainstream Islamophobic organisation which, by distancing itself from the racist thugs and neo-Nazis who infest the EDL, would enjoy greater credibility within the international “counterjihad” movement. Presumably, having served their purpose, Quilliam would then be ditched by Lennon in favour of building links with the Islamophobia industry in the US, which is after all where the big money is to be found.

At first, all seemed to be going to plan. The Quilliam press conference last Tuesday worked even better than Lennon could possibly have hoped, resulting in saturation coverage from TV channels and national newspapers and launching Lennon into a series of softball media interviews in which he faced no serious challenge over his four-year record at the head of a mob of violent anti-Muslim psychopaths.

Lennon’s main links to the US Islamophobia industry, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, had been primed in advance about his decision to leave the EDL. They immediately issued statements (here and here) enthusiastically endorsing Lennon’s move and declaring that they looked forward to working with him in the future. The former EDL leaders’ refusal to condemn their US associates was taken by Spencer as confirmation that there was “no indication that Robinson or Carroll have given up on their resolve to resist jihad terror and Islamic supremacism”. As I wrote at the time, it appeared that Quilliam had succeeded only in smoothing the way for Lennon’s transition into the leadership of a new and more profitable “counterjihadist” enterprise.

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Tea party protestor says US is ‘ruled by a president who bows down to Allah’, calls on Obama to ‘put the Qur’an down’

Larry KlaymanAt a veteran-led rally that hit the World War II Memorial, the National Mall and the White House on Sunday, one tea party rallier had choice words for President Barack Obama, blaming him for the government shutdown and calling on him to step down.

Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, a conservative political advocacy group, said the country is “ruled by a president who bows down to Allah,” and “is not a president of ‘we the people.'”

“I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come up with his hands out,” he said.

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‘Hate group’ sues to re-run controversial FBI ads on Metro buses

Faces of global terrorism ad

An anti-Muslim organization has sued the King County for refusing to allow the purported hate group to re-run controversial FBI advertisements on Metro buses.

Metro previously allowed the FBI’s “Faces of Global Terrorism” announcements to appear on the buses before the bureau pulled the ads. The FBI ads – which picture 16 terrorism suspects, most of whom are non-white, Muslim and living overseas – were dropped in June over concerns they perpetuated negative stereotypes of Muslims.

The New York-based American Freedom Defense Initiative and organization president Pamela Geller have sued King County claiming the county is violating the free speech rights of the organization’s members by not allowing it to replicate the defunct FBI ads.

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