Ali Gharib examines the past involvement of New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly, who has been suggested as a possible nominee for secretary of the Homeland Security Department, with the Clarion Project and its notoriously Islamophobic film The Third Jihad.
Update: See also “Secretary Ray Kelly? Bad for U.S. Muslims “, New York Daily News, 24 July 2013
The state Senate on Friday passed a bill that would keep courts from recognizing Sharia law. While proponents of the legislation said it would keep people safe from foreign laws, critics derided the bill as sending a message of intolerance and bigotry to followers of Islam.
San Diego police had a bomb squad standing by on Wednesday as they searched the Clairemont apartment of a man suspected of making death threats at a nearby mosque during Ramadan.
No explosives or weapons were found in Larry Michael Rodgers’ apartment on Belden Street near Marlest Driver, police Capt. Brian Ahearn said.
Rodgers allegedly walked into the Islamic Center of San Diego in Clairemont early Monday morning, caused a disruption, then walked out saying, “I’m going to kill all of you,” Ahearn said.
Two men in the congregation followed him and called police, and officers caught up to him on Convoy Street. Rodgers was arrested on suspicion of making terrorist threats. He remained in jail on $50,000 in bail, and was to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon.
Ahearn said investigators were concerned that Rodgers may have been behind a series of verbal bomb threats made against the Islamic School of San Diego, next to the mosque, in May. One threat left on the school’s answering machine said, in part, “I’m going to throw a bomb at your (expletive) school.”
The University of California’s governing board plans to vote Wednesday on a new student member who would be the first practicing Muslim to hold the post and whose nomination is being vigorously opposed by some Jewish groups.
UC Berkeley senior Sadia Saifuddin was picked from a field of 30 applicants to serve on the UC Board of Regents during the 2014-15 academic year. As student regent-designate, the 21-year-old Pakistani American would participate in meetings but wouldn’t be able to cast votes during the school year that begins this fall.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, conservative commentator David Horowitz and others have called on the board to reject Saifuddin’s appointment, alleging that some of her political activities as a student senator and member of the Muslim Students Association at Berkeley make her unqualified to represent the University of California system’s more than 222,000 students.
Those activities included co-sponsoring a bill calling for the divestment of university funds from companies with economic ties to the Israeli military or Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and authoring a resolution condemning a UC Santa Cruz lecturer who had linked the Muslim Students Association with terrorism “for inciting racist and Islamophobic rhetoric.”
If you take the view that no website could possibly be more viciously Islamophobic than Atlas Shrugs, you obviously haven’t paid to visit to Bare Naked Islam. The work of a demented New Yorker named Bonni Benstock-Intall, this site reaches such a pitch of anti-Muslim hysteria that it almost makes Pamela Geller appear as a voice of reason.
Last week Bare Naked Islam tried to exploit the case of a former soldier, David Ryding, who died following a violent incident at a taxi rank in Rugby on 7 July. The cause of the conflict and the ethnicity or religious affiliation of Ryding’s alleged attackers were unknown, nor was it obvious what possible knowledge anyone involved could have had of Ryding’s previous military service (he left the army in 2011). The anti-Muslim far right, however, immediately drew parallels between Ryding’s case and the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich.
Spectators who lined the July 4 route through downtown were treated to a wide variety of sights and sounds, among the approximately 110 entrants in Round Rock Sertoma Club’s annual Independence Day parade.
They saw soldiers in uniform, combat veterans on motorcycles and roller derby women on skates.
They saw kids on bicycles and on horseback, Star Wars characters and men driving vintage cars.
They saw floats full of Republicans, Democrats and Vacation Bible Schoolers. They saw tumbling gymnasts, beauty queens in their tiaras and a high school marching band – plus Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, martial artists, Masons and the Knights of Columbus.
They saw Maggie Moo and Uncle Sam.
What they did not see, however, was an entry from Bait-ul-Muqeet Mosque. Representatives from the Deepwood Drive house of worship had their parade application denied, with a Sertoma Club organizer citing what he called “safety reasons.”
“Teachers ‘denied schoolboy, 10, water on the hottest day of the year to avoid upsetting Muslim pupils during Ramadan'” – that’s the headline to a report in yesterday’s Daily Mail. The story, which is of course just the latest episode in the “Islamisation of the West” narrative promoted by the right-wing press, was also taken up by the Daily Express (“Teachers deny water to schoolboy, 10, on the hottest day of the year”).
Coverage was not restricted to right-wing newspapers. The story appeared in the Daily Mirror (“Mum claims son was REFUSED water at school in heatwave as it was ‘unfair’ on fasting Muslim classmates”) and also featured in the National Secular Society‘s daily media round-up (“Schoolboy forced to observe Ramadan fast – even though he isn’t a Muslim”).
It provoked the usual frothing at the mouth from the likes of Pamela Geller (“This speaks to the supremacism of Islam”) and Robert Spencer (“Easy to see which group is in charge in Britain”), along with the British National Party (“What kind of loony left teacher can actually think it is right to deny a child a drink of water on one of the hottest days of the year. She can only face the sack”).
The Islamic Center in Victoria, Texas, suffered a graffiti attack yesterday, on the eve of Ramadan. The Victoria Advocate reports that “H8” (hate) was sprayed on the front of the building.
Police have categorised the incident as criminal mischief. They say they were unaware that “H8” had a meaning, or if the vandalism was in any way connected with the start of Ramadan.
Imam Osama Hassan said he is confident those involved in the vandalism will be identified, as the Islamic Center is equipped with eight 24-hour cameras around the property. They were installed in 2001 after a pig’s head was left on the doorstep of the Center.
See also “CAIR calls for hate crime probe of another Texas mosque vandalism”, CAIR press release, 11 July 2013
Update: See “Police have suspect in Victoria Islamic Center vandalism”, Victoria Advocate, 12 July 2013
Update 2: See “Juvenile may be charged in Islamic Center vandalism”, Victoria Advocate, 13 July 2013
Political commentator Bob Beckel, the supposed liberal voice on Fox News’s daytime program “The Five,” said on Tuesday that there should be no more mosques built in the United States until every Muslim is cleared of any terrorist or violent activity.
Since 9/11, American law enforcement has taken a disproportionate interest in American Muslims across the country, seeing a whole community as a national security threat, particularly in California and New York City. But here’s the thing: the facts that have been piling up ever since that date don’t support such suspicion. Not at all.
The numbers couldn’t be clearer: right-wing extremists have committed far more acts of political violence since 1990 than American. That law enforcement across the country hasn’t felt similarly compelled to infiltrate and watch over conservative Christian communities in the hopes of disrupting violent right-wing extremism confirms what American Muslims know in their bones: to be different is to be suspect.
Matthew Harwood at Comment is Free, 10 July 2013