Category Archives: USA

Bias against Muslims rampant in ‘liberal’ California

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Once Upon a Hatred“Muslim Americans come from more than 80 different countries and four continents; they occupy different socioeconomic classes, subscribe to a variety of sects and pursue all manner of jobs. Yet this highly diverse population has been shrunken into a single suspect class, unified now by its experience with Islamophobia.”

Charlotte Silver reports on recent studies by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (Once Upon a Hatred: Anti-Muslim Experiences in the USA) and the One Nation Bay Area Project (Bay Area Muslim Study: Establishing Identity and Community).

Electronic Intifada, 25 June 2013

Update:  See “Islamophobia in the US is mainstream”, Electronic Intifada, 28 June 2013

How Pamela Geller incites race hate in the UK

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geller UK teen brutally beaten by 15 Muslims headline

Over at Exposing the English Defence League, Julie Blackadder draws our attention to a recent post at Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs blog, headlined “UK teen brutally beaten by 15 Muslims”.

A week ago Geller reproduced a report from the Dewsbury newspaper The Press, detailing an alleged attack by a group of youth of Asian heritage on a 14-year-old white boy, Joseph Haigh, in the West Yorkshire village of Thornhill, which was said to have taken place “on Friday night”. She told her readers: “The police did not classify this savage attack as ‘racially’ (Islamically) motivated, but the police arrested an 85-year-old woman after she yelled ‘go back to your own country’ outside Gillingham mosque in the wake of the Woolwich beheading.”

From which we can only conclude that Geller believes that yelling “go back to your own country” at Muslims is acceptable behaviour and that her co-thinkers in the UK should be free to shout such racist abuse without fear of arrest.

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EDL: Theresa May considers banning US bloggers from UK

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spencer Carroll Geller & Lennon

Home Secretary Theresa May is considering banning two US bloggers from entering the UK to speak at an English Defence League rally. Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are due to join an EDL march in Woolwich, where Drummer Lee Rigby was killed. The pair are prominent “anti-Islamisation” campaigners in the US.

Home affairs committee chairman Keith Vaz claims their presence will fuel hatred and is calling for them to be denied visas. Mr Vaz said: “I am alarmed that the EDL is planning this type of march in Woolwich. It is clear that the location, motivation and attendees at this march will incite hatred. Adding incendiary speakers such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer just fuels the fire.

“Before we have to pay the costs for the extra policing required for this demonstration, the Home Secretary should consider using her discretion to ban these two speakers from entering the country. A ban should be enforced properly and physically stop people entering our borders.”

The Home Office said it did not routinely comment on individual cases but the home secretary was aware of Mr Vaz’s letter and would be responding in due course. Mrs May has the power to exclude non-British citizens from the UK if she considers their presence to be “not conducive to the public good” but she must act in a “reasonable, proportionate and consistent” way.

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Florida professor’s terrorism class: Muslims taught to hate ‘from the cradle’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jonathan Matusitz and friends
Jonathan Matusitz (second from right) and friends at The Awakening conference in Florida in April

A Florida professor who teaches a class on terrorism is facing a formal complaint after he claimed that Muslims are taught to hate “from the cradle.”

In a letter to the University of Central Florida, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) calls for the school to review terrorism courses taught by Professor Jonathan Matusitz, which the group says “includes inaccurate information, anti-Muslim bigotry and hostility in the form of hate speech toward Islam and Muslims.”

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Abercrombie struggling to prove fired woman’s hijab hurt sales

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abercrombie__FitchAbercrombie & Fitch is having a hard time proving in court that the Muslim headscarf worn by an employee who was fired in 2010 hurt the clothing company’s sales, Law360 reports.

On Tuesday, when a federal judge in California pressed attorney Mark Knueve, who is representing Abercrombie, if he or any of his witnesses had financial records to show the woman’s hijab hurt sales, Knueve said he didn’t.

“A defendant says we’re harmed but provides no real evidence?” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers retorted, according to the report. “And you want me to grant summary judgment [in your favor]?”

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Virginia cabbie pursues charges after anti-Muslim rant

Posted on by Bob Pitt

McLEAN, Va. — For the second time in as many months, a Muslim civil rights group is pursuing criminal charges on behalf of a taxicab driver who was subjected to an anti-Islamic rant caught on tape.

In the most recent case, an Ashburn, Va., woman unleashed a string of expletives and called 911 to report that she was afraid for her life because she said her cabbie, Abdikar Aden of Alexandria, was “very Muslim.”

Aden says the woman also poked him repeatedly in the back of his shoulder, though that part of the confrontation was not captured in a recording provided to The Associated Press.

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Civil rights groups sue NYPD over Muslim spying

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hina Shamsi announces civil rights suit
ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi announces the civil rights suit (Photo: Seth Freed Wessler)

The New York Police Department’s widespread spying programs directed at Muslims have undermined free worship by innocent people and should be declared unconstitutional, religious leaders and civil rights advocates said Tuesday after the filing of a federal lawsuit.

“Our mosque should be an open, religious and spiritual sanctuary, but NYPD spying has turned it into a place of suspicion and censorship,” Hamid Hassan Raza, an imam named as a plaintiff, told a rally outside police headquarters shortly after the suit was filed in federal court in Brooklyn.

The city’s legal department responded with a statement calling the intelligence-gathering an appropriate and legal tactic that helps keep the city safe from terrorism.

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US company advertises pork-coated bullets

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jihawg Ammo

The right-wing US website BizPac Review reports on a new and particularly distasteful example of Islamophobia.

An Idaho company named Jihawg Ammo (company slogan “Peace through pork”) has begun producing bullets coated with “pork-infused paint”. It advertises this as “the only ammunition in the world that provides a peaceful and natural deterrent to radical Islam”.

BizPac Review explains: “The inclusion of pork in the paint makes the bullets haraam, or unclean. Under Islamic law, anyone who comes in contact with a haraam item is then unclean, and must engage in a cleansing ritual. No unclean person can be admitted into Paradise.”

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Sarah Palin on U.S. decision on Syria: ‘Let Allah sort it out’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin criticized the Obama administration’s decision to supply weapons to the rebels in the civil war in Syria today, arguing that the U.S. should “Let Allah sort it out” until there is a stronger leader in the White House.

“Militarily, where is our commander in chief? We’re talking now more new interventions. I say until we know what we’re doing, until we have a commander in chief who knows what he’s doing, well, let these radical Islamic countries who aren’t even respecting basic human rights, where both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an arbitrary red line, ‘Allah Akbar,’ I say until we have someone who knows what they’re doing, I say let Allah sort it out,” Palin said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference.

ABC News, 15 June 2013