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Executive Editor: Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Chronology of Islam in America (2015)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
August 2015 Page Two
Scott Walker: There's a 'handful of reasonable, moderate followers of Islam'
August 22: When speaking about radical Islamic terrorism at a campaign stop yesterday, Gov. Scott Walker noted that there are a "handful of reasonable and moderate followers of Islam." His comments at a VFW Post in Derry, New Hampshire, triggered a quick response from a Muslim advocacy organization, which called on him to apologize. "These types of inaccurate statements reflect a lack of understanding of Islam and Muslims that is, frankly, not presidential," said Robert McCaw, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). "If Mr. Walker believes only a 'handful' of Muslims are moderate or reasonable, then he is ignoring the very clear reality that violent extremists murder more Muslims than they do people of any other faith." The council has criticized Walker previously. In July, it called on Walker to cut ties with Kevin Hermening, a former Iran hostage. In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hermening called for wiping out the capitals of seven heavily Muslim countries if they didn't support American efforts to kill Osama bin Laden, and for the deportation of undocumented immigrants, especially those of Middle Eastern descent. [The Journal Sentinel]
Omaha's Islamic Center vandalized; national group calls for hate crime investigation
August 24:Someone threw a boulder into a window of the Omaha Islamic Center overnight Sunday. "A rock was thrown in the form of a rocket into the mosque and the mosque was shattered," Abdul Qahar Hikmat said. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wants the incident looked into as a possible hate crime. "We've seen a lot of threats to mosques nationwide," said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. "We've seen hate vandalism. Whenever a house of worship is targeted, that's of particular concern or should be of particular concern to all Americans." Mosque leaders said this is the first time in 20 years that someone's targeted their place of worship. It's the first time they've needed security cameras, too. [KETV]
French mosque fire is arson, Hollande says, as Anti-Muslim crimes on the rise in France
August 24: A fire that destroyed most of a mosque in southern France this past weekend was deemed arson by the French government today. French President François Hollande condemned the crime in an official statement released Monday, saying the actions of the perpetrators went against the "values of the [French] Republic." The arson in the mosque in Auch, near Toulouse, occurred on Augusst 22, just one day after a heavily armed man attacked a high-speed Thalys train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris in what authorities believe was a terrorist act. The assailant, Ayoub El Khazzani, 25, was wrestled to the ground by several bystanders, including U.S. servicemen, after he boarded the train armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Luger automatic pistol and a box cutter. Authorities have not yet identified suspects or motives in the arson incident in Auch, though authorities said they feared the crime was an anti-Muslim reaction to the Thalys attack. Anti-Muslim crimes have been on the rise in France since January, after two extremists who identified themselves as Muslim stormed the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, killing 12 people and wounding many more. "Muslims in France should be able to practice their religion freely and safely," Hollande said in a statement. Prime Minister Manuel Valls joined Hollande in his condemnation of the attack on the mosque, taking to Twitter to express his disappointment. "The criminal fire at the Auch mosque is an attack against our republican values," wrote Valls in a Tweet posted from his verified account. "I condemn it with the strongest possible force," he wrote. No one was injured in the fire that destroyed 70 percent of the building, including the roof and two prayer rooms. Firefighters who arrived on the scene said they smelled a strong odor of gasoline that later led them to rule that the fire was lit deliberately. [International Business Times]
Anti-Muslim protests spoil the first day of school for kindergartners In Houston
August 24: A group of adult protesters likely spoiled the first day of class for 132 knee-high pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students at Texas’ Houston Independent School District (HISD) who were on their way to a new Arabic immersion program at their school. On Monday morning, about 30 adult protesters spread out around the school fence holding signs and waving American and Israeli flags, the Houston Chronicle reported. “Everything I needed to know about Islam I learned from Muslims on 9-11-2001,” one sign read. “Qatar out of our school,” another sign stated. Protesters told the Houston Chronicle that they don’t have problems with “other immersion schools or with independent Arabic language classes, but said the school was anti-American, and that immigrants should be ‘assimilated.'” The population at the Arabic school is about 30 percent Hispanic, 30 percent white, and 30 percent African American, according to the HISD news blog. This is the first semester at HISD’s Arabic Immersion Magnet School (or AIMS), a program that offers students the opportunity to spend half their day in classes taught in Arabic and half taught in English. The program welcomes children from 40 different Houston-area zipcodes, HISD Superintendent Terry Grier said. Behind Spanish, Arabic is the second most common foreign language spoken at home amog people living in the Houston Independent School District. Though Houston’s Arabic-speaking population hovers around 23,000, not all Arabic-speaking individuals are Muslims. In fact, only 20 percent of Muslims worldwide speak the language.Even so, anti-Muslim activity is on the rise in Houston and around the country. In February, an accelerant was used to burn down an Islamic community and education center, a suspected arson that came just days after a gunman shot to death three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. There have been at least five anti-mosque incidents in Texas between 2006 and 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union found.[Think Progress]
Scott Walker: There's a 'handful of reasonable, moderate followers of Islam'
August 22: When speaking about radical Islamic terrorism at a campaign stop yesterday, Gov. Scott Walker noted that there are a "handful of reasonable and moderate followers of Islam." His comments at a VFW Post in Derry, New Hampshire, triggered a quick response from a Muslim advocacy organization, which called on him to apologize. "These types of inaccurate statements reflect a lack of understanding of Islam and Muslims that is, frankly, not presidential," said Robert McCaw, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). "If Mr. Walker believes only a 'handful' of Muslims are moderate or reasonable, then he is ignoring the very clear reality that violent extremists murder more Muslims than they do people of any other faith." The council has criticized Walker previously. In July, it called on Walker to cut ties with Kevin Hermening, a former Iran hostage. In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hermening called for wiping out the capitals of seven heavily Muslim countries if they didn't support American efforts to kill Osama bin Laden, and for the deportation of undocumented immigrants, especially those of Middle Eastern descent. [The Journal Sentinel]
Scott Walker should drop the doublespeak on Islam
August 26: The vast majority of Muslims want peace and prosperity for their families and communities, the same as anyone else. So eyebrows understandably raised last week — with a Muslim group demanding an apology — when Gov. Scott Walker suggested just the opposite. The Republican presidential candidate was speaking Friday at a VFW Post in New Hampshire, criticizing Democratic President Barack Obama for not describing terrorist groups as “Islamic.” “You’ve got to identify who the enemy is loud and clear,” Walker said. “We’ve said it repeatedly. It’s radical Islamic terrorism. It is a war not against only America and Israel, it’s a war against Christians. It’s a war against Jews. It’s a war against even the handful of reasonable, moderate followers of Islam who don’t share the radical beliefs that these radical Islamic terrorists have.” Whoops. Surely Gov. Walker didn’t mean to suggest the vast majority of Muslims are extremists. Right? What he probably meant, we assumed, was that a relative handful of Muslims are extremists. So we asked. And asked. And asked. But three requests by the State Journal to Walker’s campaign to clarify his statement elicited little more than a haze of political doublespeak. “The governor knows that the majority of ISIS’s victims are Muslims,” Walker spokeswoman AshLee Strong wrote. “Muslims who want to live in peace — the majority of Muslims — are the final target of radical Islamic terrorists. Under the Obama-Clinton foreign policy doctrine, we’ve been abandoning our traditional Muslim allies in the Middle East and allowing ISIS, al-Qaida, and Iran to fill the void.” So when the governor said “a handful,” what he meant to say was “the majority.” Right? Walker’s campaign declined further comment, letting the offensive remark stand while sort of, kind of, vaguely refuting it. [Wisconsin State Journal editorial]
Six times Texans freaked out about Islam this year
August 28: This Monday (Aug 24) morning, anti-Muslim protesters hoisting American flags took to the sidewalks outside of Houston's new Arabic Immersion Magnet School. It was like a scene straight out of 1957 Little Rock. The protesters were greeted by four- and five-year-olds with their brand new backpacks, some of them going to school for the first time ever. For all of them, though, they were attending the first Arabic immersion school in the country. They'll learn English and social studies in English and math and science in Arabic. To the protesters outside, however, somehow this equated to teaching a religion (Islam, of course), supporting jihadist terrorism, and denouncing American patriotism and culture. “Everything I ever cared to know about Islam was taught to me by Muslims on 9-11-2001,” one sign read. “QATAR OUT OF OUR Schools,” read another. “It would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic,” Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the Houston chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, told the Houston Press this week. “The school is just trying to teach the students Arabic—it's just learning a language. And I don't know why someone would protest that. It really doesn't make any sense whatsoever to me.” Carroll sees any opportunity to be exposed to Arabic language and culture as a positive step for the community—especially in a city whose primary industry is oil and energy. According to the Houston Chronicle, the Arabic-speaking population in Houston grew by one-third between 2009 and 2013, up to 23,300 people. And although many Arabic speakers are not even Muslim, that mattered little to the protesters outside HISD's immersion school this week. “Any time there's an Arab anything or a Muslim anything, these folks come out of the woodwork," Carroll said.
Here are six more times that happened in Texas this year.
1. Houston mosque burns, receives outpouring of hate Even though the homeless man accused of setting fire to Houston's Quba Islamic Institute in February said it was an accident, that didn't stop the Internet from reacting hatefully—toward the members of the mosque, that is. One Facebook user wrote, "I don't know why, but I suddenly feel like throwing severed pig-heads at every Muslim on my path." And another, a truck driver from Georgia, said that he “hopes a mosque burns for every American killed by these terrorists.” 2. Farmersville Residents Lash Out About Islamic Graveyard After an Islamic group purchased some land in July to build a cemetery in Farmersville, north of Dallas, the locals perceived it as Muslims coming in to overtake the future of the town. One resident, Medford Sumrow, told NPR, “We don't need that crap up here. What the hell they want to come up here and jack with Farmersville for?” 3. Texas (Anti?) Muslim Capitol Day Being away from the office didn't stop Rep. Molly White (R-Belton) from actively participating in Texas Muslim Capitol Day on January 29. She graciously left specific instructions to staffers in case any Muslims entered her office. “I did leave an Israeli flag on the reception desk in my office with instructions to staff to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws,” she wrote on Facebook. “We will see how long they stay in my office.” Such a warm invitation. 4. Houston high school teacher gives lesson on "radical Islamists" In March, a teacher at Foster High School in Richmond gave a pretty nasty social studies lesson about Islam. He handed out an eight-page document, which he appeared to author, called "Islam/Radical Islam (Did You Know)." Virtually nothing was cited, or accurate. And it ultimately led one Muslim student in the room to complain to her parents, who alerted the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR provided some of the lesson's grossest examples to the Houston Press, including "Islam is more of an ideology than a religion. It is also an ideology of war," and, "You will either give into their demands recognizing Islam's 'noble' rule, you will become a Muslim yourself, or you will die." 5. Conference aiming to dispel Islamophobia draws ...well, Islamophobia Although the theme of the January Muslim conference at the Curtis Caldwell Center in Garland was “Stand With the Prophet Against Terror And Hate,” the attitude outside on the streets was, well, pretty terrorizing and hateful. Hundreds of protesters gathered holding signs like, “Sharia Free Zone” and “You are NOT American. Don't fly our flags!” But inside, the Muslim attendees were waving the flags only to show they only want peace. 6. Third grade teacher spews anti-Muslim hate on right-wing TV show For some reason, a Houston-area third-grade teacher, Angela Box, found it appropriate to go live on a local right-wing cable-access show, Tommy's Garage, and say that “every normal human being in the world thinks that goat-fucking Muslims and boy-fucking Muslims are the evil of the world.” [Houston Press]
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