www.amperspective.com Online Magazine
Executive Editor: Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Chronology of Islam in America (2015)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
December 2015
American Muslims fear demonization of Islam after San Bernardino mass shooting
Dec 3: American Muslim community groups have expressed fear that San Bernardino mass shooting on Wednesday would add fuel to the rising anti-Islamic feeling. The FBI announced on Friday (Dec. 4) that the mass killing is probed as an act of terrorism. Yesterday Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik entered the Inland Regional Center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino and opened fire on attendees at a holiday party for county workers, killing 14 and injuring 21. The couple fled the scene after the massacre and reportedly left pipe bombs behind. Farook was born in Illinois, while Malik was born in Pakistan and lived in Saudi Arabia before coming to the U.S. when she married Farook. The FBI Director James Comey said the assailants showed signs of “radicalization” but that there was no evidence they were part of a larger terrorist network. Speaking at a press conference in Los Angeles organized by Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Wednesday, Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, Religious Affairs Director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, expressed his organization’s “sadness and sorrow at what happened in San Bernardino” and asked the public not to implicate Islam or Muslims in the attack. “I want to condemn this action, this action of violence,” said Siddiqi. “We have condemned all violence, everywhere, because human life is precious, and we respect and honor the human life.”He added, “Our faith is against this type of behavior.” Also speaking during the CAIR press conference, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR Los Angeles said the group “unequivocally” condemns shooting and stands “in solidarity with fellow Americans as we offer our heartfelt prayers and condolences to the injured, to the families of those who have been killed.” [AMP Report]
New York Post's "Muslim Killers" front page
Dec 3: American Muslims have expressed concern over the New York Post's front page about the San Bernardino Shooting. A version of the New York Post's cover today features "Muslim Killers" in giant letters, over an image of injured victims from the San Bernardino shooting. Robert McCaw, government affairs department manager of CAIR national, told Mic of New Yorker, "I think it's the lowest common denominator of fear-mongering to change their front page to 'Muslim Killers,'" McCaw added. "It endangers the Muslim community and it seeks to legitimize anti-Muslim hysteria." "Muslims are no more responsible for yesterday's terrible events than Christians are for Planned Parenthood," McCaw said of the last week attack on the reproductive health organization, which left three people dead. McCaw said the Paris attacks were responsible for a rise in violence and threats against Muslims in America and that CAIR has since received an unusually high number of American Muslims calling to report being targeted. Farhan Khan Virk, a Muslim social and political activist in Pakistan, told Mic the front page left him speechless. "This is not the first time something like this has happened," Virk said. "They are always looking to us Muslims to justify ourselves and we just came out of the Paris tragedy, where we had to do the same thing." [MIC]
Don’t conflate violent acts as representative of all of Islam
Dec 4: The stigma of terrorism hung like a dark cloud over Friday’s prayer service at the Muslim Association of Puget Sound in Redmond. At the end of a horrific week, Muslims at the mosque expressed bafflement and sorrow over the gruesome attacks committed by those who also call themselves Muslims — first in Paris and now in San Bernardino. “We are really not able to comprehend this because it doesn’t jibe with the religion we practice,” says Mahmood Khadeer, president of the association’s board of directors and a senior manager at Microsoft. Some will refuse to see a distinction between those who committed evil crimes and mainstream American Muslims. But as a nation, we must practice tolerance and understanding, now more than ever. It will be easy to allow fear to replace reason as the investigation in Southern California by the FBI continues to expose disturbing links to extremists in the Middle East. It’s understandable for Americans to recoil at the thought of a terrorist attack from within. At Friday’s weekly service at the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, hundreds of worshippers representing 49 countries listened to visiting Imam John Ederer condemn the Islamic State’s brutality. He called its members “misguided deviants” wreaking havoc against anyone who disagrees with their fanaticism, including a vast majority of Muslims. Ederer urged those in attendance and beyond to be compassionate, empathetic and inquisitive when it comes to understanding Islam’s true message of peace. [Seattle Times Editorial]
Santorum: Islam not fully protected by Constitution
Dec 4: Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Friday that the U.S. Constitution does not protect elements of Islam the way it does Christianity. “Islam is different from Christianity,” he said. The founder of Islam, the prophet Mohammad, established Sharia law to govern his kingdom on Earth, Santorum said, while Jesus Christ proclaimed that his kingdom was not on Earth. The former Pennsylvania senator made his comments just a few hours after the FBI announced it was treating Wednesday's mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., as a federal terrorism investigation. Santorum made his comments during the taping of Des Moines television station KCCI's "Close Up" program. [Desmoines Register]
Florida Islamic Center vandalized in wake of San Bernardino shooting
Dec 4: An Islamic Center in Florida has been vandalized in the wake of the deadly San Bernardino shooting carried out by a Muslim couple. President Sharif Elhosseiny of the Islamic Center in North Palm Beach said broken windows and destroyed furniture were discovered on Friday morning (Dec 4, 2015). He told the Palm Beach Post a red substance, similar to blood, was found inside the center. The vandalism occured on the same evening a vigil was held in California for the 14 victims of the shooting carried out by Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, both of whom were killed in a shootout with police after the attack. The FBI said on Friday the incident is being investigated as an act of terrorism, and reports indicate the couple may have been in touch with extremists online. Members of the Muslim community attended the vigil to honor the victims and pay their respects. "We are here to show support and for there to be a Muslim presence and to show that the violence is not what our religion is about," Samar Natour, a 16-year-old Muslim girl from Redlands, California, told Newsweek at the vigil. [Newsweek]
Falwell Jr. urges students at Christian college to carry concealed weapons
Dec 5: The president of Liberty University urged his student body to start carrying concealed weapons with their books in case Muslim terrorists target their Virginia campus. “Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here,” President Jerry Falwell Jr. declared at a Friday, Dec. 4, convocation before 10,000 people at the Christian college. “I’ve always thought if more good people had concealed carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in,” said the son of his namesake father, the one-time religious right leader Jerry Sr. Falwell was carrying a legal, licensed .25 caliber pistol in his back pants pocket as he spoke to loud cheers. Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on Islamic-American Relations said Falwell’s remarks only amped up the increasingly inflammatory rhetoric toward Muslims. “It’s part of an overall toxic anti-Muslim atmosphere that we’re seeing, particularly in the past few weeks with Paris and San Bernardino,” said Hooper. “Anti-Muslim bigotry was still on the fringes after 9/11. But it’s moving toward the mainstream thanks to Donald Trump, Ben Carson and these type of comments.” [NY Daily News]
Despite outreach efforts, Muslims feel more vulnerable even in peaceful communities
Dec 5: Muslim families in this southern Indiana hamlet (Newburgh) are among those feeling more vulnerable as anti-Islamic sentiment heats up across the country in the aftermath of recent extremist attacks. Here, they have found mostly peaceful coexistence at the edge of the nation's Bible Belt, forming friendly relations with the larger community by working hard to build trust. They began arriving about 30 years ago to take jobs as doctors, business owners, engineers and professors in the area around Evansville, Indiana's third largest city, many settling in this bedroom community known for antique shops, restaurants and nice houses lining manicured streets. They host an annual food festival and give tours of the new Islamic center, which opened five years ago and serves about 120 families in the region. They help build Habitat for Humanity houses and volunteer at homeless shelters. They've forged friendships with Christian and Jewish congregations. Still, they worry. Leaders have hired off-duty sheriff's deputies to safeguard their mosque during Friday prayers. It's the same way they felt after 9/11, when someone rammed a pickup truck into their old Islamic center, shattering several windows......The Rev. Kevin Fleming, pastor at First Presbyterian Church in nearby Evansville, said he is criticized occasionally by other Christians for his friendship with Muslims, who "to their way of thinking are beyond the kingdom of God, which is preposterous." If anyone had tried to picket the Islamic center after the recent attack in Paris, he said, his congregation was ready to "get between whoever was going to be protesting against them and keep them safe." [Associated Press]
Flyer calls for "No Jihad in Fredericksburg" in mosque debate
Dec 5: As an interfaith service took place at a nearby church, a flyer circulated last night in Fredericksburg, Va. calling for “No Jihad in Fredericksburg” in an effort to stop a new mosque from being built in the city. The flyer advertises an upcoming meeting about a proposal by the Islamic Center of Fredericksburg (Va.) to build a new mosque because they have outgrown their existing building. The group announced Friday that they had canceled that meeting out of “concern for the safety of the Muslim community.” The flyer also blames Muslims on the attacks in Paris and the shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. and asks people to “join with other Fredericksburg Patriots in stopping this pagan temple.” This is not the first time anti-Muslim rhetoric has entered the discussion about the proposed mosque. In November during a meeting about the mosque, at least two people in attendance went on anti-Muslim rants, one of them calling all Muslims terrorists. [WUA9]
American Muslims accuse Donald Trump of leading 'lynch mob'
Dec 8: American Muslims rejected Donald Trump's proposal for the United States to bar Muslims from entering the country, calling it "reckless" and "un-American" and predicting that it will be used as a recruiting tool for extremist groups such as the Islamic State. "Donald Trump sounds more like the leader of a lynch mob than a great nation like ours," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The GOP front-runner is "playing into the hands" of ISIS, Awad said, by turning Americans against each other. Trump, who has previously called for surveillance against mosques and said he was open to establishing a database for all Muslims living in the United States, made his latest controversial call in a news release. His message comes in the wake of a deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, by suspected ISIS sympathizers and the day after President Barack Obama asked the country not to "turn against one another" out of fear. Trump said in the release: "Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life." Muslim leaders quickly denounced Trump's proposal. "There is no place for a person who wants to advance his political agenda over the very values this country was founded on," said Oussama Jammal, secretary general of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations.
Yesterday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson visited a mosque in Virginia, where he urged Americans not to tarnish all Muslims with the terrorist brush. "The overwhelming, overwhelming majority of American Muslims, and Muslims worldwide, are men, women and children of peace, who seek to live their lives in peace, and want nothing to do with terrorism. Anyone who does not understand this does not understand Islam," Johnson said during a brief visit at the Adams Center, a mosque and community center in Reston, Virginia. Asked about Trump's plan, Johnson demurred, saying he does not comment on political candidates. But American religious leaders did not hesitate to criticize the GOP front-runner. "Anyone who cares an iota about religious liberty should denounce this reckless, demagogic rhetoric," said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. "The government should close the borders to anyone suspected of even a passing involvement with any radical cell or terrorist network. But the government should not penalize law-abiding people, especially those who are American citizens, for holding their religious convictions." [CNN]
Anti-Muslim fever goes viral after Paris and San Bernardino attacks
Dec 9: Anti-Muslim fever goes viral after Paris and San Bernardino attacks. To borrow Andrew O'hehir of Salon, Muslim fever has spread through our national bloodstream and replaced all thought. Many U.S. leaders have unleashed discriminatory rhetoric in the name of counterterrorism. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Friday that the U.S. Constitution does not protect Islam the way it does Christianity. Donald Trump said that he would “strongly consider” shutting down American mosques and that he wants “surveillance of certain mosques if that’s okay.” Thirty-one governors said that Syrian refugees were not welcome in their states. Jeb Bush suggested that refugees should be allowed into the United States if “you can prove you’re a Christian.” The president of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr, urged his student body to start carrying concealed weapons with their books in case Muslim terrorists target their Virginia campus. “Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here,” President Jerry Falwell Jr. declared at a Friday, Dec. 4, convocation before 10,000 people at the Christian college. Falwell was carrying a legal, licensed .25 caliber pistol in his back pants pocket as he spoke to loud cheers.... The San Bernardino shootings killed 14 people and wounded 21 at a meeting of public health officials that doubled as a holiday party. A dozen victims were county of San Bernardino employees. The FBI said the shootings by husband-and-wife Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were being investigated as terrorism..... Joshua Holland host of Politics and Reality Radio writes in The Nation, that regardless of what motive ultimately comes out, the reality is that Muslims have committed only a minuscule fraction of the mass shootings in this country. It was the 355th mass shooting on the 336th day of 2015. He says: "We don’t yet know what set off this latest bloodbath, but we know a lot about gun violence in America. Perhaps the most frightening thing we know about gun violence comes from a study conducted by researchers at Duke, Harvard, and Columbia that was published earlier this year in the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law. It found that almost one in 10 Americans who have access to guns are also prone to impulsive outbursts of rage. Among this group are almost 4 million people who carry their guns around in public and say they “have tantrums or angry outbursts,” “get so angry [that they] break or smash things” and lose their temper and “get into physical fights.” ..... Andrew O'hehir argues if the San Bernardino shootings had been carried out by a white man named John Smith, he would be considered a lone nut even if he were a whacked-out evangelical Christian who thought he was doing the Lord’s work O'hehir said adding:. But if Syed Farook is a crazy Muslim dude who looked at crazy Muslim websites, then he winds up on the front page of the New York Post as a “MUSLIM KILLER” who represents the tip of a deadly iceberg of terror, and cannot possibly be a lone nut. [AMP Report]
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