www.amperspective.com Online Magazine
Executive Editor: Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Chronology of Islam in America (2015)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
February 2015 page three
Rep. Ellison says bigotry against Muslims breeds hate
Feb 18: Speaking at the CVE summit on the Second day, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) denounced the United States' targeting of Muslim populations and argued that by failing to prosecute hate crimes against Muslim communities the U.S. government is only furthering extremists' cause. Recalling the shooting of three young Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Feb 10, and official reluctance to question the shooter's motive, Ellison told the assembly, "It’s important that law enforcement prosecute hate crimes against Muslims....It’s important that we at least admit that what happened in Chapel Hill probably was not only about a parking space." He added, "This defies our sense of logic and common sense." Ellison, who is the first Muslim elected to Congress, said that the incident is emblematic of how the United States' targeting and prosecution of Muslims only reinforces extremist behavior. "This actually helps to support the false narrative of violent extremism; [extremists] want to make the case that America hates you, is against you, join us," he said. "Razan, Yusor and Deah—the three student victims—were living, walking, breathing examples of countering violent extremism until their lives were taken away," added the congressman. "Let us not slip into a mistaken idea that terrorism is somehow a Muslim idea." Ellison also criticized recent moves by U.S. banks to stop all money transfers between the U.S. and Somalia. "On February 6, our financial services system stopped working with Somali money-wiring services to send money to Somalia," said Ellison, whose home state has the largest Somali-American population in the country. "This is important because in the region, the violent extremist wants to be able to say 'See, they won’t even let your relatives send you money.' They want to be able to say that and we have got to be able to stop them from saying that." "The violent extremist makes the case that America is at war with Islam and Muslims, and we have to assert that this is not true; not just in word, but in deed," he said. [AMP Report]
The Muslim Advocates deeply troubled by the CVE framework
Feb 18: “They seem to focus primarily on Muslim communities, which account for only a small fraction of terrorist activities carried out in the United States,” Farhana Khera, executive director of the group Muslim Advocates, said in an interview with Washington Post. She added that any faith community — including Christians and Jews, “would be horrified to learn that their religious leaders were asked by law enforcement to monitor their congregants’ religious views and opinions and report back to them.” The killing of Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, (on February 10, 2015) “really underscores how dangerous it is for the US government, including the White House, to focus its countering violent extremism initiatives primarily on American Muslims”, said Farhana Khera. Earlier in a statement the Muslim Advocates said: “Muslim Advocates is deeply troubled by the message that the administration is sending by primarily focusing on American Muslims, particularly young American Muslims, at this week’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) summit. While the facts show that perpetrators who are Muslim comprise a very tiny fraction of extremist violence in the US, a summit and CVE programs that focus on Muslims send the false and dangerous message to the American people that their Muslim neighbors are a threat to their safety. As the brutal murders in Chapel Hill tragically remind us, extremist violence cannot be predicted by any religious, ideological, ethnic, or racial profile. Furthermore, the few perpetrators of extremist violence who are Muslim generally do not have deep ties to the American Muslim community that could be addressed by CVE programs. The Tsarnaev brothers, for example, were virtually unknown in the Boston Muslim community and were already known by the FBI and Russian intelligence. By primarily focusing on Muslims, this summit and government CVE programs undermine the safety of all Americans, including American Muslims, who are living with the very real, well-founded fear that their neighbors may do them harm. Muslim Advocates has urged the administration to broaden the focus of the summit and is extraordinarily disappointed that it has refused to do so.” [AMP Report]
DHS Secretary: Administration ‘should give voice to plight of Muslims living in this country’
Feb 18: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson stressed at the Countering Violent Extremism summit this morning that “we in the administration and the government should give voice to the plight of Muslims living in this country and the discrimination that they face.” Johnson said he is “personally committed to speak out about the situation that very often people in the Muslim community in this country face; the fact that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and that the Islamic faith is one about peace and brotherhood.” “For our part, we — we ask something of you, of members of the community,” he said. “First of all, I’ve heard over and over again, and this is where we have to depend upon people in the community, that we need to develop the counter-narrative. We’ve heard that over and over now. And we know that there are a number of those who have undertaken to do this. We need to take that to the next level, developing the counter- narrative.” “Also in our communities and the communities we engage, we ask that we all have a stake. So one of the themes of this conference which fits right in with that is our communities, our responsibility, our shared future. And that is very much part of the message that we like to bring when we go to places like L.A., Boston, Minneapolis. Our communities, our responsibility, our shared future.”The administration has faced criticism from Islamic groups that its pilot programs to counter violent extremists have disproportionately singled out Muslim communities. [PJ Media]
KKK Anti-Islam flyers distributed in Washington State
Feb 20: Residents in the Millwood neighborhood (Spokne, Wash.) woke up this morning to find dozens of Ku Klux Klan flyers littered around their driveways and front yards. Each flyer was found in a plastic bag with a handful of white rocks. The paper reads, “You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake!” The back contains a long, hateful speech regarding Islam. “It's just shocking,” Deanne Cuevas said. “This has never happened in our neighborhood.” Cuevas moved to Millwood nearly 15 years ago because it was peaceful and family oriented, and she says never has this happened in her time living there. “Nobody should feel uncomfortable in this neighborhood,” she said. “We just want people to know that we won't tolerate hate.” Deanne's daughter, Teresa, went house to house this morning gathering and trashing all the flyers she could find. “I did that because I don't want them to feel the same upset and hurt that I felt,” she said. “We don't need children coming and seeing this. This is not okay. It's disgusting.” [KHQ.COM]
MSAs express concern over CVE framework
Feb 21: The Muslim Student Associations (MSAs) across California have expressed grave concern over the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) framework. In a joint statement on Feb 21, 24 MSAs, said they oppose the creation of pilot programs that are planned to be launched in various cities across the nation, including Los Angeles, Boston and Minneapolis. “As MSA leaders, we are concerned about the reinforcement that CVE provides to the stereotypes that Muslims are security threats, as well as the climate of fear the surveillance program will create, especially amongst Muslim youth,” the MSA statement said adding: “CVE solely targets and stigmatizes the Muslim community; with the entire focus of Countering Violent Extremism programs being on the Muslim community, the federal government is conflating extremist violence with Islam and feeding into the prejudiced and false portrayal that the majority of violent threats are coming from the American Muslim community, when in reality, most incidents of violent extremism in the United States are from non-Muslim sources.” According to Pew’s population estimate of 2.6 million Muslims living in the United States in 2010, and further data on the number of individuals that have been arrested for potential acts of terrorism linked to Al-Qaeda, these individuals only represent 0.0002% of the Muslim population in the United States, the MSA pointed out. “By creating programs and initiatives that are targeting the average Muslim in America based on the 0.0002% of the radicalized population is creating an unjust and false assumption that this radicalization is widespread within the community and should be countered on a national level.” [AMP Report]
Muslims form 'ring of peace' to protect Oslo Synagogue
Feb 23: More than 1,000 people, many of them Muslim, formed a human shield around a synagogue in Oslo, Norway this weekend as a symbol of solidarity with Jews in the capital city after a synagogue was attacked in Denmark. Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein opened fire on a synagogue in Copenhagen last week, killing two people. El-Hussein had just been released from jail two weeks prior. The 22-year-old Danish citizen was killed during a gun battle with a SWAT team. Norway is home to one of Europe’s smallest Jewish communities, numbering only around 1,000. The country’s Muslim population is 150,000 to 200,000. Norway has a population of 5.2 million people. Immigration has been an issue of debate in the country since 2011, when right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people and accused the government of encouraging Muslims to immigrate to the country which he claimed was at the expense of Norwegian citizens. An opinion poll also reports that the country’s anti-immigration Progress Party would get only 10 percent of the vote if an election were held today. That’s down from 22.9 percent in 2009. [AlterNet]
Shocking catalogue of racist incidents on college campuses across the United States
Feb 24: In isolation, incidents of racism often appear to be outliers from the norm, anomalies, a deviation from the way people really think and believe. First off, the local or national news doesn't cover issues of racism around the country with any degree of thoroughness or consistency unless it's an enormous national story or if the story happened locally. Secondly, even when they do get covered, the chance of you happening to hear the story or see the tweet is small. Consequently, it's easy to assume that if you don't hear about it, it's just not happening. So, when students at Lincoln University in rural Pennsylvania found "NIGGER" spray painted on the entrance sign of the school last week, it was only covered by local media in Pennsylvania and a few very select outlets specializing in news for African Americans. Apparently, this is the pattern for incident after incident on college campuses all across the country. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has catalogued every documented and verified incident of racism on college campuses over from 2011 to 2015. While a degree of racism has come to be expected in certain professional or geographical segments of America, this listing of incidents serves as a rebuttal to that way of thinking. College campuses are often seen as an escape from racism. The stereotype is that racism all but disappears the more educated someone gets, but these incidents fly in the face of that.Viewed in concert with one another, you would be hard pressed to find a more damning review of the true state of America than this. [Daily KOS]
George Zimmerman won't face federal hate crime charges
Feb 24: George Zimmerman won’t face civil rights charges for killing unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin three years ago, the New York Times reports. The Department of Justice announced today that there is not enough evidence to move forward with federal hate crimes charges against Zimmerman after conducting scores of interviews about his actions and character, the slain teen’s parents said. The Justice Department began an independent investigation when local law enforcement was slow to arrest and charge Zimmerman after he shot and killed the teen on Feb. 26, 2012. At the time, they claimed that state self-defense laws would make a prosecution against the wanna-be cop difficult. Gov. Rick Scott eventually appointed a special prosecutor, who charged Zimmerman. In order for the feds to have charged Zimmerman with a hate crime, they would have had to prove that he killed the teenager because he was black. His recklessness and negligence isn’t enough to move forward with such a charge. Attorney General Eric Holder said in statement that while there wasn’t enough evidence to move forward with a hate crime, it should not end discussions over the racial tensions that followed Trayvon’s death. "This young man's premature death necessitates that we continue the dialogue and be unafraid of confronting the issues and tensions his passing brought to the surface," Holder said in a statement. "We, as a nation, must take concrete steps to ensure that such incidents do not occur in the future." The decision not to charge Zimmerman closes the investigation. [AlterNet]
Arab America Commemorates the Struggle for Justice in the African American and Arab American Communities
Feb 26: Arab America in collaboration with the University of the District of Columbia presented, “From Ferguson to Chapel Hill: Together We Stand for Justice,” for Black History Month. In the wake of tragic events in Ferguson, and the recent murder of three Arab/Muslim American students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, prejudice is still directed against people of color. Both African Americans and Arab Americans stand together for equality and the struggle for civil rights and justice for all. The event featured author and humanitarian, Ambassador Attallah Shabazz, (who is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of her legendary father, Malcolm X), Lydia Lyon, African American songstress of both the African American and Arab American music genres, and Emmy Winning and Academy Award nominated Connie Field, Director of the critically acclaimed film, Al Helm: MLK in Palestine. “… horrific shooting of three Arab-Americans was racially motivated because of religion and ethnicity,” says Arab America President, Warren David. “The purpose of this event is to commemorate Black History Month and for our communities to stand together both, African American and Arab American. I can think of no better event than this one which brings our two communities together in solidarity.” “The challenge of creating a unified community belongs to everyone,” says Interim University President, Dr. James Lyons, who considers Black History month as part of our collective community heritage. “The struggles and accomplishments of any one group of people should be shared by everyone. We must all strive to broaden our perspectives by considering what we have in common and by listening to each other more closely. Seeing ourselves as one community, while still respecting our differences and honoring our unique cultures, is essential to realizing our vision for a unified community. Since history belongs to all of us, perhaps the month of February is a good place to start.” [Washington Peace Center]
Iowa Muslim civil rights group calls for investigation into threatening letter
Feb 27: The Iowa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling for a local, state and national law enforcement investigation after an anonymous threatening letter was left at an Ames mosque. An envelope that said “To all (expletive) Muslims,” was left on the door of the Darul Arqum Islamic Center, 1212 Iowa Ave., according to a news release issued by the Iowa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Three notes inside the envelope said “we will burn all of you,” “leave our country” and “we hate you,” according to CAIR-IA. “This threat to a house of worship should be investigated as a hate crime and all available resources should be devoted to bringing the perpetrator to justice,” said Miriam Amer, CAIR-IA executive director, in a statement. “We view this threat as just part of a recent spike in hate incidents targeting American Muslims and their institutions nationwide.” Ames Police Cmdr. Jason Tuttle said an officer was called to the mosque when someone found the letter. Police supervisors also met with mosque leaders to talk about a safety and security plan to ensure everyone’s safety, Tuttle said. “We want the people that go there to worship to feel safe and not have to be worried about someone doing something out there,” he said. Ames Police officers will be doing extra patrols in the area of the mosque while they continue to investigate. [Ames Tribune]
Muslim woman asked to remove her hijab by a Quebec judge
Feb 27: A Quebec judge asked a Muslim woman to remove her hijab or she would not hear her case. This was not the first time that someone has walked into a courtroom with religious attire, however Judge Eliana Marengo felt the hijab was not suitable attire for a courtroom. The woman, Rania El-Alloul’s immediate response was that she did not feel welcome here. “When I swore by God to be a good Canadian citizen I was wearing my hijab, and the judge, I shook hands with him the same day I became Canadian. I was really very happy. But what happened in court made me feel afraid. I felt that I’m not Canadian anymore.” The effects of this Judge’s actions are different than those of a hate crime. This is not just a random person on a bus verbally assaulting a woman because she wore hijab (which we saw in Quebec), because it comes from the bench, in a court of law. During the proceeding, Judge Marengo cited Article 13 of the regulations of the Court of Quebec. That article states: “Any person appearing before the court must be suitably dressed,” therefore leaving it to the discretion of the presiding judge. This sends a loud message to the public by saying that IF a judge chooses to discriminate they are sanctioned to do so by the authority we live under. What message does this send? We now have the courts openly condoning discrimination under the guise of secularism.Hate crimes against Muslims living in Quebec have gone up exponentially since the charter of values was first proposed in 2013. Canadians by and large are peaceful, accepting and culturally diverse. These religiously discriminatory acts have not been what define us. When people in positions of authority choose to ignore their civic responsibilities to protect the right and freedoms of the minorities, our society as a whole suffers. The result is that Muslims and other minorities are being made to feel like second or third class citizens in their own homes An Islamic school in Montreal had its windows shot out earlier this month. This was a clear, deliberate hate crime yet it’s not being lauded as such. The Montreal Muslim community (amongst others) is feeling marginalized. When the issue of the proposed charter of values came about, there was an air of restraint in directly targeting women who wear hijab. Our Jewish and Sikh friends were also targeted. As the conversations ensued, it became relatively clear that the issue at hand was primarily with women who wear hijab. It was viewed as the most ostensible religious covering. It is mind bogglingly outrageous to learn that a Quebec judge would serve her own religiously discriminatory interests rather than promote the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms under which she governs. As a proud Canadian Muslim woman I firmly believe that we as a society are better than this and we need to speak out against discrimination under the guise of secularism. [By Fariha Naqvi - Canadianmomeh.com]
Protesters spew hate at Muslims attending Oklahoma State Capitol event
Feb 27: Hate-filled comments spewed from the mouths of protesters upset that Muslims were at the Oklahoma Capitol learning more about state government and civic engagement. The event, dubbed Oklahoma Muslim Day at the Capitol, drew about 50 protesters holding anti-Muslim and anti-Islam signs. The protesters screamed vulgar remarks at times while condemning Muslims entering the Capitol building for their faith. At least one person was arrested for spitting on a law enforcement officer. Protesters yelled “Mohammed is in hell, he was a pedophile,” “the Koran is a piece of garbage,” and “no special treatment for Muslims.” About 60 volunteers connected to the Interfaith Alliance served as escorts for Muslims and people of other faiths who attended the event inside the Capitol. However, they weren’t alone. An increased law enforcement presence included several additional Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers, Capitol police officers and private security. Adam Soltani, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), said it seems like pure hatred. “They’re not interested in learning about the faith, only propagating hate but I figured it would happen. We have to stay focused on the mission of enhancing the understanding of Islam.”Soltani and the Oklahoma City CAIR office have fielded some threatening telephone calls, including one that warned of a potential shooting. “The caller said, ‘I don’t have a gun, but I know plenty of people who do and they’re not afraid to use them,’” Soltani recalled. [Red Dirt Report]
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