www.amperspective.com Online Magazine
Executive Editor: Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Chronology of Islam in America (2017)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
September 2017
Government's Attempt to Make 'Backdoor Muslim Ban' Permanent Condemned
Sept 1: The Council on American-Islamic Relations, Asian Americans Advancing Justice ("Advancing Justice"), and NIAC Action strongly condemn the federal government's proposal to make its "Backdoor Muslim Ban" permanent, and announce the launch of web portals to facilitate public comment. In May of this year, the Department of State ("DOS") asked for and received permission to implement a temporary measure allowing it to collect vast amounts of information from certain individuals applying for U.S. visas. Some of the most troubling aspects of the collection include a new, mandatory requirement that applicants provide all social media platforms and handles used in the last five years, as well as a new requirement that applicants provide the details of their domestic and international travel history (including the sources of funding for the travel) for the past fifteen years. The government now seeks to make that temporary proposal permanent, but before they can do so, they are required to solicit and accept comments from the public about the proposal. Advancing Justice, CAIR, and NIAC Action have developed web portals to assist the public in navigating the comment process, and strongly encourage impacted communities to make their voices heard. "The Trump administration's push to make permanent discriminatory 'extreme visa vetting' is nothing more than a 'Backdoor Muslim Ban.' As a nation, we have resisted the president's unconstitutional Muslim Ban executive orders by rallying at airports and suing the president - we must now make our voices heard once again in this public call for comments," said CAIR Director of Government Affairs Department Robert McCaw. "Today, the primary targets of these proposed extreme visa vetting standards are people of the Islamic faith from Muslim-majority countries - tomorrow, these same vetting standards could be used against any minority community wrongly vilified as a threat to national security." [CAIR]
Neo-Nazi, White Supremacist Group distributes hate literature in Iowa
Sept 2: The Iowa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Iowa) today condemned distribution in that state of hate literature by a neo-Nazi, white supremacist group.CAIR-Iowa has received reports that fliers, produced by the National Alliance group and headlined “They HATE Us,” are being distributed throughout eastern Iowa, western Illinois and specifically in the Rock Island and Quad Cities areas. The racist and anti-immigrant fliers, which list a Tennessee address, are reportedly being placed on cars and on the doors of homes. “This outreach effort by a neo-Nazi, white supremacist group is symptomatic of the unprecedented rise in hatred and bigotry nationwide in recent months,” said CAIR-Iowa Executive Director Miriam Amer. “All Iowans, and all Americans, must stand up and challenge this disturbing spike in white supremacy.” Earlier this year, CAIR-Iowa called for a hate crime investigation of an anti-Muslim message left at a mosque in that state. CAIR said it has witnessed an unprecedented increase in hate incidents targeting American Muslims and other minority groups since the election of Donald Trump. [CAIR]
Wichita, Kansas, family arrested making bank deposit
Sept 7: Sattar Ali is questioning his family's return move to Wichita following an attempt to deposit a check at his bank which landed him, his wife and daughter in police custody.. The Ali family recently sold their home in Dearborn, Michigan. He moved back to Wichita, he said, to finish his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering at Wichita State University where the Ali's 18 year old son is also a student. Ali said, "I went to the bank to deposit the check and I took all of the documents with me to verify." The check was for just over $151,000. "And I told them I don't need it until I find a house. So keep the check with you, verify, take your time." "Simply we were just going there to deposit a check. We were not asking for money." But he said his experience started to go downhill. Ali said, "And I was talking to them for less than five minutes and I found the police behind me, handcuffed me, confiscated everything and took me outside." His wife Hadil and their 15 year old daughter Hawra were waiting in the car outside the bank. Police take them into custody also and take all three downtown to police headquarters for questioning. And while holding the family for nearly three hours, police called the private school the Ali's eleven year old son attends in Andover, telling the school to hold their son because the family was in police custody. Ali said, "They didn't say why or what happened or what did we do. I'm trying to figure out what did we do." A statement from Wichita police say police were called to the bank for an attempted forgery.The Ali's are Iraqi-Americans and are American citizens. Ali said the family lived several years before in Wichita when he worked at Cessna Aircraft before taking a job with Chevron taking the family away from Wichita. Ali believes he was being racially profiled and has him questioning returning to Wichita. He asks, "Does Wichita not welcome any foreigners? Then tell us. Be up front and forward with people and say, you are not welcome in our city." Ali was puzzled with why the bank couldn't seem to verify the check but police did. [kake.com]
USCMO asks president Donald Trump & Department of Justice to keep the DACA
Sept 7: The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a coalition of leading national and local Muslim-American organizations, today denounced Trump's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ( DACA). In a statement, USCMO said "repealing DACA is not only detrimental to immigrants that have participated in this program, but harms us all by contradicting core American values. Our nation prides itself on the opportunities that we provide and the freedoms that we enjoy. To take these opportunities away from hard working, and contributing members of society is dehumanizing, discriminatory and un-American." USCMO is a coalition of American Muslim civil advocacy grounds which include American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), Muslim American Society (MAS), Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), The Mosque Cares (Ministry of Imam W. Deen Mohammed). [SCMO]
Law suit challenging constitutionality of terror watch list
Sep 8: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today announced that it has defeated a motion filed by the federal government to dismiss a lawsuit the Muslim civil rights organization filed on behalf of 25 American Muslims challenging their placement in the Terror Screening Database -- a watch list of "known or suspected terrorists" -- without due process. Almost all of the plaintiffs are Michigan residents, and this lawsuit was originally filed by CAIR's Michigan chapter. CAIR's lawsuit is the broadest ever challenge to the federal watch list, challenging not only placement on the watch list without due process, but also the consequences imposed as a result of being added to the list. In issuing the court's opinion, Judge Anthony J. Trenga stated: "The Government's 'trust us' approach is inconsistent with the fundamental procedural protections applicable to the deprivation of a protected liberty interest, including the right to be heard." "The federal watch list has imposed an injustice of historic proportions on American Muslims," said CAIR National Litigation Director Lena Masri. "Our lawsuit challenges the government's ability to broadly designate innocent American Muslims who have never been charged with a crime or known as suspected terrorists based on the false notion that the government can accurately predict future terrorist acts using nothing more than mere guesses, hunches and conjecture," said CAIR National Litigation Director Lena Masri. [CAIR]
American Muslims 16 years after 9/11
Sept 11: The seven-million strong American Muslim community, though, remains under siege since 9/11/2001 but their plight has taken a new twist under President Donald Trump whose anti-Muslim policies alarmingly fomented hate crimes against them. According to July 2017 report of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the number of hate crimes in the first half of 2017 spiked 91 percent compared to the same period in 2016, which was the worst year for such anti-Muslim incidents since the civil rights organization began its current documenting system in 2013. The number of bias incidents in 2017 also increased by 24 percent compared to the first half of 2016. At the same time, high spike in Islamophobic Incidents was reported at the U.S. borders during President Trump's first 100 days. It was reported in April last that cases of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) profiling of Muslims accounted for 23 percent of CAIR case intakes in the first three months of 2017. This represented a 1,035 percent increase in CBP bias cases reported so far this year over the same period in 2016. Not surprisingly, a high school band in Washington State has canceled a longstanding field trip to Canada over concerns that some of its students may be barred from re-entering the United States. According to the Nation, in the age of Trump, ever more Muslim travelers are being questioned about their beliefs as even Muslim-American citizens have been caught in the net of Trump’s travel ban. Alex Kane wrote on March 23: "Beyond the legal concerns, Muslim Americans and civil-liberties advocates are worried that the apparent increase in religious questioning and detention of Muslim travelers is just the opening salvo of a broader Trump-era campaign targeting Muslims. The Trump administration has brought anti-Muslim ideologues into the heart of power, and many Muslim Americans fear the executive order was the first step in a long campaign aimed at making discrimination against them official policy. Of particular concern is the role of Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist and former head of the far-right website Breitbart News, which frequently traffics in anti-Muslim bigotry. News outlets reported that Bannon helped draft Trump’s first executive order, which banned refugees and travelers from seven Muslim countries, and also suggested more vetting of Muslims." Tellingly, Steve Bannon was sacked by Trump on August 18. He joined Breitbart News as its chief. Not surprisingly, the UN last month issued a rare warning over 'alarming' racism in US. The UN human rights experts have called on the United States and its leadership to "unequivocally and unconditionally" condemn racist speech and crimes, warning that a failure to do so could fuel further violent incidents. The rare "early warning and urgent action" statement, which is reserved for serious situations, was issued by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). It stopped short of criticizing US President Donald Trump by name. But CERD said it was "disturbed by the failure at the highest political level" of the US to reject racist demonstrations. That failure could lead to "fuelling the proliferation of racist discourse and incidents" in the United States, the statement said. "We are alarmed by the racist demonstrations, with overtly racist slogans, chants and salutes by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan, promoting white supremacy and inciting racial discrimination and hatred," Anastasia Crickley, who chairs the UN panel, added. [AMP Report]
How extremist groups use religion to radicalize
Sept 12: During the 1980s and 1990s, right-wing extremists were galvanized by several national issues such as the perceived erosion of parental rights and authority through court rulings, expanding multiculturalism, abortion rights and the decline of the American family farm – all perceived as an attack on their Judeo-Christian beliefs which right-wing extremists view as a key component to America’s founding). These issues were magnified because of the far-right’s perception of a changing political climate which favored expanding benefits and equal opportunities to ethnic minorities, immigrants and other diversity groups. So it was no surprise that religious concepts and scriptural interpretation played a role in the armed confrontations between right-wing extremists and the U.S. government during this time period — specifically, at the Covenant, Sword, Arm of the Lord (CSA) compound in 1985, Ruby Ridge in 1992, and Waco in 1993. These standoffs not only showed extremists rebelling against the U.S. government and its laws, but also asserted what they believed were their divine religious and Constitutional rights. These events served as radicalization and recruitment nodes to boost the ranks of white supremacists, militia extremists sovereign citizens, and other radical anti-government adherents who viewed the government’s response to these standoffs as tyrannical and overreaching. In the cases of the CSA, Ruby Ridge, and Waco, religious concepts — such as end times prophecy, millennialism and the belief that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was imminent — played a vital role in the recruitment, radicalization and mobilization of these Christian-inspired extremists and their illegal activities. For example, CSA members, the Weaver family and the Branch Davidians each embraced a lethal triad of end times prophecy, antigovernment conspiracy theories and an affinity for weapons. Author Paul T. Coughlin expounds upon this lethal triad in his book Secrets, Plots & Hidden Agendas. This deadly combination has been linked to many extremists violating the law, instigating violent confrontations with law enforcement as well as providing motivation for domestic terrorist attacks (e.g. Spokane Bank Robbers, Eric Rudolph, Robert Dear, among others). Each also used their religious beliefs to justify engaging in “prepper” type activities, such as living off the land, isolating themselves from other family members and society, and stockpiling food, water and weapons to prepare for the end times and await — or even hasten — the apocalypse.... Obviously, there is a wide range of world religions, denominations and congregations within these denominations (including various factions and sub-factions). Such diversity clearly illustrates the significantly complex and controversial nature of religion. Like any social culture, religious beliefs and written scripture are subject to human interpretation, cultural influences and historical context. Such diversity and autonomy not only strengthens religious communities, it also permits extremists to exploit it (e.g. their beliefs and sacred texts) to justify threatening others, criminal acts and violence against non-believers. [SPLC]
The Christian and Norse mythology behind white supremacist violence
Sept 12: Dating back decades, many white supremacists have embraced religious concepts and scripture borrowed from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. This is particularly applicable to Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members, Christian Identity adherents and some neo-Nazis. White supremacists believe mainstream religions, including Christian denominations and their institutions, have fallen astray from God and are under the control and influence of Satan. As a result, white supremacists interpret scriptures and spiritual parables through the lens of racial discrimination and hate. In this way, they can justify their beliefs (which are vile and deplorable) as good, moral and responsible. According to their propaganda, KKK members and Christian Identity adherents believe the Bible is the family history of the white race. They believe that white Christians are morally and spiritually superior to other races and that the Old Testament’s Twelve Tribes of Israel represent the origins of the white race (e.g. Anglo-Saxons, Teutonic, Scandinavian, Celtic, Basque, Lombard, Slavic, etc.). Their beliefs advocate that God created other races as “mud people” who have beast-like roles and lower standing to white men. They condemn race-mixing and Jews, who they perceive as enemies to God. They further believe whites are the only race that continually followed Jesus Christ. Such religious interpretation de-humanizes non-whites and provides spiritual justification — and perhaps motivation — to attack their enemies. KKK ideology uses the Bible along with its universal handbook, the Kloran, as primary sources. The Kloran, first published in 1916, is the KKK’s rule book and a guidebook for “Klancraft” — a term used to describe the KKK’s beliefs, positions, symbols and rituals. There are many biblical references in the Kloran. Biblical symbolism is incorporated into KKK tradecraft, such as cross burnings, wearing white robes and hoods (symbolizing purity and cleanliness), baptisms and induction ceremonies. For example, KKK members equate cross burning to sending out the light of Christ to the world. Also, the KKK’s primary symbol, the MIOAK (which stands for “Mystic Symbol of a Klansman”) or the Blood Drop cross, features a white cross with a red tear drop at the center. The Blood Drop cross symbolizes the atonement and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as well as others who have shed their blood for the white race. Surprisingly, some KKK leaders are actually ordained ministers and some have even organized churches which enjoy tax-exempt status. Examples include the Church of the National Knights of the KKK, Christian American Knights of the KKK, Knights of the White Disciples and the Soldiers of the Cross Training Institute.... Finally, some neo-Nazis believe the swastika has biblical origins dating back to the time of Adam. According to Aryan Nations literature, “the swastika represents the Revolving Resurrection Cross and the promise of the Messiah which was fulfilled in Jesus Christ’s death on the cross.” Further, Aryan Nations members were taught that the open-handed salute (e.g. “Sieg Heil” salute) has “always been used by the white race to acknowledge God in the heavens and our dependence on Him for strength and succor,” the group’s literature states. [SPLC]
The religious concepts of the Sovereign Citizens Movement
Sept 12: The Sovereign Citizen Movement (SCM) is a loosely organized collection of groups and individuals who believe that virtually all forms of state and federal government are illegitimate. Sometimes referred to as constitutionalists, freemen or common law advocates, they use tactics such as harassment, threats and intimidation against their enemies. Sovereign citizens have been known to establish “common law courts” to issue fake indictments and bogus arrest warrants against public officials. Sovereign citizens have also been known to violently attack — even kill — government officials and others. Sovereign citizens have a strong presence on the Internet and exploit the public’s frustration over tax increases, mortgage and credit card interest rates and perceptions of government greed and corruption to recruit new members. Due to the high level of sovereign citizen encounters and related criminal activity, law enforcement, government officials and academics are keenly aware of it. Few, however, understand that sovereign citizen actions are oftentimes based on religious beliefs. “For most sovereigns, beliefs about the law are explicitly religious beliefs,” says Spencer Dew and Jamie Wight of the University of Chicago’s Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion. “This cannot be overstated: they link their beliefs to points across a broad constellation of existing religious traditions.” Core sovereign citizen beliefs are based on their own version of law that is derived from a combination of the Magna Carta, the Bible, English common law, and various 19thcentury state constitutions. Central to their argument is the view of a Supreme Being having embodied every person with certain inalienable rights as stated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Bible. Sovereign citizens believe that God created man to be sovereign — “free” of man-made laws and government regulation. They believe their doctrine is inspired, sanctioned and sustained by God. It consists of universal divine truths concealed to humanity by the world’s most powerful leaders and business elites. A sovereign citizen group based in Oregon actually sold “Kingdom of Heaven” license plates, passports, and driver’s licenses to fellow sovereign citizens entitling them to be members of God’s Kingdom. Author Verl K. Speer (often referred to as the “Doctor of Common Law”) in his book Pied Pipers of Babylon (considered sovereign citizen propaganda) summarizes his view of our society in religious terms. “It is time that we came to the realization that we are engaged in a spiritual war against powers and principalities, contracting parties in high places who have entangled us in their web of deceit via a multitude of non-disclosed adhesion contracts,” he writes. SCM ideology appeals to a wide range of people separated by generations, cultural and ethnic differences, and spans the political spectrum. As a result, religious concepts among sovereign citizens can fall anywhere along the theological continuum. For example, some extremist insular communities, such as the Church at Kahweh in California and the Christ County Kingdom of God sect in Michigan, have merged sovereign citizen tradecraft into their religious organizations. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) faction in Hildale, Utah, also embraces and uses aspects of sovereign citizen tactics, such as engaging in welfare and tax fraud, disregarding federal and state laws or authority, and creating their own police force (which is neither certified nor recognized by the state). As individuals, other sovereign citizens have taken a more common approach to their religious views, such as Bible-based Christian Patriotism or holding end times/apocalyptic beliefs. [SLPC]
Maryland joins three other states to defend DREAMers
Sept 12: The Maryland Outreach Department of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today welcomed an announcement by Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh that Maryland has joined Maine, Minnesota and California in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. "We applaud Attorney General Frosh's commitment to giving DREAMers the chance to work and study without the threat of deportation while Congress addresses our broken immigration system," said CAIR Maryland Outreach Manager Dr. Zainab Chaudry. "These young people deserve to live free from the fear and anxiety that forces them live in the shadows of society, unable to contribute to our nation’s economy." Last week, President Trump authorized U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to formally announce the end in six months the Obama-era program which protected young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation. Nearly one million people are estimated to be directly impacted by this decision. The suit is filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and argues that the Trump administration's rescinding of DACA violates the U.S. Constitution and federal laws. In July, Attorney General Frosh joined nearly two dozen other Attorneys General to send a letter to President Trump urging him to maintain and preserve DACA. [CAIR]
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