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Executive Editor: Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Chronology of Islam in America (2019)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
September 2019
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: If it were Muslims committing mass shootings
Sept 3: MSNBC's Joe Scarborough reacted to reports this morning that the man who shot dozens of people in West Texas over the weekend had a criminal record and did not go through a background check to buy his gun, stating bluntly: "I guarantee you, if it was a Muslim radical firing these AR-15s instead of white Americans, they would be figuring out something to do other than offering bland statements." [Real Clear Politics]
How Minnesota Republican operatives are sowing distrust of Muslims
Sept 4: most of Minnesota’s aggressively negative news about Muslims is produced by a group of Twin Cities donors, policy wonks, and strategists tied to the state’s most powerful Republican organizations. Jim Hinderaker, president of the Minnesota-based think tank Center of the American Experiment, has called Islam a religion of “crazed, sadistic violence.” John Hinderaker has been on the Freedom Club’s (Minnesota-based NGO) board since at least 2013, but was well known in conservative circles for a decade prior thanks to Power Line, the blog he co-founded. Hinderaker has also displayed a pattern of animosity toward Muslims. “Dearborn, Michigan, is home to a substantial Muslim population, and there is strong evidence that local authorities now enforce sharia [law] in preference to the Constitution of the United States,” he wrote in the 2010 piece, “Sharia comes to Michigan.” Does Islam have something to offer other than crazed, sadistic violence, committed to perpetuate the crudest forms of ignorance?” he added in a 2013 story. “If so, I haven’t seen it.” Today, Hinderaker runs the Center of the American Experiment, a sizable Minnesota think tank with 14 staffers and an annual budget of more than $1.5 million, according to nonprofit tax disclosures. Attorney General Keith Ellison says that Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian immigrants tell him they think of returning to their home countries, afraid the U.S. is unsafe. “I mean, think about that,” Ellison says. “You’re a Syrian Muslim and you’re thinking about going back to Syria because you think the United States is dangerous for Muslims.” Ellison has been a target since 2006, when Power Line first alleged that he was a Muslim extremist. As recently as 2018, the site repeated its most frequent allegation, calling him “a long-time apostle of hate on behalf of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.” [City Pages]
The FBI’s terrorism watch list violates the Constitution, federal judge says
Sept 4: A federal judge ruled today that an FBI watch list of more than 1 million “known or suspected terrorists” violates the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens in the database. The decision from U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia in favor of 23 Muslim Americans who sued over their inclusion in the Terrorist Screening Database found that the watch list infringes on their constitutional right to due process. Trenga noted that the list restricts their ability to fly and engage in everyday activities and backed the plaintiffs’ concerns that they were flagged secretly and without a clear methodology. “An individual’s placement into the [watch list] does not require any evidence that the person engaged in criminal activity, committed a crime, or will commit a crime in the future,” the judge wrote, “and individuals who have been acquitted of a terrorism-related crime may still be listed.” The Washington Post said the ruling could reshape the government’s process for a watch list that has long been criticized for inaccuracy and described by opponents as “a Muslim registry created in the wake of the widespread Islamophobia of the early 2000s.” Trenga ordered both the plaintiffs and defendants to submit arguments about how to fix the constitutional problems with the database, which encompasses nearly 1.2 million people, including about 4,600 U.S. citizens or residents, as of June 2017. Trenga’s 32-page opinion was hailed as a significant win by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the civil liberties organization that filed the lawsuit in 2016. “Innocent people should be beyond the reach of the watchlist system,” Gadeir Abbas, a CAIR attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “We think that’s what the Constitution requires.” [Washington Post]
'Proud Islamophobe' pastor hosts anti-Muslim event on 9/11 at Bloomfield Hills church, Michigan
Sept 5: "Islam is a growing threat in the United States of America," said Pastor Dr. Donald McKay, head minister at Bloomfield Hills Baptist Church, Michigan. It's on the flier and straight from the head minister at Bloomfield Hills Baptist Church, planning to host an event on Sept 11 and 12 stirring controversy. "I am an Islamophobe, I wear that badge proudly," he said adding: "We don't hate Muslims, we hate the ideology they are identified with." "We believe that Muslims, committed Muslims, that are familiar with their faith are committed really to the overthrown of the United States and to world domination," McKay said. [Fox2 Detroit]
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