Disinformation » Muslims

FBI Crime Maps Now ‘Pinpoint’ Average Muslims

bluemana — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:22:20 +0000

Spencer Ackerman reports on WIRED’s Danger Room:

It started out as a crimefighting tool. But over the years, an FBI effort known as “geo-mapping” evolved into something more expansive — a method to track Muslim communities, without any suspicion of a crime being committed.

Last month, Danger Room revealed that the FBI was training its agents that religious Muslims tended to be “violent” and that Islamic charity is merely a “funding mechanism for combat.” In response, both the FBI and the Justice Department promised full reviews of their training materials. But the geo-mapping effort indicates that the FBI may have more than just a training problem: The suspicion of ordinary Muslims promoted in those lectures may be spilling over into its counterterrorism tactics.

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union acquired some of the FBI geo-maps (.pdf), like the one pictured after the jump, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Although many of the maps are heavily redacted, they represent the first public confirmation that the FBI compiles maps of businesses, community centers and religious institutions in ethnic enclaves around the United States…

More: WIRED’s Danger Room

Add Muslim College Students to the List The NYPD Has Spied On

imkaan — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:28:27 +0000

Joe Coscarelli writes in New York Magazine’s Daily Intel:

The Associated Press’s series on NYPD spying continues today with the news that Muslim students at colleges in New York were investigated covertly by the secret NYPD and CIA program that also monitored community centers, government allies, and entire neighborhoods in the years after September 11. The new report places NYPD undercover officers at schools including Brooklyn College, Baruch, Hunter, City College, Queens College, La Guardia, and St. John’s, where they sought out student radicalization. But according to experts, their methods “may have broken a 19-year-old pact with the colleges and violated U.S. privacy laws, jeopardizing millions of dollars in federal research money and student aid.”

“The government, through the police department, is working privately to destroy the private lives of Muslim citizens,” said Moustafa Bayoumi, an English professor at Brooklyn College.

“We come to the room, we talk, we chill,” said one 20-year-old student of his Islamic Society group at school. “So if another sister comes into the room and she’s a cop, that’s not cool. I’m really scared about this.”

More on New York Magazine’s Daily Intel

In U.S., Muslims And Atheists Most Opposed To Violence

JacobSloan — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:52:17 +0000

Is violence targeting civilians ever justified in the name of a worthy cause? U.S. Christians say yes, atheists and Muslims say no. Raw Story writes:

New data from polling firm Gallup shows that out of all the religious groups in the U.S., Muslims are most likely to reject violence, followed by the non-religious atheists and agnostics.

Through interviews with 2,482 Americans, Gallup found that 78 percent of Muslims believe violence which kills civilians is never justified, whereas just 38 percent of Protestant Christians and 39 percent of Catholics agreed with that sentiment. Fifty-six percent of atheists answered similarly.

The survey was designed to measure religious and non-religious attitudes toward violence 10 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Perhaps most tellingly, 92 percent of Muslims surveyed said they did not believe any Muslim in their community had sympathy toward al Qaeda terrorists.

When Gallup put the question a bit more pointedly, asking if it would be justified for “an individual person or a small group of persons to target and kill civilians,” the responses were a bit more uniform. Respondents from nearly all groups were widely opposed to such tactics, with Protestants and Catholics at 71 percent against. Muslims still had the highest number opposed, at 89 percent. Seventy-six percent of atheists were also opposed.

Taliban Terry Arrested In Ireland For Obama Death Threat

majestic — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:36:24 +0000

Is there a nuttier Irishman than Khalid Kelly, a/k/a Taliban Terry? He’s one of the main characters in Stephen Marshall’s acclaimed documentary Holy Wars (see trailer below), and is now vowing revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden. Via AP:

Police arrested Ireland’s most notorious Muslim convert Thursday over his reported death threats against President Barack Obama.

Police said Khalid Kelly, a 44-year-old dubbed “Taliban Terry” by Dubliners, was arrested at his Dublin residence on suspicion of threatening to kill the U.S. leader. He could be held for up to three days before being charged or released.

The arrest came 10 days before Obama’s arrival in Ireland and four days after a British newspaper, the Sunday Mirror, printed an interview with Kelly. He is Ireland’s most outspoken supporter of al-Qaida and its slain founder, Osama bin Laden.

Kelly was quoted as telling the newspaper that he expected al-Qaida to kill Obama during his visit to Ireland in part because the country’s police force is poorly armed. The article said Kelly would like to kill Obama himself but was too well-known to police here.

“Personally I would feel happy if Obama was killed. How could I not feel happy when a big enemy of Islam is gone?” Kelly was quoted as saying.

Obama is scheduled to spend May 23 in Dublin and the village of Moneygall, ancestral home of a great-great-great-grandfather who emigrated to the United States in 1850. Ireland is already ramping up a security operation involving 10,000 police and troops to protect both him and Queen Elizabeth II, who arrives Tuesday in Ireland for a four-day visit.

Kelly, a former Catholic altar boy from inner-city Dublin, converted to Islam while imprisoned in Saudi Arabia in 2000 for selling illegal alcohol…

[continues at AP]

France’s Burqa Ban Takes Effect With Two Women Already Arrested

BananaFamine — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:07:45 +0000

CNN reports:

Paris (CNN) – French police arrested two veiled women protesting the country’s law banning face-hiding Islamic burqas and niqabs Monday, just hours after the legislation took effect.

The arrests outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris were not for wearing the prohibited garments. Police say the women were instead arrested for participating in an unauthorized protest. But the incident reflected the high passions the ban has incited among some Muslims…

For more information, see original article.

The Muslim ‘Radicalization’ Myth Debunked

aaroncynic — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 14:39:13 +0000

Justin Elliot at Salon.com talks with the author of a report from the Brennan Center for Justice on the difference between Peter King’s hysterical homeland security hearings and actual work to combat terrorism:

When Rep. Peter King’s controversial hearing on Muslim “radicalization” finally convened on Thursday, members of Congress had the opportunity to take some good shots at each other, and the relatives of two Americans who became extremists gave emotional testimony about their experiences.

What the hearing did not feature was any serious, evidence-based consideration of the actual issue of so-called homegrown terrorism by Muslim Americans.

King and other Republicans spent a lot of time going after the Muslim group CAIR and defending themselves from Democratic complaints that the hearing was bigoted. As TPM put it: “Peter King Hearing Focuses On Whether Peter King Hearing Was a Good Idea.”

As it turns out, there is rigorous academic work being done on the “radicalization” issue. The Brennan Center for Justice, for example, released a report in advance of the King hearing looking at flaws in the government’s approach to combating radicalization and terrorism in the United States. The report concludes: “Radicalization is complex. Yet a thinly-sourced, reductionist view of how people become terrorists has gained unwarranted legitimacy in some counter-terrorism circles.”

To learn more about this — and to find out what the government should be doing to combat terrorism — I spoke with the author of the report, Faiza Patel. She is co-director of the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. The following is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Is there a generally accepted definition for “radicalization”?

There are a lot of different ways in which people use the term. People use it very broadly to refer to the process of embracing ideas that are outside of widely accepted religious or political spectrum. So they use it to refer to, for example, Muslims who believe in the restoration of the caliphate. People have used it to talk about Tea Party politicians who have argued that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate. But in the wake of 9/11, the term has been used narrowly to mean the process that leads people — particularly Muslims — to embrace violence as a means for achieving political or social change.

Isn’t it possible to be “radicalized” without being a terrorist or committing a crime?

I think it’s really important to recognize that radicalization as most people talk about it has two components. One is speech and religious activity that’s protected by the Constitution. The other component is criminal activity such as preparing for a violent act or raising money for a terrorist organization. That end of the spectrum is worrisome.

Read the full post at Salon.com

An American Muslim’s View – Why Our Community Needs the King Hearings On Radical Islam

BananaFamine — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:23:25 +0000

M. Zuhdi Jasser

Yes, yes I know it’s Fox News, but let’s at least hear what he has to say [Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a medical doctor and a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Arizona]:

Representative Peter King’s (R-N.Y.) decision to hold hearings on American Muslim radicalization has presented an incredible opportunity to American Muslims.

The course of radicalization over the past two years makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone to assert with a straight face that America is immune to the global Muslim radicalization problem. American Muslims must take the lead in creating solutions to the radicalization of our own.

These hearings will provide the long overdue platform for us to step away from the standard denials and apologetics in order to reclaim our Muslim identity from the terrorists and redefine ourselves within the framework of the American pantheon.

The attacks of 9/11 brought the fight to our shores and woke us up to the reality of the global threat to American security and our very way of life. The attacks also redefined what it meant to be an American Muslim.

For me, the attacks led to the creation of our American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and mobilization of a lifelong mission to contribute to building the future of Islam for our children through liberty and freedom and the separation of mosque and state. The biggest obstacles to that legacy for American Muslims are Islamists, domestic and foreign advocates of the platform of political Islam. It is time for our diverse Muslim communities to reclaim our faith from the control of Islamists.

Without a paradigm shift in the way we address the issues of Islamist terror and ideology, I am ever more fearful of what lies ahead for American Muslims. Radicalization and terror are but a symptom of an underlying ideological conflict between modern western liberal democracy and the false dream of the Islamic state and its instrument of shar’iah law…

For more information, see original article.

A Shock To The West: Muslims Want Democracy

Nasrin Alavi — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:01:47 +0000

Detail from 'The Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy' by Domenico Tiepolo

I can’t quite settle on what shocked the West more: 9/11 or the popular democratic uprisings sweeping throughout the Middle East. 9/11 certainly came easier for some to explain. Testament to this are the endless column inches and books about the otherness of a world of Islamists at war with humanity; added with the current titillating literary imagination of powerless women victims held in bondage by their men and their faith.

That these very Muslims want democracy has to be the real shocker though. Well it certainly negates the truth of all the regular intelligence agency national dossiers, the think tank country profiles, the political proclamations and so on.

As I try to search for answers of such gross miscalculation. I can’t help but remember personal encounters with such experts. I had written a book about the phenomenon of the Iranian blogosphere that a Times columnist had quoted from telling his readers that “Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, the head of the Iranian judiciary, recently described the Internet as a ‘Trojan Horse carrying enemy soldiers in its belly.’”

Within days I received a gentle enquiring email from an Iran-based foreign correspondent of a renowned western publication asking me about the source of the quote. It was a well known speech that had been widely reported at a time when most media outlets did not have online archives. As I had written most of the book in Iran, I still had the newspaper clippings. So assuming that he wanted to write about a cause close to my heart — how the internet has opened a new virtual space for free speech in Iran, a country dubbed the “the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East” — I asked a friend to scan and send me the whole report. This however took longer than I had anticipated and in the intervening days I received further less-gentle emails that questioned the veracity of the quote.

I could understand his reservations about the claims I had made in my book about the possibilities of the power of collaborative, electronic, social media in a young educated country like Iran. After all it was 2005 and I had encountered such widespread scepticism when trying to publish. But what honestly surprised me, was when he wrote that anyway “Trojan Horse” was not a phrase that a mullah would use. He basically assumed that a Shia cleric was unlikely to be aware of the Trojan Wars of the ancient Greeks.

At that point I could not be bothered to reply or to inform our “Iran expert” that for centuries Plato’s “The Republic” has been one of the first basic texts used and debated in the Shia seminaries. Indeed classic Greek texts were first translated into Arabic and thus four-hundred-years later reached the West in the 12th century.

The fascination about the western world has gone on to this day unabated. Young clerics read debate and more importantly try to nullify western ideology. Today I’m told Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is a much appreciated text amongst the most radical seminarians as it endorses and justifies the ideologies that they will preach from the pulpits of the land.

The Middle East has been ruled by dictators for decades, not simply because the hapless citizens must do or die. Even the most tyrannical, like Muammar Gaddafi justify their rule through ideological national pride and Arab honour.

In my native Iran the state uses every particle of hostility to blame any domestic problem or upheaval on foreign powers, the United States and Britain above all. It is skilled too in sustaining the alarmist message that internal enemies are in the pay of or serving the interests of these nefarious outsiders. In turn it has received the helping hand and three decades of sanctions and suspicion from the west have nurtured revolutionary Iran’s sense of siege.

These others, whose uprising has shocked you, know more about you than you care to know about them. Wander through any inner city from Cairo to Tehran and American-style fast food joints are crammed with crowds; ordinary families are glued to TV screens watching films that you have made. They also want a little bit of what you have: accountable governments that represent their needs and wants.

Just thinking back to my student days in London I was never made to feel like an outsider or treated with disdain by my contemporaries. So I can’t believe unawareness of the East comes from malice. What many of us have experienced in the West is a ‘live and let live’ attitude. But as the body count all around continues to grow; the West can no longer afford to be taken by surprise.

Nasrin Alavi is a British Iranian who lives both in London and in Tehran. She is the author of We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs.

FBI Sued For Surveillance Of Muslims

BananaFamine — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:32:43 +0000

Fox News reports:

A former FBI informant who infiltrated a California mosque violated the constitutional rights of Muslims by conducting “indiscriminate surveillance” because of their religion, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles was filed by the ACLU of Southern California and the Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. It named the FBI and seven of its agents and supervisors, the Washington Post reported.

The lawsuit alleges ex-FBI informant Craig Monteilh was ordered by his supervisors to target Muslims for surveillance, violating their First Amendment right to freedom of religion. The lawsuit seeks class-action status, unspecified damages and a court order instructing the FBI to destroy or return the information Monteilh collected.

Monteilh infiltrated an Orange County mosque and helped build a case against an Afghan-born man who was arrested on terrorism-related charges in 2009.

The lawsuit claims that Monteilh’s handlers, FBI agents Kevin Armstrong and Paul Allen, instructed him to collect e-mail addresses, phone numbers and other detailed information about Muslims and “explicitly told Monteilh that Islam was a threat to America’s national security,” according to the Post…

For more information, see original article.

40% Of Iowan Republicans Agree: Obama Is A Muslim

Good German — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:05:35 +0000

I bet these people believe the U.S. found WMDs in Iraq, too.

UK Muslim Pupils Reportedly Being Taught Anti-Semitism, Sharia Law

BananaFamine — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 14:04:09 +0000

Photo: David Shankbone (CC)

The Telegraph reports:

Muslim children are being taught how to chop off thieves’ hands and that Jews are plotting to take over the world at a network of Islamic schools, it has been disclosed.

Up to 5,000 pupils attending weekend schools across Britain are being exposed to textbooks claiming that some Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and that some offences could be punished with stoning. One book for six year-olds warns that those who do not believe in Islam will be condemned to “hellfire” in death.

Another text for 15 year-olds teaches that thieves who break Sharia law should have their hands cut off for a first offence and their feet amputated for a subsequent crime. Teenagers are presented with diagrams showing where the cuts should be made.

Tonight’s Panorama on BBC One will claim that the books were discovered at a network of 40 private schools teaching the Saudi Arabian national curriculum. The programme claims to have uncovered evidence apparently linking the schools to the Saudi embassy. Officials at the embassy deny any link.

Panorama also found examples of private Muslim schools using extremist sentiments on their websites.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said last night that extremism, homophobia and anti-Semitism would not be tolerated in schools…

For more information, see original article.

Muslim Prejudice Becomes ‘Socially Acceptable’ in UK

BananaFamine — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:44:45 +0000

BBC News reports:

Prejudice against Muslims has “passed the dinner-table test” and become socially acceptable in the UK, a senior Conservative is to say.

Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the Tory Party, will warn against dividing Muslims into moderates and extremists.

The baroness, the first Muslim woman to serve in the cabinet, will say such labels fuel misunderstanding.

She will use a speech at Leicester University to accuse the media of superficial discussion of Islam.

Baroness Warsi will say anti-Muslim prejudice is now seen by many Britons as normal and uncontroversial, and she will use her position to fight an “ongoing battle against bigotry”.

In extracts of the speech, published in the Daily Telegraph, the peer blames “the patronising, superficial way faith is discussed in certain quarters, including the media”, for making Britain a less tolerant place for believers.

She is expected to reveal that she raised the issue of Islamophobia with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Britain last year, urging him to “create a better understanding between Europe and its Muslim citizens”…

For more information, see original article.

Media Roots Radio – The Anthrax Attacks, From The Memory Hole

Abby Martin — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:33:13 +0000

Media Roots Radio — The Anthrax Attacks, From The Memory Hole by Media Roots

This is a special episode of Media Roots Radio about the events of 9/11 & Anthrax. In this edition, Abby and Robbie Martin continue the discussion from the previous 9/11 episode, and break apart the official government and corporate media narrative of both attacks by discussing the foreknowledge, government complicity, and gross inconsistencies regarding every aspect of the events.

Please check out Part 1 of our 9/11 discussion which dovetails into the Anthrax attacks discussion in Part 2. The above timeline is interactive.

Scroll through it to find out more about the show’s music and to resources mentioned during the broadcast. To see a larger version of the timeline with clickable resources go to the soundcloud link below the player. If you would like to directly download the podcast click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display.

This radio show airs on shortwave radio Sundays at 6pm central time, following the Alex Jones show. The frequency is 9.350 MHz. For more information go to www.MediaRoots.org

Christians Are Being Violently Pushed Out Of Middle East

majestic — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:48:35 +0000

Coptic cross. Author: Sagredo (CC)

In the wake of the suicide bomb attack on the Coptic Christians in Egypt and the deadly October massacre at a Christian church in Iraq, Paul McGeough writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that Christians are rapidly leaving the Middle East altogether:

…A century ago, they accounted for 20 per cent of the population in the Middle East – today the Vatican estimates that proportion to be 5 per cent and falling in a region in which most regimes impose limits and restrictions on Christian rituals.

Iran has recently been rounding up Christian missionaries and deadly Christian-Muslim violence has erupted again in Nigeria.

“If this phenomenon continues, Christianity in the Middle East will disappear,” the Reverend Khalil Samir, an Egyptian Jesuit in Beirut, told reporters on the eve of a Vatican conference that discussed the crisis last year. “This is not an unreal hypothesis – Turkey went from 20 per cent Christian in the early 20th century to 0.2 per cent now. [And the flight from Iraq] could bleed the Church in Iraq dry.”

In the early 1950s, 20 per cent of Egyptians were Christian – today, at just 10 per cent of the population, they are the region’s biggest Christian community but they hold just three of the 508 seats in the parliament.

There was advance warning of the attack on the Alexandria church on an Islamic website, which Cairo initially blamed on al-Qaeda but which some Egyptian political analysts speculated might be the work of locals frustrated by an absence of substantive reform in Mubarak’s 30-year reign.

What emerges from the experience of the latest hot spots is that what is perceived to be a solution often creates a greater problem – that is, trying to deal with the crisis as a security challenge that can be dealt with in the short term.

A bare-knuckled crackdown on those who thrive amid the collapse of their social and political institutions, as in Pakistan, or the marginalisation and oppression of voices for reform, as in Egypt, tends to gloss over the reality that the root cause of the problem is elsewhere…

Would Muslims put up with this treatment in North America or Europe?

Racism Row Over DC’s Muslim Superhero

TheNiallist — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 14:39:15 +0000

From Comics Alliance:

“Another day, another racist freakout over non-white superheroes. But unlike the hilariously dishonest racism we saw when the Council of Conservative Citizens called for a boycott of Marvel’s Thor movie on account of a mythical Norse god’s depiction as a black man, a recent round of conservative attacks on Nightrunner — DC’s Muslim Batman of Paris — are prejudicial in a more insidious way. While the CCC put forth a laughably tenuous justification for their outrage, it was with respect to one specific character in one specific context. The argument against Nightrunner, led by conservative blogger Warner Todd Huston, is based on the bigoted belief that a Muslim superhero is by definition an exercise in deceitful political correctness, and that Muslims are natively evil.

Introduced in this month’s Detective Comics Annual #12 and Batman Annual #28, Nightrunner is a 22-year-old Algerian Muslim who’s lived in Paris his entire life (it seems reasonable to assume he was born in France, but at the very least he was raised there). Born Billai Asseiah, the character is uncommonly adept at the highly YouTubeable gymnastic form known as parkour. That and Asseiah’s sense of justice make him an ideal recruit for Bruce Wayne’s new Batman, Inc. initiative, whereby he franchises Batmen to cities all over the world.”

Obama Is President of Extra-Judicial Killing, Says Ex-Guantánamo Inmate

Good German — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:55:45 +0000

Moazzam Begg. Photo: JK the Unwise (CC)

From the Irish Times:

US President Barack Obama’s attempts to reach out to Muslims have been an “utter failure” given his broken promises on several issues including closing Guantánamo Bay detention facility, former inmate Moazzam Begg has said.

Begg, a British national who spent two years in Guantánamo before being released in 2005, fears the detention centre may become permanent.

“People who were released from Guantánamo after Obama came to power told me that conditions had improved slightly but nobody there was under the illusion that [it] was going to close,” Begg said during a visit to Dublin.

“It is like a town now and every thing around it has continued to expand. It seems that this is a permanent facility and they intend to keep it as such.”

Begg, whose organisation, Cageprisoners, recently expanded its work to include the highlighting of extra-judicial killings, particularly the use of drone strikes, argued little had changed despite Obama’s promises. “We say that Bush was the president of torture, but Obama is the president of extra-judicial killing. The difference between the two is that while one used to extra-judicially detain people, the other has gone a step further and extra-judicially kills them.”

Begg singled out Obama’s decision to authorise the targeting of Yemen-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki for assassination earlier this year. Cageprisoners took on Awlaki’s case when he was detained in Yemen in 2006.

Recipe For Disaster? India Divides Sacred Site Between Muslims and Hindus

majestic — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:56:23 +0000

I almost hate to say it, but is this the next Jerusalem? From the Wall Street Journal:

NEW DELHI—An Indian court ruled Thursday that a sacred site claimed by both Hindus and Muslims should be divided, in a complex decision that will test whether India has moved beyond the violent religious passions that bedeviled the nation in the 1990s.

In the ruling, two of the three judges in the case found that the site be divided into three parts—two for the Hindu side and one for Muslims. Two of the judges also found that the site was the birthplace of Lord Ram, a significant ruling for the Hindu side. The court said no action would be taken for three months and the Muslim side said it would appeal to the Supreme Court of India.

The case, before the Allahabad High Court in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, has been running since 1950 and had been closely watched not just for its historic and religious significance but for the country’s reaction; a Hindu mob partially destroyed a mosque on the site in 1992 which was followed by widespread violence.

To minimize the risk of post-verdict violence, the government has deployed hundreds of thousands of security personnel across the country, including 190,000 in Uttar Pradesh alone. Officials repeatedly called for calm whatever the verdict and banned bulk instant messaging to make it harder for demonstrators to organize.

Some businesses around the country informally advised some of their staff to stay home Thursday. In the state of Karnataka, the government closed all schools and colleges Thursday and Friday. In Madhya Pradesh, the administration imposed a rule which disallows any gathering of more than four people…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

New York Town Forcing Removal Of Muslim Cemetery

majestic — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:10:53 +0000

Delaware County, New York

Thanks to Mark for sending us this story from Huffington Post:

A town in upstate New York is trying to force a local Muslim religious community to dig up a small cemetery on its property and never bury anyone there again because it says it’s illegal.

“What we would not want is an unauthorized cemetery,” says Bob McCarthy, town supervisor of the Delaware County town of Sidney, population 5,993. “We’re taking care of a bunch of cemeteries, and they just came in and buried the bodies, and didn’t go through…there’s no funding there, it’s not a standard kind of deal, and it’s going to become a liability to the town.”

So what steps have the Muslims skipped? “I don’t know what the exact law is,” he says.

Which is the problem; because whether or not the town government likes it, there are no laws in Sidney — or New York state, for that matter — covering cemeteries on private land — religious cemeteries included. Plus, the town approved the cemetery in 2005.

In any event, the cemetery, in the tiny hamlet of Sidney Center, was never a secret — and couldn’t have been: When the first body arrived in November, 2009, it had a 3-car escort from the Passaic, New Jersey Police Department, which necessarily told local authorities it was arriving.

And there’s certainly nothing illegal about it as far as the State Troopers are concerned. “We looked into the cemetery and it was determined what they were doing is lawful,” says Captain James Barnes of the New York State Police, Troop “C,” based in Sidney.

This apparently isn’t stopping the town board…

[continues at Huffington Post]

France Bans Burqas

majestic — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:21:08 +0000

I suppose it’s somewhat comforting to know that the United States is not the only country with xenophobic pastors and politicians who want to burn Korans, or in the case of France, ban women from wearing burqas (those head-veils) in public — but it’s not exactly going to make life any easier for the French, who have already seen a threat to the Eiffel Tower as a result!

1 in 5 Americans Think Obama Is Muslim

majestic — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:18:48 +0000

Most of the news media seem to think this is a bad thing. Personally I think it’s great – a significant number of Americans voted for a man they thought was Muslim when electing their president. Story from NPR:

Americans increasingly are convinced – incorrectly – that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and a growing number are thoroughly confused about his religion.

Nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, said they think Obama is Muslim, up from the 11 percent who said so in March 2009, according to a poll released Thursday. The proportion who correctly say he is a Christian is down to just 34 percent.

The largest share of people, 43 percent, said they don’t know his religion, an increase from the 34 percent who said that in early 2009.

The survey, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and its affiliated Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, is based on interviews conducted before the controversy over whether Muslims should be permitted to construct a mosque near the World Trade Center site. Obama has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center there, though he’s also said he won’t take a position on whether they should actually build it.

In a separate poll by Time magazine/ABT SRBI conducted Monday and Tuesday – after Obama’s comments about the mosque – 24 percent said they think he is Muslim, 47 percent said they think he is Christian and 24 percent didn’t know or didn’t respond…

[continues at NPR]

Muslims Target ‘South Park’ Creators With Violence

majestic — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:16:47 +0000

The offending caricature of the Prophet Muhammad disguised in a bear suit. Source: SouthParkStudios.com

The regular refrain of “Who Killed Kenny?” could get a whole lot more serious now that South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have been threatened with violence as a result of their popular TV series making fun of Muslims, never mind that they are equally scathing of Christians, Jews, Mormons, Scientologists and others who take their religion too seriously. Reported by Fox News:

A radical Islamic website is warning the creators of “South Park” that they could face violent retribution for depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit during an episode broadcast on Comedy Central last week.

RevolutionMuslim.com [note: site appears to be down as of this posting] posted the warning following the 200th episode of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “South Park,” which included a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad disguised in a bear suit. The Web posting also included a graphic photo of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was murdered in 2004 after making a documentary on violence against Muslim women.

“We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show,” the posting reads. “This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

Reaching by phone early Tuesday, Abu Talhah al Amrikee, the author of the post, said he wrote the entry to “raise awareness.” He said the grisly photograph of van Gogh was meant to “explain the severity” of what Parker and Stone did by mocking Muhammad.

“It’s not a threat, but it really is a likely outcome,” al Amrikee said, referring to the possibility that Parker and Stone could be murdered for mocking Muhammad. “They’re going to be basically on a list in the back of the minds of a large number of Muslims. It’s just the reality.”

Al Amrikee said the website is considering a protest against the “disgusting” show, which also depicted the Prophet Muhammad in an episode on July 4, 2001.

“This is not a small thing,” he said. “We should do whatever we can to make sure it does not happen again.”

The posting on RevolutionMuslim.com also includes audio of a sermon by Anwar al-Awlaki — a radical U.S.-born preacher now believed to be hiding in Yemen — who discusses assassinating individuals who defame the Prophet Muhammad. It also included a link to a 2009 story in the Huffington Post that gave details of Stone and Parker’s mansion in Colorado…

[continues at Fox News]

‘Jihad Jane’: American Woman’s Plot To Kill Swedish Cartoonist

majestic — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:18:48 +0000

‘Jihad Jane,’ as Pennsylvania woman Colleen LaRose dubbed herself, was indicted Tuesday for helping recruit a network for suicide attacks and plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist. Seven Muslims were arrested in Ireland in connection with the alleged plot. Jonathan Adams reports for the Christian Science Monitor:

Authorities unsealed charges in the US against a woman dubbed “Jihad Jane” and arrested seven Muslims in Ireland Tuesday for their alleged involvement in a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist.

The allegations highlight the ongoing sensitivity of cartoon renderings of the prophet Mohammad, and are a rare example of a white American woman becoming involved in global jihad over the Internet.

The indictment against “Jihad Jane” was unsealed in Pennsylvania Tuesday; the seven arrested in Ireland were being questioned Wednesday.

Ireland’s RTE News reported that four men and three women whose nationalities were not given were arrested in Waterford and Cork, Ireland.

Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks ignited controversy in 2007 with his cartoon of the head of the prophet Mohammad on the body of a dog, as the Monitor reported. (See one of the drawings here.) Later that year, an Al Qaeda faction leader put a $100,000 bounty on Mr. Vilks’s head.

Vilks has been under police protection ever since. In an article Wednesday, the Irish Times called him “an artist who courts controversy with the same ease as the rest of us draw breath,” and reported his defiant response to news of the alleged murder plot targeting him: “The barks of those roundabout dogs will never fall silent,” he said…

I Should Have Read My Islamic Marriage Contract

majestic — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:39:36 +0000

Why didn’t I? Why don’t a lot of Muslim women? By Ayesha Nair, writing in Slate:

I have two master’s degrees from Columbia, keep the h silent in haute couture (you’d be surprised at how few Pakistanis like me do so), and know to scour the fine print before I sign anything. But I scrawled my signature on the most important contract of my life without reading a word. And, as I later found out, many of my also well-educated female friends did the same. Why do Pakistani women agree to marriage contracts without scrutinizing them first and making sure they won’t be sorry later?

For my nikah, or official marriage ceremony, in March 2008, I chose a majestic monument in Lahore, aptly known as the Badshahi or the King’s mosque. It was 8 a.m., and the spring sun was strong as I sat decked out in a heavily embellished duputta (long head veil). My aunt had warned me: “You will have a headache, an ear ache, and a neck ache by the end of the day, which will be proof that your parents adorned you with a sufficient amount of jewelry.”

More than the weight on my body, I was bothered by how extraneous I felt to the ceremony. My soon-to-be husband had been briefed by the religious scholar presiding. He had also read the marriage-contract papers in detail, making the additions and cancellations he wanted.

But I hadn’t seen the document. When I had asked to, my mother had rebuffed my request, saying there was no need, since she had already gone through it. When I told my fiance I wanted to discuss the contract with him, he wondered why I didn’t trust him to do what was best for us.

My grandmother, the stern matriarch of our family, warned me with a scowl that to read the contract would be a bad omen. But I was still eager to see the papers and began bugging my father. He initially consented, but eventually pulled back, saying he didn’t want my husband’s family to take offense. I burst into tears. My father patted me on the head, whispered consoling words, and said I should trust him.

Marriages in Pakistan are physically and emotionally exhausting. The rituals are designed to remind the woman that there is no turning back. Drained by the festivities and eager for a smooth end to the 14-day-long wedding, I gave in.

And so, during the ceremony, I sat a mile away from my fiance, could barely hear the words being recited, and felt as removed from the proceedings as a guest. I heard the microphone being passed to my husband. I heard him say “yes” three times, as is the tradition in Islam. I heard a round of congratulations. When my mother engulfed me in a tight hug, I protested that I had no idea what was happening…

[continues in Slate]

Muslim Punk Rock: A Mashup of Piety and Politics

majestic — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:28:26 +0000

When I went to Austin for the 2009 South By Southwest film festival I spent a lot of time with the director of a film we had just acquired for distribution, Rip! A Remix Manifesto. The director, Brett Gaylor, is part of a Canadian production company called Eyesteel Films and they had rented a funky little house a little way out of town. It became the place to hang after the last screening of the night, and I got to talking to another director in the Eyesteel stable, Omar Majeed, who was making a documentary about Muslim punk rock. I knew a little bit about it from the Soft Skull Press book The Taqwacores, published by my friend Richard Nash.

Fast forward several months and Omar’s film is now starting to screen at festivals and arthouse cinemas. Check out the official site for screening info, and here’s the trailer:

Meanwhile, the film is attracting some serious media attention, as evidenced by this article in Time:

When Jimi Hendrix smashed his guitar in the 1960s, it was clear he was attacking the Establishment. When a Muslim punk rocker smashes up a guitar outside an American Muslim convention, the now-standard rock ‘n’ roll trope gains a few new meanings. These young punks are taking on every establishment going: Muslim, American and Muslim American. “In this so-called war of civilizations, we’re giving the finger to both sides,” says the godfather of the Muslim punk movement, Michael Muhammad Knight, in Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, a new documentary by Pakistani-Canadian director Omar Majeed. As a mashup of piety and politics, hard-core music and anarchy, the Muslim punk movement makes the Sex Pistols look like Fleetwood Mac.

The guitar-smashing episode occurred in 2007 after a crowd of Muslim punks were thrown out of the Islamic Society of North America’s open-mike night. They had shocked attendants at the meeting — North America’s largest annual Muslim gathering — not just by cranking up their amps, swearing and screaming their lyrics, but also by having a woman sing onstage. In the documentary, young women in hijabs are shown staring open-mouthed at first, then rocking out and yelling, “Stop the hate!” The concert then comes to an abrupt halt when the meeting’s organizers, backed by Chicago police, step in, deeming it “not Islamically appropriate.” Afterward, the punks smash their guitars and begin an ironic, anti-authority chant outside: “Music is haram [forbidden]!”

In their small but burgeoning scene — there are only a handful of Muslim punk bands in the U.S. and Canada — rebellion is an act of piety. Strident as their sound can seem, it is, in spirit, in harmony with other rebellious voices that are rising amid the breakdown of authority in the Islamic world…

[continues in in Time]

Two Million Muslims Prepare To Stone Devil At Haj

majestic — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:31:10 +0000

From Reuters:

MUZDALIFA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Some two million Muslims headed to Muzdalifa on Thursday after spending the day at the plain of Arafat to prepare to cast stones at the devil in the most dangerous part of the annual haj pilgrimage.

Bright weather greeted the pilgrims after heavy rain hit the nearby city of Jeddah, gateway to Mecca, on Wednesday. Some 77 people were killed, none of them pilgrims, most of whom were swept away by currents and drowned, state television said.

At Muzdalifa, the pilgrims will collect pebbles to throw at walls at the Jamarat Bridge on three occasions over the next three days in an act that symbolizes the rejection of the devil’s temptations.

The bridge has been the scene of a number of deadly stampedes — 362 people were crushed to death there in 2006 in the worst haj tragedy since 1990…

Fort Hood Gunman Shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (Video)

majestic — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:29:55 +0000

CBS News’ Harry Smith spoke with Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, the Fort Hood Base Commander, about what happened during the deadly shooting. He says that witnesses reported that mad gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shouted ”Allahu Akbar!” before unleashing the bloody rampage.

Creationism, Minus a Young Earth, Emerges in the Islamic World

majestic — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:00:41 +0000

Kenneth Chang writes in the New York Times:

AMHERST, Mass. — Creationism is growing in the Muslim world, from Turkey to Pakistan to Indonesia, international academics said last month as they gathered here to discuss the topic.

But, they said, young-Earth creationists, who believe God created the universe, Earth and life just a few thousand years ago, are rare, if not nonexistent.

One reason is that although the Koran, the holy text of Islam, says the universe was created in six days, the next line adds that a day, in this instance, is metaphorical: “a thousand years of your reckoning.”

By contrast, some Christian creationists find in the Bible a strict chronology that requires a 6,000-year-old Earth and thus object not only to evolution but also to much of modern geology and cosmology, which say the Earth and the universe are billions of years old.

“Views of scientific evolution are clearly influenced by underlying religious beliefs,” said Salman Hameed, who convened the two-day conference here at Hampshire College, where he is a professor of integrated science and humanities. “There is no young-Earth creationism.”

But that does not mean that all of evolution fits Islam or that all Muslims happily accept the findings of modern biology. More and more seem to be joining the ranks of the so-called old-Earth creationists. They do not quarrel with astronomers and geologists, just biologists, insisting that life is the creation of God, not the happenstance consequence of random occurrences…

Islamic Countries Push A Global ‘Blasphemy’ Law

majestic — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:36:09 +0000

As reported in the Christian Science Monitor:

Remember the Danish “Muhammad cartoons” that set off riots by offended Muslims more than three years ago? The debate pitted freedom of press and speech against notions of freedom from insult of one’s religion. It rages still – but now in a forum with international legal implications.

For years, Islamic nations have succeeded in passing “blasphemy” resolutions at the United Nations (in the General Assembly and in its human rights body). The measures call on states to limit religiously offensive language or speech. No one wants their beliefs ridiculed, but the freedom to disagree over faith is what allows for the free practice of religion. The resolutions are misguided, but also only symbolic, because they’re nonbinding.

Symbolism no longer satisfies the sponsor of these resolutions – the Organization of the Islamic Council. Under the leadership of Pakistan, the 57-nation OIC wants to give the religious antidefamation idea legal teeth by making it part of an international convention, or legally binding treaty. Members of the UN Human Rights Council are passionately debating that idea in Geneva this week.

The United States under Barack Obama recently joined the UNHRC, maligned for years as the mouthpiece for countries that are themselves flagrant human rights abusers. A “new” council formed in 2006. President Obama’s hope is that as an engaged member, the US can further reform – and its own interests. This case will test his theory.

Consider the wording put forth by Pakistan, written on behalf of the OIC. It proposes “legal prohibition of publication of material that negatively stereotypes, insults or uses offensive language” on matters regarded by religious followers as “sacred or inherent to their dignity as human beings.”

This gives broad latitude to governments to decide what’s offensive. Countries such as Pakistan already have national blasphemy laws, but a global treaty would give them international cover to suppress minority religious groups with the excuse that these groups offend mainstream beliefs.

And what about unpopular, even “insulting” dissenters within a majority religion – such as women who seek to interpret Islamic sharia law so that they may gain more rights? …

[continues in the Christian Science Monitor]