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Chronology of Islam in America (2010)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
February 2010
DOJ orders probe into fatal shooting of Detroit Imam
Imam Luqman killed in FBI sting was shot 21 times
Feb 2: Arab and Muslim groups have welcomed the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (DOJ-CRD) decision of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to review the shooting death of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah by FBI agents in Detroit on October 28, 2009. House Judiciary Chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) announced the Justice Department review at a news conference in Detroit sponsored by CAIR's Michigan chapter (CAIR-MI) and attended by a coalition of civil rights groups. The news conference was scheduled following the release of autopsy results showing that Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah was shot at least 20 times, including once in the back, as well as being found handcuffed in the prone position. CAIR and other civil liberties groups had called for an independent investigation of the shooting. On January 13, Rep. Conyers sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to request that the civil rights division investigate both the October shooting and whether the FBI violated the Constitution by using informants in mosques. On Feb. 1 the long-suppressed autopsy of slain Muslim leader Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah was released to the public at the Dearborn, Mich., police headquarters. The medical examiner's report had been delayed for months after Dearborn police, who are investigating the FBI in the matter, filed a court affidavit requesting the document be kept sealed. Since the release of autopsy report, family members of the deceased and community activists have called for a second autopsy to look into possible cuts on the Imam’s hands which, according to a local press report, “may indicate he was bitten by an FBI dog before he allegedly fired back.” Community activists have also submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to see if there is a video of the incident. (AMP Report)
Fresh attempt to destroy national American Muslim organizations
Feb 7: In a fresh attempt to destroy the national American Muslim civil advocacy groups, the Dallas Morning News (DMN) has published an article smearing the largest Muslim American organization, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The DMN article written by Brooks Egerton under the title “U.S. torn over whether some Muslims pose threat or offer insight” resorted to half-truths and twisted facts to smear the ISNA. The article also tried to link ISNA with terrorism through guilt by association. It attempted to project ISNA as an arm of a foreign organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. It will not be too much to say that anti-Muslim hate mongers have been working hard to defame Muslim Americans and discredit their mainstream organizations in the same way the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was used by anti-Semitic pundits against Jews. The Dallas Morning News assault on ISNA is not surprising in the post-9/11 America. We see similar attempts to destroy leading American Muslim civil advocacy groups. Last year, four Republican congressmen which have been dubbed by Washington Independent as ‘the Anti-Muslim Bigot Caucus at the Capitol Hill’ had accused, another leading American Muslim civil advocacy group, the Council on American-Muslim Relations (CAIR), of attempting to plant spies in key Congressional offices in order to affect policy. On October 14, 2009, the four congressmen - Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), and Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) held a bizarre McCarthy-era like press conference accusing the CAIR of "trying to infiltrate the offices of members of Congress by placing interns in the offices." The four are the Republican members of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus.(AMP Report)
Free 11 Muslim students representing America's conscience
Feb 8: Eleven Muslim students were arrested this evening during a raucous lecture at University of California, Irvine, where Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren came to talk about U.S.-Israel relations. Oren was interrupted 10 times while trying to give his speech before 500 people at the UCI Student Center, where there was heavy security. Oren took a 20 minute break after the fourth protest, asked for hospitality and resumed his speech, only to be interrupted again by young men yelling at him every few minutes. After the 10th interruption, several dozens students who opposed Oren's talk got up and walked out and staged a protest outside. One may disagree with the style and tactics demonstrated by the 11 students, but the central issue is not responding to the disruption by the students. Rather, the main focus should be on understanding what led to that action. The protest of Ambassador Oren's speech did not occur within a vacuum, but rather as a reaction to a string of numerous attempts to stigmatize Muslim students of UCI and squelch their free speech.
In May 2006, FBI Agent Pat Rose, head of the Al-Qaeda Unit, told a group at the Pacific Club in Orange County that her squad was monitoring Muslims students at UC-Irvine. Rose was quoted as saying, "We live in Irvine. I can't tell you how many subjects' names come up, and they live right down the street from me." She was garnering support for the Patriot Act. (1) In response, FBI Assistant Director Stephen Tidwell had to make a public appearance at the mosque in Irvine to announce that there was no profiling of Muslims by the FBI. I arranged a meeting between Mr. Tidwell and the Muslim students and thought it could help develop mutual understanding and cooperation. (2) At the same time, the Zionist Organization of America was applauding the Department of Justice for launching an investigation of Muslim students for anti-Semitism. Any criticism of Israel and its policies is consistently connected to anti-Semitism. The students and human rights activists in general speak out against Israel's policies, not against its people and not against Judaism. If anything, the best of what it means to be a Jew or Muslim is lived when speaking for justice. (3) In May 2007, Muslim students at Irvine complained of nearly being run over by a car later determined to be driven by an FBI agent. (4) An FBI informant named Craig Monteilh announced in 2009 that he set up video cameras in Orange county gymnasiums frequented by young Muslims to monitor their activities. (5) A member of congress singled out the Muslim Student Union for supporting George Galloway's humanitarian convoy into Gaza even though the campaign was gaining national and international support without opposition by many in the government. The university needs to acknowledge the history of institutional harassment of Muslim students as they engage in campus activism. Muslim students complain that their requests for Palestinian speakers to be hosted by the university, similar to the hosting of Ambassador Michael Oren, are typically rejected or ignored.
Suppressing the voice of these students by threatening them with failure and arrest in order to prohibit them and future students from expressing their views on Palestine is tantamount to telling them not to be American. The Muslim students' actions at UCI epitomize the confrontation against institutional injustices by means of peaceful exercise of free speech, a great American tradition. The 11 Muslim students took a stand for another people's human rights, for what the best of America represents, and for what millions of people around the world admire Americans. So I thank the students for reminding me of why I am a proud American -- because I have the responsibility of celebrating my freedom by demanding it for others. (Salam Al Marayati is the Executive Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council)
Obama names U.S. envoy to Muslim world body
Feb. 13: President Barack Obama today named a new special envoy to a top Islamic body to deepen Washington's cooperation with the Muslim world. Obama told a U.S.-Islamic World Forum in the Qatari capital Doha in a recorded video message that he was naming White House official Rashad Hussain as special envoy to the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. "As an accomplished lawyer and a close and trusted member of my White House staff, Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo," Obama said. In a speech in Cairo last June, Obama called for a "new beginning" in ties between the United States and Muslims, many of whom felt targeted by the "war on terror" launched by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Since then, my administration has made a sustained effort to listen. We've held thousands of events and town halls ...in the United States and around the world ... And I look forward to continuing the dialogue during my visit to Indonesia next month," Obama said. (Reuters)
U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom accused of bias
Feb 17: Allegations of anti-Muslim bias are being leveled against the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, that advises the president and other government officials on issues related to religious freedom worldwide. The Washington Post reported today, that some past commissioners, staff and former staff of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom say the agency is rife, behind-the-scenes, with ideology and tribalism, with commissioners focusing on pet projects that are often based on their own religious background. In particular, they say an anti-Muslim bias runs through the commission's work. The paper reported that: The commission was hit this fall with an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint filed by a former policy analyst, Safiya Ghori-Ahmad, who alleges that her contract was canceled because of her Muslim faith and her affiliation with a Muslim advocacy group. The commission's six researchers signed a letter unsuccessfully urging their bosses to keep Ghori-Ahmad because of what they described as her strong résumé and the need for an analyst to cover the key region of South Asia. One researcher, Bridget Kustin, quit in protest, saying in her resignation letter that she would not "remain part of an organization that would be willing to engage in such discrimination." Rumors about infighting and ineffectiveness have swirled for years around the commission, which was created by Congress in 1998 as part of the International Religious Freedom Act. The legislation, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, was championed primarily by Christian groups, along with people of Jewish, Bahai and other faiths, to get the government to pay more attention to religious persecution overseas and be an advocate for religious freedom in its foreign policy. The commission's nine members, who are appointed by the president and congressional leaders of both parties, include two Catholics, two evangelical Protestants, one Southern Baptist, one Orthodox Christian, one Jew and one Muslim, with one vacancy. Their $4.3 million budget is used to research religious discrimination abroad, take fact-finding trips, hold public hearings, write an annual report, make policy recommendations and put out news releases. (AMP Report)
Muslims here since slavery: New Study
Feb 18: Indiana University religious studies professor Edward Curtis' recent book, "Muslims in America," is, according to his publisher, the first single-author history of American Muslims from Colonial times to the present. There is not a whole lot of competition. I don't know of any textbooks that mention how there were Islamic names like Hassan and Ali in documents from our Spanish colonial period (in the American Southwest) in the 1600s. In 1730, roughly 280 years ago, the first identifiable Muslim arrived on the Eastern Seaboard. He was Ayuba Suleiman Diallo. The hapless man was enslaved by Muslim slavers in present-day Senegal and put on a slave ship that landed in Annapolis. From there, the African was taken to a nearby tobacco farm. He became known as Job, and he could read and write Arabic and had memorized the Koran. Somehow, he got a letter circulated asking for his release. It fell into the hands of James Oglethorpe, a member of the British Parliament who arranged to have Job freed and eventually returned to Africa. Given that Islam had nearly 1,000 years to expand into West Africa before Protestant missionaries began arriving in the 19th century, it seems only logical that many of the slaves captured and sent across the Atlantic were Muslim.
Mr. Curtis chronicles the stories of several Muslim slaves who, although in America against their will, made the best of their situation and either became overseers of other slaves or joined anti-slavery movements. After the Civil War, Muslims — mostly from Syria and Lebanon — began to trickle in. There were only a few white converts, the first being Alexander Webb, the U.S. consul to the Philippines, who accepted Islam in the late 1870s. Islam's most famous American convert, Malcolm X, didn't discover the faith until the 1940s, while in prison. In 1952, the year he was released, there already were 20 mosques in North America, thanks to some savvy proselytizing among blacks. Mr. Curtis says that started in the 1920s, when American Muslims achieved enough mass to constitute a religious denomination. "I honestly believe part of the tensions between Muslims outside of the United States and inside the United States is due to ignorance," Mr. Curtis says. "My hope is that by conjuring up our American ancestors, we will think of ourselves in the present differently." (Washington Times)
Double standard on 'terror' counterproductive, offensive
Attack on Texas IRS office not called 'terrorism,' despite fitting definition
Feb 22: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), along with other national Muslim organizations, today held a news conference in Washington, D.C., to express concerns over a perceived double standard on the use of the label "terrorism" as it relates to acts of political violence committed by people who are not Muslims. Other Muslim groups taking part in the news conference included MAS Freedom and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and Council for Social Justice. CAIR's news conference was prompted by coverage of last week's politically-motivated airborne suicide attack on an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office in Austin, Texas, which the Muslim civil rights and advocacy group called an act of terror."
In a statement read at today's Capitol Hill event, CAIR Legal Counsel Nadhira Al-Khalili said: "American law defines 'terrorism' as 'premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets' or as 'the unlawful use of force against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.' When an act that fits these definitions is carried out by a Muslim individual or group, there is and should be no hesitation in labeling that act 'terrorism.' Regrettably, when an act fitting the legal definitions of terrorism is carried out by someone who is not Muslim, there seems to be a general reluctance on the part of commentators, public officials and law enforcement agencies to use the term.
"Last week's attack on the IRS office in Texas perfectly fits either legal definition of terrorism, yet it has not been labeled as such. This apparent double standard only serves to render the term 'terrorism' meaningless and imbues it with a sense of religious and ethnic bias that is both counterproductive and offensive…. Failure to label the IRS attack in Texas an act of terrorism has had real consequences. Supporters of the Austin terrorist on Facebook and Twitter now claim he is a 'true American hero.' This support would likely not have materialized if the attacker's Internet fans believed they were supporting terrorism…..Republican Congressman Mike McCaul, who represents Austin, Texas, is correct when he said 'any time you fly an airplane into a federal building to kill people, that's an act of terror.' America should identify such acts as terrorism whenever they are committed, wherever they are committed, whoever commits them."
USA PATRIOT Act extended through backdoor
Feb 27: President Obama today signed into law a one-year extension to provisions of the controversial USA Patriot Act that were set to expire on February 28. The extended provisions include those that: (1) Authorize a secret court to approve roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones. (2) Authorize a secret court to approve seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations. (3) Permit surveillance against "lone wolf" targets (a non-citizen suspected of being engaged in terrorism without being a part of a recognized terrorism group). No amendments to restrict the government's ability to spy on Americans were passed. Just three days before the USA PATRIOT Act was to expire, Congress used a backdoor method to camouflage the stripping away of civil liberties until after the 2010 election. The bill, HR 3961, was originally passed by the House last fall as the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act. While the Republocrats originally wanted to add the PATRIOT Act reauthorization to the so-called "jobs" bill, some dissent on the jobs portion by some Republicans and on the PATRIOT portion by some Democrats delayed the bill, so Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) had to resort to the backdoor amendment of HR 3961. The Senate passed the amendment unanimously, and the House passed the bill 315-97 with 20 not voting. (AMP Report)
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