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Chronology of Islam in America (2007)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
April 2007 page II
The end of religious school holidays
April 9: On Friday, students in Florida's Hillsborough County School District had the day off from school for Good Friday, no matter what religious faith they practiced. It's the last time they will have Good Friday off as a district-wide day off from school. As part of the ongoing struggle in schools across the country on how to respect holy days of all religions, the Hillsborough school district, which encompasses the city of Tampa, came up with its own solution. It has eliminated all religious holidays starting with the 2007-2008 school year. (ABC News)
Sami Al-Arian is a victim of the U.S. "war on terror."
April 9: The U.S. government has gone out of its way to make an example of this outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights. Racist prosecutors, inhumane treatment and abuse in custody, the prospect of indefinite detention--Al-Arian has been subjected to this and more in the four years he's been behind bars. Al-Arian was arrested in February 2003 on charges that he and others used an academic think tank, a Muslim school and a charity as a cover for raising money for "terrorism." Though a Florida jury acquitted him or deadlocked on all counts in 2005, the Feds kept him in prison. Faced with a retrial, Al-Arian agreed last year to plead guilty to the least serious charge in exchange for what was supposed to be a small addition sentence and his deportation. But Al-Arian's nightmare continues. First, federal Judge James Moody ignored prosecutors' recommendations and sentenced Al-Arian to the maximum possible. Under the longer sentence, Al-Arian's release was set for April 13, 2007. But he is now facing an indefinite extension of his prison sentence. (Counter Punch)
American Muslim leaders sign 'code of honor' to promote Intrafaith harmony
April 9: As tragic sectarian divisions in Iraq turn into ruthless power struggles and result in a massive number of casualties, Muslim leaders from all schools of thought have come together to ensure intrafaith harmony. Before an audience of more than 700 people, Muslim American leaders in Southern California last week signed onto an "Intra-Faith Code of Honor" at the Muslim Unity Celebration of Prophet Muhammad's birthday hosted by Islamic Educational Center of Orange County (CA). The Code of Honor originated as a result of a meeting of Muslim American religious leaders called by the Muslim Public Affairs Council in March. During the meeting, the leaders identified strategies for addressing increasing sectarian violence abroad and, most importantly, ensure that Muslim American communities are not detrimentally affected by this conflict. The codes reads in part: "...We have to prevent this tragedy from spilling over to our Muslim society in the United States. As a first step in that endeavor, we suggest a Community Code of Honor for all Muslims to live by in order to respect one another, not only in matters in which we are in agreement, but more importantly on issues and times of disagreement." (MPAC Bulletin)
Dr. Sami Al-Arian makes new bid to end imprisonment
April 9: A Florida college professor who (in a plea bargain) pleaded guilty to aiding Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian, is making a fresh attempt to persuade a federal appeals court to order an end to his imprisonment for failing to testify before a grand jury. Al-Arian's latest bid for freedom came in a legal filing last week, in which he asked the full, 12-judge bench of the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a three-judge panel's decision last month upholding his jailing for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating Northern Virginia Islamic charities. This week, the Supreme Court is scheduled to take up a separate legal petition in which the Kuwaitiborn professor is challenging the basis for the 57-month prison sentence he received after entering a guilty plea last year on charges of providing assistance to a designated terrorist group. With credit for time served since his arrest in 2002, Al-Arian could have been released and deported as soon as Friday. (April 13). However, a judge put Al-Arian's criminal sentence on hold while he serves up to 18 months for civil contempt. (New York Sun)
Islamophobe to Steve Emerson strikes again
April 10: The Muslim Public Affairs Council today called on self-proclaimed terrorism expert Steve Emerson to retract false and baseless accusations he made recently about the Muslim Public Affairs Council on the Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes" program, and repeated in an article on the right-wing blog Frontpagemag.com. In its response to Emerson's latest baseless attacks, MPAC said: "In his most recent blogosphere attack, Emerson persists in his campaign of defamation against the MPAC, admits that there is a personal agenda behind this campaign, resorts to the most blatant mischaracterization of MPAC statements, and suggests that American Muslims should have no recourse to courts of law to defend their rights. Indeed, in his ongoing campaign against MPAC, Emerson has done more to reveal the true nature of his extremist agenda then in any of his other activities since his misguided rehabilitation by parts of the American media after the terrorist attacks on our country on September 11, 2001." In January 2006, Emerson appeared on the Fox News Channel program "Hannity and Colmes" and denounced the Attorney General of the United States for meeting with a number of major American Muslim organizations, including MPAC. (MPAC bulletin)
World publics reject US role as the world leader
April 17: A multinational poll finds that publics around the world reject the idea that the United States should play the role of preeminent world leader. Most publics say the United States plays the role of world policeman more than it should, fails to take their country's interests into account and cannot be trusted to act responsibly. But the survey also finds that majorities in most countries want the United States to participate in international efforts to address world problems. Views are divided about whether the United States should reduce the number of military bases it has overseas. Moreover, many publics think their country's relations with the United States are improving. Americans largely agree with the rest of the world: most do not think the United States should remain the world's preeminent leader and prefer that it play a more cooperative role. They also believe United States plays the role of world policeman more than it should. This is the fourth in a series of reports based on a worldwide poll about key international issues conducted by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org, in cooperation with polling organizations around the world. The larger study includes polls in China , India, the United States, Indonesia, Russia, France, Thailand, Ukraine, Poland, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Argentina, Peru, Israel and Armenia—plus the Palestinian territories. The publics polled represent about 56 percent of the world's population. (World Public Opinion Org.)
Losing Muslim hearts and minds
April 25: It has been a long and bloody spring in Iraq and Afghanistan, but on the battlefield of ideas, the news is even less encouraging. A survey released yesterday by WorldPublic-Opinion.org suggests that the struggle for Muslim hearts and minds may already be lost. Overwhelming majorities of those surveyed in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan and Indonesia say they believe that the U.S. seeks to "weaken and divide the Islamic world" and to "achieve political and military domination to control Middle East resources." Most say they think that Al Qaeda defends the dignity of Muslims by standing up to the U.S., and most share the terrorist organization's goal of evicting the U.S. military from the Mideast. (Los Angeles Times)
Tenet says Cheney had eye on Iraq long before 9/11
April 28: White House and Pentagon officials, and particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, were determined to attack Iraq from the first days of the Bush administration, long before the Sept. 11 attacks, and repeatedly stretched available intelligence to build support for the war, according to a new book by former CIA director George Tenet. Although Tenet does not question the threat Saddam Hussein posed or the sincerity of administration beliefs, he recounts numerous efforts by aides to Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to insert "crap" into public justifications for the war. Tenet also describes an ongoing fear within the intelligence community of the administration's willingness to "mischaracterize complex intelligence information." "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraq threat," Tenet writes in At the Center of the Storm. The debate "was not about imminence but about acting before Saddam did." (Washington Post)
Muslims, Arabs report repeated border crossing incidents
April 30: Scores of U.S. citizens who are of Arab descent or Muslim are being detained and harassed at the border when trying to re-enter the country, a civil rights lawyer said at a community forum in Cleveland. "We've been to Boston, Buffalo, Detroit and Seattle and we hear this story over and over again," said Harvey Grossman, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. His office filed a civil rights lawsuit last year in Chicago on behalf of 10 Muslim and Arab-Americans repeatedly detained at the border, including one man who was handcuffed and shackled to a chair for nearly three hours. Many of the 150 people in the audience gasped when Abe Dabdoub told them he and/or his wife have been detained 17 times. The Toledo-area engineer and his wife, both U.S. citizens, travel to Canada frequently to visit relatives. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
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