|
Chronology of Islam in America ( December 2006-II)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
December 2006 Page II
Tension high amid Boston mosque planMuslim, Jewish groups at odds
Dec. 17: The leader of the Muslim group that is attempting to build New England's largest mosque at Roxbury Crossing has accused a Jewish advocacy organization that has criticized the project of deliberately inflaming communal relations in the Boston area. Dr. Yousef Abou-Allaban , chairman of the board of the Cambridge-based Islamic Society of Boston, said in a letter to Charles Jacobs , president of the David Project, that the group was trying to thwart local Muslims' dreams of a new place of worship. Abou-Allaban's letter was a response to a press release a week earlier by the David Project , which had accused the society and the Boston Redevelopment Authority of withholding public information about the mosque project. (Boston Globe)
President Carter: Opening discussion on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Dec. 18: Jimmy Carter, the USA's 39th President and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, recently published his 23rd book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." The contents of the book and the title have been met with much controversy. In the book, Carter discusses topics which are widely debated around the world but rarely receive much notice or widespread analytical attention within the US. This is particularly relevant as many seek to foreclose the debate on the Middle East by promoting the idea that criticism of Israel's policies is indistinguishable from hatred of Jewish people and a person raising these issues is Anti-Semitic. President Carter has already been maligned as an Anti-Semite and some allege his work diminishes public debate, as opposed to opening dialogue. During an interview Carter said, "There is no discussion or debate in this country about very sensitive issues in the Middle East...if that discussion implies a criticism of Israel." (Anti-Discrimination Committee)
Go Daddy ordered to pay ex-employee $390,000
Dec. 18: Go Daddy Group Inc. wrongfully terminated a Muslim employee from Morocco for complaining of discrimination and must pay the man $390,000 in damages, a federal jury decided. The jury did side with the Scottsdale-based registrar of Internet domain names on five other counts in the civil lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Jurors concluded that Go Daddy decided not to promote Youssef Bouamama for other reasons, not because of his religion or national origin or because of his discrimination complaints. The jury also concluded that Go Daddy did not terminate him because of religion or national origin. The jury said Go Daddy must pay Bouamama $250,000 in punitive damages, $135,000 in back pay and $5,000 for emotional pain and suffering. (Arizona Republic)
Japanese, Muslims recall racism
Dec. 18: When the Imperial Japanese Navy swooped over Pearl Harbor 65 years ago and destroyed more than 2,400 American lives, Mas Yamasaki was watching a church basketball game in Sacramento. He was 12, and he didn't know that he would soon live in a detention camp at Tule Lake - sleeping on an Army-issued mattress, braving the elements without indoor plumbing or heat. The child of Japanese immigrants, Yamasaki was born an American citizen. But he spent 31/2 years of his American childhood in the camp - he was considered a threat to national security. The internment of Japanese immigrants is familiar to most Americans - in large part, because Yamasaki and legions of Japanese camp survivors have made their voices heard. Now, Yamasaki and other survivors are speaking out against a new danger. "We were stereotyped," said Yamasaki. "Now, with the Muslims, it's the same thing. Everyone's pointing fingers saying they're an enemy." "Pearl Harbor gave the United States the excuse to discriminate against Japanese Americans by saying these guys are potential saboteurs," said Steve Okamoto, co-president of the San Mateo chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). "Now, they're lumping (Muslims) together like they did with the Japanese." Okamoto, 65, was only 6 weeks old when he and his family were shipped from their home to the Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno and later to the Topaz internment camp in Utah. After 9/11, Okamoto and other members of the JACL were the first non-Muslims to speak out against the swirling dust storm of anti-Muslim hate speech. Okamoto since has helped coordinate JACL forums with Muslim Americans to speak out on the dangerous excesses of stereotyping - both past and present. (San Mateo County Times)
VA Congressman asked to apologize for anti-Muslim remarks
Dec. 19: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) tonight called on Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) to apologize for anti-Muslim remarks he made in a recent letter to a constituent. Goode's letter to the head of the local Sierra Club chapter slammed the planned use of a Quran for the ceremonial swearing-in of Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress. (No religious texts of any kind are used for the official swearing-in ceremony.) "Representative Goode's Islamophobic remarks send a message of intolerance that is unworthy of anyone elected to public office," said CAIR National Legislative Director Corey Saylor. "There can be no reasonable defense for such bigotry." (CAIR Bulletin)
Muslim groups ask Wal-Mart to drop game glorifying religious violence
Dec. 19: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) urged Wal- to stop selling a video game that glorifies religious violence and may harm interfaith relations. CAIR said it has received complaints about the game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” produced by Left Behind Games Inc. The game reportedly rewards players for either converting or killing people of other faiths. The Muslim American Public Affairs Council also joined a national campaign to ask Wal-Mart to stop selling a video game that it says glorifies religious violence. In a letter to Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr., CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad wrote in part: "We believe the message this game is promoting is one of religious intolerance. The game's enemy team includes people with Muslim-sounding names. When asked about the Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Left Behind Games' President Jeffrey Frichner said, 'Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ' -- and therefore cannot be on the side of Jesus in the game. As you may know, Muslims do in fact revere Jesus as one of God's prophets.In the post 9-11 climate, when improving interfaith relations should be a priority for all, this type of product only serves to dehumanize others and increase interfaith hostility and mistrust.” (CAIR/MPAC News Bulletins)
U.S. won't back off on Maher Arar
Dec. 19: The mystery about why the United States continues to blacklist Maher Arar deepened with statements by senior administration officials suggesting there is "good reason" for keeping the Canadian software engineer on a border watch list. Questioned by members of a business audience here and again later by reporters, U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins refused to clarify why his government refuses to accept the declaration of a judge-led Canadian inquiry that Arar is innocent. However, Wilkins flatly rejected suggestions the U.S. decision to keep Arar on the watch list is tied to efforts to avoid liability in a pending lawsuit filed by Arar against the U.S. government. In Washington, State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said the Bush administration made "a conscious decision" to keep Arar on a list. "People tell us that there is good reason for his being on the watch list," he said. But Wilkins appeared to shrug off the two-year, $13.4-million commission of inquiry that revealed for the first time that RCMP officers had erroneously tagged Arar and his wife in a border lookout request as an "Islamic Extremist" with ties to Al Qaeda. (Toronto Star)
Americans remain baffled and confused about the Middle East
Dec. 20: Despite the deluge of information on the Middle East in the US media Americans remain baffled and confused about basics in politics and culture. It is my guess that most Americans do not know that Kurds are generally Sunnites, that Iranian are not Arabs, that Arabs are not necessarily Muslim and that the Shiite-Sunnites divide is largely political rather than religious. Americans need blame-the-victim theory to justify the crime of occupying Iraq and destroying it. Nowadays, a popular US blame-the-victim theory is “Islamofascism”. There is a growing media movement portraying Arabs and Muslims as fascists. Muslims are being portrayed as the modern day followers of Hitler and Mussolini. Jihad is being equated with terrorism. National resistance in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon is confounded with the organized crime of Alkaeda world. Arabs and Jews are Semites, and yet hate crimes against Arabs are not considered a form of anti-Semitism. US Christian scholars have anointed themselves as experts on Islam. Islam is increasingly being connected with end-of-time American Christian theology. The difference between Islamic and Christian chauvinism has disappeared. (Ghassan Rubeiz - Al Hewar)
Muslims mark solidarity with Jews
Dec. 21: Local Muslim leaders lit candles at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide. American Muslims "believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again," said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps. Around the hexagonal room, candles glimmered under the engraved names of the death camps: Chelmno. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Majdanek. "We stand here with three survivors of the Holocaust and my great Muslim friends to condemn this outrage in Iran," said Sara J. Bloomfield, the museum's director, addressing a bank of TV cameras in the room, known as the Hall of Remembrance. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad organized last week's conference after Western countries protested his comment last year that the slaughter of 6 million Jews was a myth. The two-day meeting drew historical revisionists and such people as David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. (Washington Post)
Muslims question GOP silence on VA Rep's Islamophobic remarks
Dec. 21: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on state and national GOP leaders to repudiate anti-Muslim remarks made by a Republican congressman in Virginia. In a recent letter to constituents, Rep. Virgil Goode slammed the planned use of a Quran for the ceremonial swearing-in of Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress. (No religious texts of any kind are used for the official swearing-in ceremony.) Goode also decried the growth of the American Muslim community and expressed concern that "many more Muslims" may be elected to public office. "We are deeply troubled by the failure of state and national GOP leaders to clearly distance themselves from Representative Goode's intolerant remarks," said CAIR National Legislative Director Corey Saylor. He said Republican leaders in Virginia should have learned a lesson in tolerance from the controversy over Senator George Allen's "macaca" episode. (CAIR Bulletin)
NC Congressman demands Iraqis be converted to Christianity
Dec. 22: North Carolina’s 8th District congressman has a winning plan for Iraq: Convert all the Muslims to Christianity! In the past, only a few brave public intellectuals such as Ann Coulter have offered this only obvious solution to our 3-1/2 year bloodbath occupation of Iraq, so it is a proud moment for America that Rep. Robin Hayes is the first politician to deal seriously with our disastrous war. The only way to make Iraq stable enough for the U.S. to withdraw is by “spreading the message of Jesus Christ, the message of peace on earth, good will towards men. Everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the Savior.” (Wonkette.com)
New studies put U.S. Jewry over 6 million mark
Dec. 22: Two major new demographic studies estimate the American Jewish population at well above 6 million people, indicating a growing Jewish community that contrasts sharply with popular images of Jewish decline. The new studies appear to refute a widely publicized survey conducted in 2001, which counted 5.2 million American Jews and sparked widespread anxiety over American Jewry's future. The most clear-cut refutation of the earlier figure comes in the newly published American Jewish Year Book, which sets the American Jewish population at 6.4 million. A separate study, still being conducted by a new Jewish demographic institute at Brandeis University, has a final estimate between 6 million and 8 million. (Forward)
Bush is urged to act on criticism of Muslim
Dec. 23: White House officials said they were aware that some Democrats and Muslims were urging President Bush to admonish Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., Republican of Virginia, and Dennis Prager, the conservative commentator, for suggesting that the first Muslim elected to the House had no place in Congress. “We’re aware of the situation,” said Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, “but no judgments have been made.” Mr. Goode said the election of Keith Ellison, a Minnesota lawyer who converted to Islam as a college student, posed a threat to American values. Mr. Prager, a presidential appointee to the board that oversees the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, said Mr. Ellison should not serve if he could not swear on a Bible, though he has apologized for those remarks. (New York Times)
Muslim gets apology for April strip search
Dec. 28: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has apologized to a Muslim traveler strip-searched at the Pinellas County Jail after being detained at Tampa International Airport in April. Federal agents said they denied Spanish citizen Safana Jawad entry to the United States on April 11 because she was suspected of being associated with someone they view as suspicious. Jawad, 45, was taken to the jail, strip-searched according to protocol and held in a maximum security cell for two days. She was never told the identity of the suspicious person. Jawad, who was born in Iraq, had flown to the United States to visit her son, Hany Kubba, 16, who then lived in Clearwater with her ex-husband, Ahmad Maki Kubba. Jawad was deported to England on April 13 and has since filed a complaint with the Homeland Security Department about being mistreated by customs officials as well as staff at the Pinellas County Jail. (St. Petersburg Times)
German Muslim denied entry to U.S., detained in Las Vegas
Dec. 30: The Southern California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) today asked for an explanation as to why a German Muslim was barred from entering the United States and is now being detained in Nevada. According to his family, 62-year-old Majed Shehadeh is being held after arriving at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport on Thursday. Family members say Shehadeh was interrogated for a total of more than 12 hours by officials with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the FBI. He was also allegedly placed in a cold cell with some 25 other people and a single toilet, and prevented from taking prescribed heart medication for 20 hours. Shehadeh, whose wife and three children are U.S. citizens, had planned to visit his daughter in Bakersfield, Calif., to celebrate her passing of the California Bar and her wedding anniversary. (CAIR Bulletin)
Texas man races pigs to protest mosque plans
Dec. 31: In Kay, Texas, a man unhappy with an Islamic association's plans to build a mosque next to his property has staged pig races as a protest during afternoon prayers. Craig Baker, 46, sold merchandise and grilled sausages Friday for about 100 people who showed up in heavy rain. He insisted he wasn't trying to offend anyone with the pigs, which are forbidden from the Muslim diet. The dispute began when the association asked Baker to remove his cattle from its newly bought land. The association plans to build a mosque, community center, athletic facilities and a school. (Detroit Free Press)
Return to Page I
|
