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Chronology of Islam in America (2014)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
July 2014
Ramadan Reception at the California State Capitol
July 1: The California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CA) hosted the eleventh annual Capitol Ramadan reception commemorating the commencement of the holy month of Ramadan. The reception drew more than 200 state elected officials, community members, and interfaith leaders to break the fast with one another at the California Capitol, Sacramento. This year's Capitol Ramadan reception was co-hosted by more than 55 assembly members and senators, who also co-authored a member resolution congratulating the California Muslim American community on commencing Ramadan and also for its contributions to the fabric of the state of California. This year's reception included addresses by Imam Zaid Shakir and State Board of Equalization Board Member Betty Yee, as well as the presentation of the resolution by Assembly member Roger Dickinson, Assembly member Mariko Yamada, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, along with several other legislators. [CAIR]
Muslims in UK remain target of hate crime
July 1: The Muslim community is experiencing frequent abuse in the United Kingdom with perpetrators being as young as 10 years of age, according to a new study by Teesside University. The finding is based on the data collected over a period of 10 months by the Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) project. Researchers found that about 734 self-reported cases of anti-Islamic abuse between May 2013 and February 2014. "Muslims remain among the most likely minority group in Britain to be targeted for a hate crime. 'Trigger' events like the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby clearly magnify the possibility of far-right groups and others victimising Muslims simply for who they are and what they believe," Study author Dr Matthew Feldman, co-director of the Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies, said in a statement. The finding is published by the Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies at the University. [University Herald]
Daniel Pipes apologizes for smearing Saudi businessman
July 1: Islamophobe Daniel Pipes wrote: In my article dated 18 June 2014 headed "Turkish Support for ISIS", I alleged that Saudi businessman Yassin Abdullah Kadi has close ties to ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), the militant Sunni Islam group, and that Mr Kadi has funded ISIS. I also stated that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had met three times with Mr Kadi and I implied these meetings took place in order to further Ankara's alleged support for the ISIS group. I have since been informed by Mr Kadi's legal advisers that he has never supported ISIS financially (or otherwise) nor has he ever supported any other terrorist group or activity. I unreservedly retract these allegations of Mr Kadi which I accept are totally untrue. I sincerely apologise to Mr Kadi for having published them. Daniel Pipes" (Editor's Note: This apology has since been deleted from Daniel Pipes' website.) [CAIR]
Ohio Muslim Sues Internet Islamophobes
July 2: A Muslim "multicultural relations officer" for Ohio's Office of Homeland Security claims in court that Internet bloggers defamed him and cost him his job by posting that he was an "Islamist mole" who sympathized with terrorists. Omar Alomari sued the City of Columbus, Todd Alan Sheets, Stephen Coughlin, John Guandolo, Patrick Poole and a John Doe known on the Internet as "Rusty Shackleford," in Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. Alomari was hired as a full-time multicultural relations officer in 2006 by the Office of Homeland Security (OHS), and was in charge of building relationships between the state agency and the Muslim community. After he published two articles on Islamic culture and radicalization in 2007, Alomari says, "defendant Poole began writing a series of articles condemning individuals and organizations within Central Ohio's Muslim communities as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers." Alomari claims Poole also began making public records requests for emails and other communications from the multicultural relations officer to Muslims in his area. After the records requests, Alomari says, defendant Shackleford - who operates a blog called the Jawa Report - "began posting articles claiming that plaintiff had ties to terrorists, terrorist organizations, and/or organizations with links to terrorism." The complaint states: "the Jawa Report (a) labeled plaintiff an 'Islamist mole,' a 'radicalized fox,' 'a former agent of a foreign government,' and 'a lying scumbag,' (b) alleged that plaintiff was an 'information pipeline' to terrorists, (c) asserted that plaintiff's work 'help[ed] encourage radicalization,' and (d) alleged that plaintiff 'escorted' terrorists into OHS. Alomari claims that during a 2010 training session titled "Understanding the Threat to America," defendants "Coughlin, Guandolo and Poole accused plaintiff of being a 'suspect,' alleged that plaintiff used his position within OHS to 'connect with terrorists,' and promised to 'keep digging' into plaintiff's background to 'expose' him as a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer." Alomari seeks compensatory and punitive damages for invasion of privacy, tortious interference with business contract, negligent supervision and spoliation of evidence. He claims he lost his job with the OHS because of the false statements linking him with terrorists. [Court House News]
Texas GOP Congressional Candidate is ‘Repelled by the Muslim Religion'
July 3: South Texas congressional candidate Larry Smith says he was repelled by the Muslim religion and religious law. "They talk about Islam being a religion of peace and understanding. It absolutely is not. It is horrendously oppressive to children and women," Smith said. "This is a war on women." Smith, who had served in Iraq in 2004, also smeared the Arab culture. A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations called Smith's views "bigoted and extremist." "To make sweeping condemnations of the Arab culture or the faith of one-fifth of the world's population is just something beyond the pale," said Ibrahim Hooper, of CAIR, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization. "It's really unworthy of any public official or candidate." Time and again, CAIR has called on Republican leaders to repudiate Islamophobia in their ranks, Hooper said. [Caller]
Use of 'state secrets' in no-fly list case challenged
July 7: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, announced today that it has filed a motion in opposition to an affidavit submitted by Attorney General Eric Holder invoking the "state secrets privilege" in Virginia Muslim Gulet Mohamed's no-fly case. Invoking the state secrets privilege allows the government to refuse to produce evidence in court that would reveal secret information that, if disclosed, might harm national security interests or relations with foreign countries. That privilege has been utilized increasingly by the government as a way to kick cases out of court and, in this case, to avoid a ruling on the constitutionality of the government's actions. CAIR's motion, filed today in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia - Alexandria Division, states: "Having failed in other cases to defend its extra-judicial use of the No Fly List, the government has availed itself of the litigation equivalent of the nuclear option: the government wants to kick 21-year-old Gulet Mohamed completely out of court because Attorney General Holder submitted an affidavit invoking the state secrets privilege." In its motion to the court, CAIR argued that publicly-available facts and those obtainable from sources other than the government, not state secrets, are at the heart of Mohamed's claims. CAIR's filing also argued that the "fleetingly small risk" of state secret disclosure does not justify the dismissal of Mohamed's claims. Mohamed was prevented from boarding a flight to the United States in 2011 and has alleged that he was tortured while in detention in Kuwait and faced unconstitutional coercion to answer questions by FBI agents who ignored his repeated requests for legal representation. CAIR filed a lawsuit against the government alleging violation of Mohamed's right to return to the United States and his right to challenge his placement on the no-fly list. In January, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that placement on the government's no-fly list "transforms a person into a second class citizen, or worse." That 32-page opinion allowed CAIR's lawsuit against the government on behalf of Mohamed to go forward. [CAIR]
League City resolution unfairly singles out Muslims
July 8: The League City City Council today passed a resolution which simultaneously closed its city doors to unaccompanied illegal immigrant children and unfairly characterized Muslims as terrorists. The resolution bans the use of League City public facilities for housing of unaccompanied children entering this country illegally. Writing in Galveston County Daily News on July 12, CAIR-TX Communications Coordinator Ruth Nasrullah said: While we are concerned about the humanitarian crisis prompted by thousands of unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors flooding into Texas, CAIR-TX is especially concerned with language used in the resolution which seems to single out Muslims as a threat to border security, an idea for which there is no basis. The resolution contains a clause which states that “members of dangerous transnational criminal organizations and radical Islamic terror groups continue to exploit the situation to infiltrate the United States for the purpose of establishing criminal activity, terror cells, and training operations within our homeland. Specifically identifying “radical Islamic terror groups” gives the false and unfair impression that Muslims constitute a particular threat. The “transnational criminal organizations” named in the clause were not described as members of any particular religion or nationality. Why is Islam singled out? The resolution bolsters the false perception that all Muslims are a threat to this country. [Galveston County Daily News]
Muslim community alarmed at the NSA spying of leading American Muslims
July 9: Seven-million strong American Muslim community was alarmed at today's revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) covertly spied on leading American Muslims, including lawyers, and civil rights activists. In Glenn Greenwald’s article published in The Intercept, it was revealed that thousands of community leaders, organizations, and activists were targeted by the NSA. Greenwald details the NSA’s activities in targeting Arab and Muslim Americans, along with respective community organizations, and civil rights groups solely due to political beliefs or religious affiliation. According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the list of Americans monitored by their own government includes:
(1) Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country. (2) Dr. Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights; (3) Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush; (4) Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases; (5) Dr. Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University;
These individuals appear on an NSA spreadsheet in the Snowden archives called “FISA recap”—short for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The spreadsheet shows 7,485 email addresses listed as monitored between 2002 and 2008. The five Americans whose email accounts were monitored by the NSA and FBI have all led highly public, outwardly exemplary lives, the Intercept report said adding: All five vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, and none advocates violent jihad or is known to have been implicated in any crime, despite years of intense scrutiny by the government and the press. Arab and Muslim civil advocacy groups joined a coalition of 45 civil rights, human rights, privacy rights, and faith-based organizations in a letter to President Obama that calls on the administration to provide “a full public accounting of these practices” and to address the problematic infringement of civil liberties.The coalition also repeated its call for the U.S. Department of Justice to strengthen its official guidance on the use of race by federal law enforcement agencies. [AMP Report]
Suit: Feds Deemed Man 'Suspicious' for Converting to Islam
July 10: Another plaintiff in the lawsuit, Wiley Gill, was identified two years ago as a "Suspicious Male Subject in Possession of Flight Simulator Game," according to a 2012 SAR report that was obtained by the ACLU of California through a Public Records Act request. He was identified as "worthy of note" because he converted to Islam and has a "pious demeanor," according to the information the ACLU obtained. "The only reason that someone deemed Mr. Gill 'suspicious' is because he is a devout Muslim, not because he has done anything wrong," said Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney at the Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus. [Washington Post]
Continued on page two
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