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Chronology of Islam in America (2013)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
March 2013 - Page Two
Anti-Islam writer infiltrates Muslim conference
March 12: Mark Tapson, a writer for the anti-Islam FrontPage Magazine, detailed how his secret infiltration of the Muslim Student Association’s yearly West Coast conference did not yield the expected results. “It was largely very innocuous. I mean, there was nothing beyond what I’ve already told you, really. There was very little that you’d consider radical. Highly politicized, yes, but nothing damning,” Tapson said. Miranda Blue from Right Wing Watch reports that Tapson was speaking on Janet Mefferd’s radio show, and was disappointed that after going so far as to use a “variation” of his name to get into the conference, there was nothing too nefarious to report, even at the apparently tantalizingly named panel “Islamatics.” ....Tapson said: "It’s all about the younger generation. And, politicizing and organizing that younger generation in campus groups and strengthening their sense of community as Muslims, strengthening their campus activism, that’s all, that’s a very important goal because it radicalizes them and it steers them toward further radicalization down the line. So, yeah, it’s all about capturing the hearts and minds of the young." [Salon.com]
Missouri Bill would stop "Sharia Law"
March 12: In what has become a regular ritual here, a state Senate committee heard testimony today on a bill that would prevent Sharia Law from taking over Missouri. The Senate General Laws committee also discussed a measure that would outlaw any federal attempts to regulate firearms in Missouri. The committee hasn't acted on either measure, and both appear unlikely to have much chance at becoming law. But they both touch on some of the hottest ideological issues in the nation right now. "They should call that the Tea Party Committee," Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis, a committee member, scoffed as she left the hearing. Both bills are sponsored by Sen. Brian Nieves, R-Washington, who acknowledged that Missouri isn't in any immediate danger of being overtaken by foreign legal theories. But he said he wants to make sure the state "keeps things the way they are." "Missouri's been pretty fortunate as far as this goes," Nieves told the committee. The bill doesn't specifically mention the Islamist Sharia religious law. But more than 20 states have considered similar measures in the past few years, generally tied to the ongoing debate over alleged Islamist influences in the U.S. There's no current mechanism under which a foreign law could apply in Missouri. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
NJ Church offers prayer space for Muslim community
March 13: While the University considers itself a diverse community, some students have felt left out of the equation — until now. The Second Reformed Church will now offer a place for practicing Muslims to go for their Friday worship, Pastor Doug Shepler said. “The decision was a natural outcome from the church,” he said. “The reformed church has had a strong relationship with the Muslim community for a very long time.” Yusra Janajri, a School of Arts and Sciences junior, said up until now, practicing Muslims have had to pray in some uncommon places. “As someone who tries to find a place to pray — usually facing a stray wall, a doorway or sometimes a bathroom — it is difficult,” she said. “This makes things a lot easier for us.” Saad Kahn, a School of Arts and Sciences junior, said the idea to go to the church was suggested while he was talking with a friend at a New Jersey Dream Act Coalition meeting. “Our friend was talking about how the Muslim community could use a place to pray,” Kahn said. “It was interesting to hear someone outside the Muslim community talk about the same issues we have.” He said he was introduced to Shepler the same night and they came up with a plan to allow the Muslim community to pray at the church. The Muslim community’s use of the church has three goals, Kahn said. “The first prayer space, is going to be fulfilled by being able to use the church,” Kahn said. “Next we need to bring the Muslim community together, then finally we will need to sustain a space for the long term.” [Daily Targum]
Federal Judge finds National Security Letters unconstitutional, bans them
March 15: Ultra-secret national security letters that come with a gag order on the recipient are an unconstitutional impingement on free speech, a federal judge in California ruled today. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the government to stop issuing so-called NSLs across the board, in a stunning defeat for the Obama administration’s surveillance practice. However, she also stayed her order for 90 days to give the government a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “We are very pleased that the Court recognized the fatal constitutional shortcomings of the NSL statute,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman, whose organization is representing a telecom that received an NSL in 2011. “The government’s gags have truncated the public debate on these controversial surveillance tools. Our client looks forward to the day when it can publicly discuss its experience.” The telecommunications company received the ultra-secret demand letter in 2011 from the FBI seeking information about a customer or customers. The telecom took the extraordinary and rare step of challenging the underlying authority of the National Security Letter, as well as the legitimacy of the gag order that came with it. Both challenges are allowed under a federal law that governs NSLs, a power greatly expanded under the Patriot Act that allows the government to get detailed information on Americans’ finances and communications without oversight from a judge. The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs and been reprimanded for abusing them — though almost none of the requests have been challenged by the recipients. [Information Clearing House]
New York's first Muslim Democratic Club launched
March 15: The launch of New York City's first Muslim Democratic Club took place in a lounge on West 38th Street—a common area of a fancy residential building, with marble floors, leather couches and a glass-enclosed fireplace. "Now I know how the other side lives. This is a really fancy place," said New York City Comptroller John Liu, one of two mayoral candidates who attended the club's party. The other candidate to attend was Sal Albanese, a former Democratic Councilman from Bay Ridge. Representatives for New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former comptroller Bill Thompson and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio were also in attendance. Robert Jackson of Harlem, the only Muslim member on the New York City Council, spoke to the crowd. So did Zead Ramadan, who is also Muslim and is one of the candidates running this year to replace Jackson. There were approximately 60 people in attendance at the most crowded point, and the crowd was mostly young professionals in their late 20s and early 30s. (One of the organizers said afterward that the club had collected the signatures of 80 attendees on a sign-up sheet.) According to an analysis of registered voters' last names, the club estimated that there are 105,000 registered Muslim voters in New York City, with about 70 percent of those in the Democratic Party. Four of the five neighborhoods with the highest numbers of Muslim voters are in Queens. [Capital New York]
SF supervisors unanimously pass resolution condemning Islamophobic bus ads
March 19: San Francisco's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution today condemning the content of Islamophobic advertisements placed on San Francisco buses. Board President David Chiu sponsored the resolution. The resolution is the first of its kind in the nation, sending a clear message that San Francisco's elected leaders stand against hate and Islamophobia. The group underwriting the ads, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has sued several U.S. cities for the First Amendment right to place the ads. The group's founder, Pamela Geller, has been designated an anti-Muslim hate extremist by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. In August of 2012, San Franciscans were outraged over AFDI advertisements on MUNI that referred to Arabs and Muslims as "savages." These are the group's third such ads in San Francisco in the last nine months. During the same month in which this first round of advertisements circulated on MUNI buses, Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities experienced 10 high profile incidents of hate violence across the country including arson, vandalisms, and attacks targeting individuals. The new advertisements are even more offensive than those placed before because they assert that all Muslims are defined by extremism and violence. The ads also baselessly target Arab and Muslim San Franciscans who make invaluable contributions to the city's life and culture. [CAIR]
CIA plans to keep your information 'forever'
March 20: Just days after the CIA inked a $600-million cloud computing contract with Amazon, chief technology officer Gus Hunt admitted that the agency is trying to amass as much data as it can, hold it indefinitely and use it for analysis in the future. In a speech today in New York City to an audience of technology experts assembled for GigaOM’s Structure: Data conference, Hunt admitted the intelligence community has long sought a database to store text messages, tweets, Facebook activity, videos and any other information Americans make available - intentionally or otherwise. “Technology in this world is moving faster than government or law can keep up,” he said. “It’s moving faster, I would argue, than you can keep up. You should be asking the question of what are your rights and who owns your data.” Hunt said CIA analysts have been at work on new algorithms that will break down vast amounts of information into easily digestible tools that allow them to closely examine trends in the public. The agency will then be able to base its covert strategies off those results. “The value of any piece of technology is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time,” he added. “Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have ... we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.”
Earlier in March Federal Computer Week reported that the CIA agreed on a contract with Amazon that will allow the government to develop a private cloud infrastructure, thereby keeping up with the same technology Hunt alluded to during his speech today. In the past the CIA’s intelligence model has relied on small, more specific cloud servers that didn’t have the capability the future service presumably will. During his speech, Hunt stressed that the CIA will collect information on individuals thought to be America's enemies, evaluate it quickly, and act on those assertions. Along with the Amazon partnership – which neither side would officially recognize to media outlets – Hunt’s speech alluded to the “underwear bomber,” who was foiled in his attempt to blow up an airliner on Christmas of 2009. A 2010 report from the White House explained how the Al Qaeda plot made it as far as it did. “Though all of the information was available to all-source analysts at the CIA and the [National Counter Terrorism Center] prior to the attempted attack, the dots were never connected, and as a result, the problem appears to be more a component failure to ‘connect the dots,’ rather than a lack of information sharing,” the report read. Based on Hunt’s comments it would appear that the CIA is prepared to fill in those gaps by any methods in its grasp. “You are aware of the fact that somebody can know where you are at all times, because you carry a mobile device, even if that mobile device is turned off,” Hunt said. “You’re already a walking sensor platform - you know this, I hope? Yes? Well, you should." [ICH/RT]
Study finds nearly 2 in 3 hate crimes unreported
March 21: Despite growing awareness of hate crimes, the share of those crimes reported to police has fallen in recent years as more victims of violent attacks express doubt that police can or will help. Nearly 2 of 3 hate crimes go unreported to police, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported today. For the years 2003-06, 46 percent of hate crimes were reported to police. But more recently, in 2007-11, just 35 percent were reported. There was an increase in the percentage of victims of violent hate crimes who didn't report the crime because they believed the police could not or would not help, from 14 percent in 2003-06 to 24 percent in 2007-11, the bureau said. Hate groups are becoming increasingly violent, which raises the possibility that victims are afraid to report the acts to police out of fear of reprisal, said Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation, the nation's oldest police research organization. Among various studies that point to rising violence in hate crimes, the statistics bureau found a growing percentage of violent hate crimes as opposed to property crimes. Violence accounted for 84 percent of the hate crimes during 2003-06 but rose to 92 percent during 2007-11. This comes as the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that it has identified more than 1,000 organized hate groups in each of the last three years, compared with 600 to 700 such groups in the period 2000-02. Congress has defined a hate crime as a criminal offense motivated by bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. [Associated Press]
Tennessee lawmakers worry new mop sink is for Muslim foot washing
March 26: After the Tennessee State Capitol got a $16 million makeover in December, some members of the Congress were curious why a utility sink, formerly mounted on the wall, was moved to the floor. Some wondered, was it a sink for Muslims to wash their feet before praying? Senate Clerk Russell Humphrey told the Associated Press that a House and Senate member approached him about the sink, though he wouldn’t name the members. Republican Senator Bill Ketron confirmed that he was one of the members to approach Humphrey about the sink after Republican Congressman Judd Matheny told Keltron of his concerns. When reached by the AP, Matheny, however, denied the accusation, saying: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s not ringing a bell.” Lawmakers were then assured that the sink was just a mop sink. Ketron and Matheny have in the past sponsored legislation to ban people from following certain parts of Shariah law. They might be surprised to find that several religions, as the AP pointed out, including some Christians, practice ritual purification and cleanse their feet. [AlterNet]
Muslim workers' bias complaints filed against DHL subsidiary
March 26: The Columbus, Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Columbus) announced today that it has filed discrimination complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Exel, Inc., a subsidiary of DHL, on behalf of 18 Muslim employees who were allegedly fired for praying in the workplace. The Muslim employees reported to CAIR-Columbus that they had asked the company several times for prayer accommodations, including adjusting break times or taking their prayer breaks without pay, but the company repeatedly denied any of the accommodations proposed by the employees. One manager allegedly told the employees they should pray in the bathroom so they wouldn't be seen praying. Other managers told them to "obey the rules or get fired." In their complaints, the employees say they made an effort to resolve the dispute by trying to speak to human resources, but that Exel managers and supervisors repeatedly refused to allow them access to the human resources department. Managers reportedly began terminating Muslim employees when they saw them praying at work. On February 8, 2013 the general manager called a meeting in which he reportedly told a large group of Muslim employees, many of whom had been working for the company for years, that Exel would not change its policies and that the company could not provide a religious accommodation. He ultimately terminated the entire group when they insisted they had a right to religious accommodation. Both state and federal law requires employers to accommodate the religious practices of their employees unless it creates an undue burden on the company. "This company has a history of discriminating against Muslims, especially Muslims of Somali origin," said CAIR-Ohio Legal Director Jennifer Nimer. "This is not the first time a group of Muslim employees has been fired from this company for requesting a prayer accommodation. This type of blatant discrimination cannot be tolerated." According to the EEOC, 21 percent of religious discrimination complaints in 2011 involved bias against Muslim workers. [CAIR]
Punished for Refusing to Disrespect Jesus
March 27: in Bacon Raton, Florida, Ryan Rotella refused to step on Jesus. The Florida Atlantic University junior’s act of reverence resulted in suspension from his college class and a barrage of attention he neither sought nor anticipated. “The story illustrates the degree to which traditional Christian beliefs are held in contempt in the secular academy [of higher education],” said Patrick McNamara, director of communications for the New York-based Catholic League. Rotella was in a March 4 lecture in his intercultural communication class when instructor Deandre Poole told students to each write “Jesus” on paper and then step on it. Rotella set his paper on a surface and told Poole he was offended by the request. “Anytime you stomp on something, it shows that you believe that something has no value,” Rotella explained to Boca Raton’s CBS affiliate. “So, if you were to stomp on the word 'Jesus,' it says that the word has no value.” Rotella complained to university administrators. They responded four days later, by suspending him from the class. Rotella’s predicament spread through social networks and eventually found its way to the mainstream media just before Holy Week. University officials initially defended Poole, saying that the instructor merely conducted an exercise recommended in the textbook Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach. They later apologized, but, at that time, denied having suspended Rotella. [NC Register]
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