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Chronology of Islam in America (2010)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
September 2010 (Page Two)
'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day' cartoonist Molly Norris goes into hiding after fatwa
Sept 19: The cartoonist behind the recent "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon has been drawn into hiding after a fatwa was issued for her death. Molly Norris of the Seattle Weekly has gone into hiding on the recent advice of the FBI after being declared a "prime target" for death by extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in a June issue of "Inspire," an English language magazine. Published on her Web site in April, Norris' cartoon - originally intended to mock Comedy Central for censoring an episode that depicted the Muslim prophet Mohammed in a bear suit, - declared May 20 as "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" and promptly created an international controversy. Pakistan blocked access to Facebook after the social networking site featured a support group for the event. (New York Daily News)
Six men arrested in suspected Quran burning in UK
Sept 23: British police say they have arrested six men on suspicion of stirring racial hatred after they posted a video on the Internet in which they appear to burn two Qurans on Sept. 11. Northumbria police say the men posted bail and were released. They will face further court hearings for their actions in the town of Gateshead in northern England, police said in a statement. The arrests were made public today. Police say two men were arrested Sept. 15 and four on Sept. 22. Police would not say how much bail was required. The arrests follow a controversy that started when a Florida pastor said he would burn a Quran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.Gateshead officials said that the behavior does not reflect community values. (Huffington Post)
Texas Board of Education approves ani-Islamic resolution
Sept 24: The Texas State Board of Education today adopted a resolution attacking Islam and calling on publishers to stop writing, what the resolution claims, are social studies textbooks with an anti-Christan and pro-Islamic bias. Tellingly the board members by a vote of 7-6 rejected numerous opportunities to pass a balanced resolution that called on the publishers to treat all religions with balance and accuracy in their textbooks. Hence, it is hard not to conclude that the members who voted for this resolution were solely interested in playing on fear and bigotry in order to pit Christians against Muslims, said Kathy Miller, president of the liberal Texas Freedom Network. The biased resolution was suggested to the board this summer by Odessa businessman Randy Rives, who lost his Republican primary bid for a seat on the panel earlier this year. Members of a social conservative bloc of the board then asked the board chairman Gail Lowe to put the resolution on the agenda.
The resolution claims that the textbooks exhibit a "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias" based on "half-truths, selective disinformation and false editorial stereotypes." Specific examples include: (1) Ignoring massacres of Christians at the hands of Muslims, compared with 27 lines "dwelling" on atrocities committed by Christian Crusaders against Muslims during the Middle Ages. (2) The use of "pejorative" words toward Christians, compared with "superlative" word choice regarding Muslims. (3) Significantly more attention devoted to Muslim beliefs, practices and culture than is given to Christianity.
The resolution includes a variety of claims designed to demonstrate the alleged bias in high school world history textbooks published in 1999. Tellingly, those textbooks are not in Texas classrooms. Publishers updated those textbooks, which Texas adopted in 2002. A review of those newer textbooks, which carry a copyright of 2003, at the Texas Education Agency reveals that the Rives’ claims are superficial and grossly misleading. The Texas Freedom Network, a liberal watchdog on religion and education, produced a point-by-point rebuttal of the resolution. The TFN analysis indicates that the resolution takes a selective and incomplete survey of the textbooks in question.
The decision by the Texas State Board of Education could influence the rest of the country, since it is one of the largest buyers of textbooks in the nation. This means publishers generally skew their books to fall in line with the demands of Texas, thus shaping the language in textbooks for millions of students across the United States. "Basically, its school system is so large that if Texas presses publishers to make changes in textbooks, the revisions will likely spread to other states as well," NPR's Mark Memmott explained. As history shows, the last time Texas decided to place a similar mandate on textbook publishers, the effects were in many ways considered a resounding conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks. (AMP Report)
Mossad recruits Muslims in America
Sept 25: There have been a number of cases reported to the FBI about (Israel’s secret service) Mossad officers who have approached leaders in Arab-American communities and have falsely represented themselves as “U.S. intelligence,” says Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer. Because few Muslims would assist an Israeli, this is done to increase the likelihood that the target will cooperate. It’s referred to as a “false flag” operation, says Giraldi in his monthly column - Mossad in America – published in the August issue of American Conservative magazine. Giraldi pointed out that Mossad officers sought to recruit Arab-Americans as sources willing to inform on their associates and neighbors. “The approaches, which took place in New York and New Jersey, were reportedly handled clumsily, making the targets of the operation suspicious.” These Arab-Americans turned down the requests for cooperation, and some of the contacts were eventually reported to the FBI, which has determined that at least two of the Mossad officers are, ironically, Israeli Arabs operating out of Israel’s mission to the United Nations in New York under cover as consular assistants, according to Giraldi.
Giraldi emphasized that Israeli government claims that it does not spy on the United States are intended for the media and popular consumption. “The reality is that Israel’s intelligence agencies target the United States intensively, particularly in pursuit of military and dual-use civilian technology.” He went on to say that among nations considered to be friendly to Washington, Israel leads all others in its active espionage directed against American companies and the Defense Department. “It also dominates two commercial sectors that enable it to extend its reach inside America’s domestic infrastructure: airline and telecommunications security. Israel is believed to have the ability to monitor nearly all phone records originating in the United States, while numerous Israeli air-travel security companies are known to act as the local Mossad stations.”
Commenting on Giraldi’s report, Washington Post’s Jeff Stein quoted a retired senior FBI counterintelligence official as saying, "They have always been extremely aggressive, and seem to feel they can operate whenever and wherever they want, in spite of being called on the carpet more than any other country by probably a factor of three times as often." The former CIA official echoed the views of other U.S. intelligence sources I’ve talked to over the years about Israeli operations in the United States, Jeff added. Washington Post report said that Israel’s undercover operations here, including missions to steal U.S. secrets, are hardly a secret at the FBI, CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. From time to time, in fact, the FBI has called Israeli officials on the carpet to complain about a particularly brazen effort to collect classified or other sensitive information, in particular U.S. technical and industrial secrets. The most notorious operation employed Jonathan Pollard, the naval intelligence analyst convicted in 1987 and sentenced to life in prison for stealing tens of thousands of classified documents for Israel. Ben Ami Kadish, the New Jersey resident sentenced in 2008 for spying in the 1980s. (AMP Report)
West warned that Islam insults risk ‘civilization clash’
Sept 28: Kings, emirs and presidents from Muslim nations have made pressing appeals to the United Nations for the West to clampdown on attacks on Islam which they warned is a growing threat to international security. In speeches to the UN General Assembly, leaders said that “Islamophobia” was causing a growing Muslim-West divide and one top Arab minister put the international community on guard against a “civilization clash.” A threat to burn the Koran by a fringe US church, controversy over a proposed mosque near the scene of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and assaults on Islamic symbols in European countries have been a major talking point for Muslim nations. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, condemned attempts to link Islam with terrorism. He partly blamed the US “War on Terror” declared after September 11. “We disagree with the attribution of this so-called terrorism to the Islamic religion because this — in addition to being incorrect — is a historical injustice that is refuted by evidence from recent history.” He said “gratuitous violent actions” in the United States, Europe and Asia in the late 20th century were never labelled as being American, European or Asian terrorism. “This violence was attributed to its underlying political, economic, social and even ideological causes, without attributing it to a particular religion, country or idea.” Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit condemned “regrettable and appalling incidents that have increasingly touched Muslims and Islam, repeatedly and sometimes systematically in certain cases.” He added: “We find the West, in general, being drawn into a clash with the Muslim world.” Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak told the UN assembly that the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims were offended by “attempts to demonize Islam.” He added: “It intensifies the divide between the broad Muslim world and the West.” (AFP)
NY Community College honchos slapped for firing Muslim Prof. Hanaa Khalil
Sept 29: Honchos at Kingsborough Community College (New York) have been ordered to take a workplace discrimination class after a chemistry professor charged she was fired for being a Muslim. Hanaa Khalil, who filed a complaint with the city's Human Rights commission, was also awarded $7,700 in back wages and $10,000 in damages. A 46-year-old Egyptian immigrant who lives in Queens, Khalil said things soured when she showed up at the Department of Physical Sciences and the secretary spotted her head scarf. "She turned her face when she looked at me ... she turned her face like she saw something real bad," Khalil told The News. "It was clear to me it was because they found out that I was a Muslim." In court papers, Khalil said she had posted her résumé on a CUNY website and Kingsborough secretary Maureen Sharkey hired her sight unseen in March 2009. Khalil said she wanted to meet with department head John Mikalopas, but Sharkey "stated that they needed someone to start immediately," court papers state. When Khalil arrived the next day, she claimed Sharkey took one look at her and asked for her ID "in a dismissive tone." Sharkey gave her a hard time about not having her Social Security card, even though she produced a green card, passport and driver's license, Khalil said. "Between you and me, do you really have a Social Security number?" Mikalopas later asked her, the professor claimed. Khalil said when she used a computer, a security guard closely watched her, then called Sharkey and said, "Now she's making changes. I thought she only needed to print." The final straw was when Sharkey wouldn't let her use a laptop to make a Power Point presentation and told her to use the chalkboard instead. Khalil said when she took a series of gripes to the human resources department, Mikalopas showed up with two guards and told her, "You're terminated." (New York Daily News)
American Muslim groups alarmed by raids on anti-war activists’ homes
Sept 30: American Muslim groups have expressed alarm over the recent FBI raids on the homes of nearly a dozen peace activists in Chicago and Minneapolis and FBI intimidation of activists in California, North Carolina and Wisconsin.The raids were conducted under the pretext of investigating potential "material support" and "terrorism" charges. The targeted individuals included leaders of the Arab American Action Network, the Colombia Action Network, and the Twin-Cities Anti-War Committee. The FBI has said no arrests have been made, and there was there no "imminent danger" to the public. Instead it has claimed it is currently looking for evidence in an ongoing investigation for possible "material support" for terrorism.
Anti-war activisit, Jess Sundin, whose home in south Minneapolis was raided and who received a grand jury subpoena, gave a graphic account of the FBI raid: "At 7 AM I awoke to the sound of banging at my front door. My daughter and my partner were already awake. By the time I got downstairs, there were six or seven federal agents in our house. When they came in and asked if we had any guns in the house, my six-year-old said, 'We don't believe in guns'. She took offense at the suggestion. We don't even allow toy guns in our house. The agents showed me a search warrant and proceeded to go through everything in my house, every room. Among the things they seized, they took books, they took music CD's, photographs, computers, my cell phone, check book, papers, camera and a lot more. We were very clear that we were not going to talk to them. They gave both my partner and me our subpoenas for the grand jury. They told us we were not detained, we could leave, but no one else was allowed in. We couldn't use the phone, except to call a lawyer. They took my phone into their possession and kept it with boxes and lists. I could hear it going off but I wasn't allowed to answer it. Steff, my partner, kept possession of her phone but we weren't allowed to use it to make or receive phone calls. They took about four hours to search the house. I don't know how many boxes they carried out. They gave me a receipt, but I refused to sign it. I said, "I don't know what you've taken.'"
Sundin is a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a founding member of the Anti-War Committee of the Twin Cities, and a member of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) Local 3800. She is a clerical worker at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Sundin said it was "immediately clear" to her that she was being targeted for her antiwar activism, and, in particular, her activity against US foreign policy in Colombia and the Middle East. "The US is heavily involved in Colombia," Sundin said. "They've been building military bases and they've been funding the Colombian government's war against its own people. It's the third largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world. "Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. And the Palestinian people have lived for generations--sixty-plus years--without an internationally recognized state. Their homes are bulldozed, they're second-class citizens with no right to participate in the political process. And in places like Gaza bombs fall from the sky."
Among those targeted by federal authorities was Hatem Abudayyeh, Executive Director of the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network (AAAN). Muslim civil advocacy groups such as CAIR, MPAC and antiwar activists have denounced the raids as a fishing expedition seeking to silence dissenting activists in regards to U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as policies toward Colombia and the Palestinian Territories.
As Tom Burghardt said, the political nature of the raids was blatantly transparent. A copy of the search warrant on Kelly's home obtained by Twin Cities Independent Media Center (TC-IMC) revealed that the order, signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Nelson specified that Kelly's membership in the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) was a primary motive behind the Bureau's home invasion. The warrant allowed the FBI to take "documents, files, books, photographs, videos, souvenirs, war relics, notebooks, address books, diaries, journals, maps, or other evidence, including evidence in electronic form relating to Kelly's travels to and from and presence and activities in Minnesota and other foreign countries, to which Kelly has traveled as part of his work for FRSO." “While corporate polluters and criminals get a free pass from the federal government and an anti-Muslim and anti-Arab crusade is in full-swing, stoked by right-wing goons and their media shills, it is little wonder then, that Friday's raids targeted supporters of the Palestinian solidarity movement,” Burghardt argued.
Former Reagan official Paul Craig Roberts believes that the US government by raiding the homes of anti-war activists is establishing in the mind of the public that anyone who criticizes the War on Terror is aligned with terrorists. He further argues that under the rubric of terror the government has stripped Americans of their civil liberties. (AMP Report)
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