Continuing struggle for equal opportunity and social justice among Americans of Muslim religious faith; impact on their situation of the “war on terrorism.”
HEADLINES
4/22/10
CONTROVERSY AT THE PENTAGON: WILL ANTI-MUSLIM EVANGELIST BE ALLOWED TO PRAY AT THE NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER? Franklin Graham has been invited to speak at May 6 event, but protests from religious freedom advocates lead military brass to get their bars in an uproar by considering whether to rescind the invitation, even as conservative sponsors of the "Day" continue to support his inclusion
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2/16/10
Although it is politically unpopular in Denmark, country's schools are making exceptions to school practices to accommodate Muslim and other non-Christian students.
2/3/10
French government's attack on Islamic veil use in the country continues as a man of unspecified nationality is refused citizenship because he required his wife to wear the veil.
1/24/10
Calgary imam Syed Soharwardy arouses suspicion by issuing fatwa against terrorism after earlier history of making extreme statements against Jews.
12/28/09
THE GRAND MOSQUE OF MARSEILLE: SYMBOLIC OF ISLAMIC ASSILIMATION OR TARGET OF EUROPEAN ISLAMOPHOBIA? Depends on whom you ask, says New York Times writer of the new mosque in the French port city. Such visual Islamic presence in European countries is an indication of incorporation of Muslims into those countries, but it also provides a convenient target for Europeans to scapegoat them as responsible for the various ills of the "sick old woman" that Europe has largely become.
12/26/09
President of Free Press Society in Denmark uses his free speech to make some controversial remarks about Muslim moral depravity
12/21/09
FRENCH PRESIDENT NICOLAS SARKOZY LEADING A MARCH TO THE RIGHT UNDER AN ISLAMOPHOBIC BANNER. Antoine Lerougetel describes Sarkozy's increasingly blatant appeal to the country's right wing, expressed for example in a Le Mond op-ed piece in which he condemns opposition in Switzerland to a law banning new minaret construction as an affront to "the people," as he moves to put populism on an anti-Muslim footing.
11/30/09
Swiss voters pass ban on Muslim minaret construction
10/13/09
Turkish PM blasts international community for blaming Islam rather than Israel for war on Gaza, as Israel is banned from a Turkish international air show.
9/29/09
Israeli General's call for compulsory national service for all Israelis could present a problem for the 1/5 of Israeli population that is Arab, especially where that "service" might involve anti-Palestinian military operations.
9/12/09
TORONTO DECLARATION: NO CELEBRATION UNDER OCCUPATION. Naomi Klein describes a movement including over a thousand actors, directors and writers, including herself, to protest the Israeli government's self-promotional agenda of putting a "spotlight on Tel Aviv" with an international festival with the seeming intention to improve the "image" of Israeli in the eyes of the world. The protesters want more films that depict realistically the very horrors of the Gazan invasion that the festival seems designed to paper over.
8/16/09
CHRIS FLOYD SPLASHES IN THE SINK OF FEAR CALLED ISLAMOPHOBIA. The British writer comments acidly on the rise of fear and loathing of Muslims that he sees around him in Britain and throughout Europe. His own observations are supplemented by an extended review of Islamophobia in a UK/Guardian article by Pankaj Mishra.
MISHRA ARTICLE:
8/14/09
WHAT'S A MEMORIAL TO SIMON BOLIVAR DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ESHTAOL FOREST IN ISRAEL? Eshtaol was one of the forests planted by the Jewish National Fund over lands from which Palestinian villagers were expelled after Israel "liberated" Palestine from Arab control in 1948. Now JNF has fund-raising offices in Caracas and Bogota from which it receives funding to complete the "ethnic cleansing" of Israel as pines replace people, this in the name of South America's liberator.
7/23/09
Arab children in Israeli find their history is "disappeared" in their textbooks.:. Education Minister in new right-wing government decrees the removal of the word from Arab language textbooks of the word "nakba" and its associated definition as a word meaning "catastrophe" to Arab people and used in counter to the "independence" of Israel in 1948. The minister says that "There is no reason that the official curriculum of the state of Israel should present the establishment of the state as a 'holocaust' or 'catastrophe'."
6/10/09
WILLIAM BLUM: LOOKS LIKE IT'S "1964, THE BEATLES HAVE JUST ARRIVED IN NEW YORK, AND EVERYONE IS A TEENAGE GIRL." The man who "wrote the books" on American imperialism reflects in wonder on what he sees as the "cult-like" adulation among leftist intellectuals of Obama's "Muslim speech," in disregarding the numerous lies and hypocracies that Blum thinks he finds in it. For an historical perspective, Blum quotes as length from another great "speech" given in 1935 by Adolph Hitler in Austria in which the German Chancellor used many of the same rhetorical devices used in the Obama speech.
6/8/09
In "poor old Israel" they are (not yet) hanging men and women for the celebrating of Nakba day, but the Knesset is considering bills which would limit the rights of the growing Arab minority in the country to express any kind of opposition to Jewish dominance of the state, including their observance of May 15 as Nakba Day, a "day of mourning" of the day in 1948 when the settler state of Israel was recognized by the UN. While the Nakba measure was "watered down" to forbid public funding for same, limitations on oppositional speech (the Israeli equivalent to the wearing of the green) may yet emerge from the current spate of proposed legislation.
6/5/09
Ali Abunimah, for Electronic Intifada, describes President Obama's Cairo speech as a kind of "sheep in Bush clothing." Beyond their polite acceptance on the Arab mujanalat custom of civil behavior between host and guest, he finds little to distinguish anything of attitude or policy that distinguishes it from those of his predecessor. Especially annoying was Obama's treatment of "Islam" as a dangerous and violence-prone world to which the "free world" must respond. His appeal to Muslims to eschew violence as their contribution on the road to peace ignores the violence perpetrated against Muslims by both the U.S. and Israel from Pakistan to Gaza.
6/3/09
Robert Fisk doubts that Muslims will pay much attention to Obama's "Muslim world" speech:. As Obama prepares to speak in Egypt, he may find an audience deeply jaded by discrepancies in the past between what U.S. Presidents say and do about Muslim relations. A commenter on Common Dreams post of Fisk article (June 2 10:30 am) suggests that Muslims would "listen" well enough if Obama went to a West Bank apartheid wall and said "tear down this wall, Mr. Netanyahu" or the Egypt/Gaza border and said "tear down this border crossing barrier, Mr. Mubarak."
5/22/09
Charges have been made that British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith knew months ago and failed to intervene in a plan of M-15 (intelligence) to pressure a group of young Muslim community activists with no ties to terrorism to inform on other alleged terrorists in that community. With publicity for the situation now having elevated it to a scandal, Ms. Smith denies these allegations.
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4/22/10
CONTROVERSY AT THE PENTAGON: WILL ANTI-MUSLIM EVANGELIST BE ALLOWED TO PRAY AT THE NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER? Franklin Graham has been invited to speak at May 6 event, but protests from religious freedom advocates lead military brass to get their bars in an uproar by considering whether to rescind the invitation, even as conservative sponsors of the "Day" continue to support his inclusion
4/18/10
ISLAMOPHOBIA: THE "GREEN SCARE" OF TODAY FUNCTIONS MUCH LIKE THE "RED SCARE" OF THE 1950s. Rutgers University professor Deepa Kumar makes this argument, citing the over-hyped concerns about "homegrown terrorism" plots that have been used by the Bush and Obama administrations to justify U.S. imperial adventures in Muslim countries. Just so, McCarthy and other purveyors of anti-communist hysteria were engaged in a project of manufacturing consent for the communist "containment" conflicts in Korea Vietnam.
4/2/10
NEW DEAL IN AIR LINE SECURITY: PROFILING 101. By presidential directive, Homeland Security will focus on screening passengers flying into the U.S. from 14 countries, mostly Muslim ones. Oh, and if you're an Indian American who went on a Grand Circle tour of the Middle East, expect to get yourself "flagged" for special attention; you know all those hyphenated Americans who went overseas to get training at Al Qaeda "training camps."
1/4/10
HAVE U.S. PASSPORT AND WANT TO BOARD A PLANE WITH TERRORIST INTENTIONS? Not to worry, you won't be patted down or subjected to full body x-ray scanning or have TSA people go through every toothbrush in your luggage. New regulations at U.S. airports effectively "profile" people from 14 nations for such enhanced screening procedures and (surprise), 13 of those are predominantly Muslim countries, with Nigeria thrown in for "good measure."
1/2/10
PRESSURE GROWS FOR PROFILING OF MUSLIMS AS SECURITY RISKS AT U.S. AIRPORTS. Earl Ofari Hutchinson raises the spectre of possible "Muslims-only" lines at airports, profiling people with Arab sounding names or appearance for special security attention. Earlier political administrations (Clinton, Bush) have successfully resisted these profiling pressures, but the present decibel level of noise from the right wing demanding just such profiling may pressure a current administration which has shown itself vulnerable to right wing criticism.
12/18/09
LEADERS OF ISLAMIST SOCIETIES IN U.S. SAY THEIR RELATIONS WITH FBI HAVE DEGENERATED INTO FEAR AND MISTRUST RESULTING FROM FBI TACTICS. After 9/11, these agencies entered a cooperative relationship with the Bureau in helping to secure information about potential acts of terrorism by Muslims. Now, the FBI's trademark tactics of provoking the "crime" that they are suppressing and demanding detailed information about even potential suspects is eroding the relationship into one of mutual hostility.
9/8/09
YALE UNIVERSITY SAVES THE WORLD FROM MUSLIM TERRORISM. The Yale University Press in a controversial move removes, as an illustration in a book about the furor created when a Danish newspaper published cartoons about the Prophet Muhammed, a page of the newspaper containing that cartoon. The University's explanation is that it feared the publication would spark "violence" like that which occurred in Denmark and in other Muslim populations around the world after the newspaper publication.
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11/24/09
"ISLAM IS OF THE DEVIL" T-SHIRT WEARERS GET SUPPORT OF ACLU. A lawsuit against school officials in Gainesville Florida is entered by members of a local fundamentalist church whose children were banned from wearing t-shirts with this slogan, the same wording that was placed on signs on the church grounds. While local Muslim parents compliment the school board on its decision, the parents through their lawsuit and with ACLU help argue that the ban is an infringement of their free speech rights.
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FLORIDA LOCALITIES
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Orlando:
10/15/09
FLORIDA JUDGE, PLAY IT AGAIN: IS FATHIMA RIFQA BARY CASE (2009) A RE-MAKE OF THE ELIAN GONZALEZ AFFAIR (2000)? An Orlando judge is about to decide the fate of an Ohio Muslim girl who converted to Christianity and ran away to Florida, whose family is demanding her return to their custody, while the girl says her father has "threatened to kill her" for her apostasy. As the struggle between Cuban and Floridian family members pitted pro- versus anti-Castro Cubas, so the Rifqa Bary case divides Christians from Muslims and revives thorny issues about reconciling American constitutional protections and traditional Islamic law that has accommodated "honor killings" in Muslim countries for women and girls who have violated Muslim standards of sexual morality.
Gainesville:
7/9/09
Erecting of anti-Muslim sign by a church in Gainesville brings out protests from many local non-Muslims.
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