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Chronology of Islam in America (2012)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
August 2012 - page two
The Empire State Building glows green for the three days
August 17: Tonight, the Empire State Building was lit up in green to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. While this might leave some neocons around town gibbering with rage, it's a fitting tribute to New York's sizable Muslim population. And, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations — who also tweeted a photo of the emerald tower — the light show will continue for another two nights. [New York Magazine]
Stoking the flames of hatred on Staten Island
August 19: Islamic leaders contend that whoever left raw bacon at the site of a Staten Island (New York) Ramadan ceremony this morning hewed to the tactics used in a pattern of anti-Muslim bigotry occurring across the nation. Early this morning, organizers of an outdoor end-of-Ramadan ceremony in New Dorp Beach found several strips of bacon strewn across the artificial turf field where worshipers were set to gather. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters that a note was left behind as well -- signed with a code name and referencing a website that mentioned the raw bacon. Authorities have not disclosed any details on the code name and the website. Police are investigating the act as a possible bias crime, and Islamic leaders across the state decried the incident as the latest in a string of anti-Muslim incidents. The civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), on Monday reached out to the U.S. Justice Department to urge that agency to investigate the incident. "These incidents are not a coincidence. We believe the recent surge in acts of bigotry and hatred is directly linked to the words of elected officials, and those running for office, who have used anti-Muslim bigotry as a campaign strategy," said CAIR-NY executive director Muneer Awad. [SILive.com]
A quiet campaign of violence against American Muslims
August 20: In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy—believing that it was too difficult to fight communism abroad—declared that the real threat came from communists at home. In so doing, he fueled a hysteria that ruined the lives of countless Americans who had dabbled in leftist politics but never remotely posed a threat to their fellow citizens. Today, with the Bush era’s epic “war on terror” ending with a whimper, a new generation of anti--Muslim -McCarthyites is doing something similar. The more American politicians insist that Islam is inherently hateful and violent, the more hate and violence they foment against Muslims in the U.S. Maybe if the media covered the attacks American Muslims endure as vigorously as they cover the attacks American Muslims commit, more people would realize that. [By Peter Benart - The Newsweek]
NY police spying on Muslims led to no leads or terror cases
August 21: The Associated Press reported today that in more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques, the New York Police Department's secret Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation. The AP report was based on New York Police Department's court testimony unsealed on August 20, 2012. The Demographics Unit is at the heart of a police spying program, built with help from the CIA, which assembled databases on where Muslims lived, shopped, worked and prayed, the AP report said adding: “Police infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques, monitored sermons and catalogued every Muslim in New York who adopted new, Americanized surnames. Police hoped the Demographics Unit would serve as an early warning system for terrorism. And if police ever got a tip about, say, an Afghan terrorist in the city, they'd know where he was likely to rent a room, buy groceries and watch sports.” However, the AP said in a June 28 deposition as part of a longstanding federal civil rights case, Assistant Chief Thomas Galati said none of the conversations the officers overheard ever led to a case. "Related to Demographics," Galati testified that information that has come in "has not commenced an investigation." [The Associated Press]
GOP platform takes hard stance against imaginary Sharia threat
August 21: The Republican National Convention adopted an amendment to their platform supporting a ban on foreign law, with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) specifically stating that Sharia posed a threat to America. "We see it from the top where the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly quoted foreign law in interpreting our U.S. constitution and it's actually coming in at the bottom as well, it's being raised as an argument in courts around the country," Kobach said. "I'm not aware of any court that's accepted the argument, but in cases involving either spousal abuse or assault or other crimes against persons, sometimes defenses are raised that are based in Sharia law," Kobach said. "We actually put a provision affecting Kansas statute this year and I think it's important for us to say foreign sources of law should not be used as part of common law decisions or statutory interpretations by judges in the lower state courts as well." [TPM]
Poll: GOP really dislikes Muslims
August 23: Anyone wondering why Rep. Michele Bachmann would launch a witch hunt against Muslims or why the Republican Party would add a plank to its platform opposing Shariah law need look no further than a new poll conducted by the Arab American Institute. The poll, released on today asked Americans for their views on various religious groups, as well as on Arabs and Arab-Americans. It also asked respondents how confident they would be that a Muslim or Arab-American holding a position of influence in government could do their job without letting “ethnic loyalty … influence their decision-making.” The results are split sharply along partisan lines. Overall, Republican voters hold strongly negative views of Muslims, with 57 percent saying they view them unfavorably and just 26 saying they view them favorably — more than double. The numbers are similar for Arabs, whom Republican respondents view negatively by a slightly smaller margin of 26 percent, 53 to 27 percent. When asked about “Muslim Americans” and “Arab Americans,” the numbers improved slightly, with a 12 and 15 percent net unfavorable rating, respectively. By contrast, Democrats held favorable views of these groups by margins of at least 20-35 percent in all four cases. The view of Muslims and Arabs among Democrats was still less positive than other religious groups included in the survey, however, underscoring a resilient problem of post-9/11 America. Still, Democrats gave no group a net negative rating, while Republicans gave negative ratings to Muslims, Arabs, Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans. [Salon]
Speaking Urdu or Bengali a cause for police suspicion in NYC
August 27: Earlier this summer, Thomas P. Galati, commanding officer of the New York Police Department’s elite intelligence division, sat for an unusual legal interrogation, during which he talked of his keen interest in Urdu-speaking New Yorkers. “I’m seeing Urdu,” Assistant Chief Galati said of the data generated by his eight-person demographics unit, which has eavesdropped on thousands of conversations between Muslims in restaurants and stores in New York City and New Jersey and on Long Island. “I’m using that information for me to determine that this would be a kind of place that a terrorist would be comfortable in.” Chief Galati, whose job it is to stalk the terrorists who may live in our midst, continued along this line. “A potential terrorist could hide in here,” he said. “Most Urdu speakers would be of concern.” All of which sounds reasonable, sort of, maybe. Except that something in the neighborhood of 80,000 New Yorkers, mostly of Pakistani and Indian descent, speak Urdu. A little later, Chief Galati turned to those New Yorkers — perhaps another 20,000 or 30,000 — who speak Bengali. “The fact that they are speaking Bengali is a factor I would want to know,” he said, adding that the information was used solely to be able to determine where “I should face a threat of a terrorist and that terrorist is Bengali.” But here is the problem for those eager spies among us. Asked if all of this compiling of Urdu- and Bengali- and Arabic-language hangouts, and all of this listening in on the chatter, had resulted in tips about potential terrorist plots, Chief Galati conceded it had not. “I could tell you that I have never made a lead from rhetoric that came from a demographics report,” Chief Galati said. The lawyer Jethro Eisenstein, arguing on behalf of plaintiffs in a long-running civil liberties dispute, conducted the legal grilling of Chief Galati. He is trying to determine whether the Police Department’s counterterrorism policies violate a consent decree limiting surveillance of political groups. [New York Times]
End NYPD's dubious spying on Muslims
August 29: New Yorkers recently learned how many terrorism investigations have resulted from the controversial NYPD surveillance operation that included spying in neighborhoods where Muslims live, eavesdropping on their conversations and infiltrating mosques: zero. If the New York Police Department is going to engage in practices that potentially trample civil liberties, the information gathered should at least be useful in preventing terrorism. The NYPD Demographics Unit has been monitoring Muslim communities in the city, on Long Island and elsewhere for years. But a June 28 deposition by NYPD Assistant Chief Thomas Galati, which was unsealed last week, provided the first official glimpse of the secretive operation. Galati was questioned in a lawsuit challenging the spying as a violation of a 1985 court-monitored agreement that set federal guidelines prohibiting the surveillance of political activity when there is no indication of unlawful activity. Police had hoped the demographics unit would become an early warning system for terrorism. But Galati conceded that in the six years he has commanded the NYPD Intelligence Division, he never got a single lead from a demographics unit report and none of the conversations the officers overheard has ever led to a terrorism investigation. That lack of actionable intelligence is the single best reason to call off the whole dubious operation. The NYPD shouldn't waste time with a program of questionable legality that is clearly ineffective. [Newsday Editorial]
Grave defaced with anti-Islamic writing for second time this month
August 31: An Evergreen Cemetery grave has been defaced with graffiti for the seventh time since March 2011. This time, however, police may have video. An Evergreen Cemetery grave was defaced with anti-Islamic writing sometime during the night on Aug. 28-29, said Evergreen Park Police Lt. Peter Donovan. The grave site, which also features a bench and obelisk, was vandalized with black marker scribblings in a manner almost identical to what was discovered and cleaned up two weeks ago, Donovan said. Unlike the prior incident, however, a video camera was trained on the scene. The graffiti features profanity, gang symbols and anti-Islamic slurs. This marks the seventh time that this particular site has been vandalized since March 2011, each time in very similar fashion, Donovan said. In response to the incident several weeks ago the cemetery installed lights around the grave site and police mounted a camera. Detectives are reviewing any footage that may have been captured the night of the most recent incident, Donovan said. [Evergreen Park Patch]
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