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Chronology of Islam in America (2012)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
July 2012
Hate crime probe sought of suspicious fire at Missouri mosque
July 5: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called for state and federal hate crime investigations of what officials are calling a "suspicious" fire at a Missouri mosque. CAIR said the fire occurred early Wednesday at the Islamic Society of Joplin in Joplin, Mo. A passer-by noticed the fire just before 4 a.m. and it was extinguished before causing major damage to the mosque. The FBI has been called in to investigate and tapes from security cameras are being reviewed by authorities. An official with the Islamic Society of Joplin told CAIR that the mosque's sign was burned and shot in the past and that passengers in cars cruising by the mosque periodically shout anti-Muslim slurs at worshippers. "Given the suspicious nature of the fire, and the past incidents targeting this mosque and Missouri's Muslim community, state and federal officials should investigate this case as a possible hate crime," said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. [CAIR]
Mosque attacks common nationwide; imam takes incident in stride
July 5: One simply has to type the words “mosque fires” into a search engine to determine how common fires like the one Wednesday at the Islamic Society of Joplin (Missouri) mosque are. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have tracked dozens of fires, firebombings and incidents of vandalism at mosques around the country over the past five years. A few examples: A mosque in Queens, N.Y., was firebombed in January with worshippers inside. There were no injuries. An arson attack on a Houston, Texas, mosque was reported in May 2011. Construction equipment was set afire at the site of a mosque being built in Murfreesboro, Tenn., in August 2010. An Oct. 31, 2011, arson fire at a mosque in Wichita, Kan., caused an estimated $120,000 in damage. Closer to Joplin, someone in April 2011 burned three copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, and left a threatening letter near the entrance of the Islamic Center of Springfield mosque. The anonymous letter claimed that Muslims would “stain the earth” and that Islam wouldn’t survive. The mosque had earlier been vandalized with graffiti. The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for state and federal agencies to investigate the Joplin mosque fire as a possible hate crime. “Given the suspicious nature of the fire and the past incidents targeting this mosque and Missouri’s Muslim community, state and federal officials should investigate this case as a possible hate crime,” said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for CAIR, a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization.
The ACLU has a map of anti-mosque activity at aclu.org/maps/map-nationwide-anti-mosque-activity. The map includes incidents in each state of vandalism, arson and firebombings, plus efforts to prevent mosque construction. “We’ve seen a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment and anti-mosque attacks,” said Heather Weaver, a staff attorney with the ACLU. She said the attacks were especially prominent during the debate over the Park 51 Center in New York City, the so-called “ground zero mosque,” but they have continued. Weaver said the fact that the Joplin incident took place on Independence Day also is disturbing. “I think it’s especially troubling,” she said. “On Independence Day, we should be celebrating all of our freedoms, including freedom of religion.” Weaver said various activities and movements have tried to marginalize Muslim communities around the country. She said they have included anti-Sharia measures promoted by state legislatures, the tea party movement condemning Muslims, and opposition to construction of mosques. [Joplin Globe]
Colorado Republican State Senator says: Mosques are not places of worship
July 6: Last weekend, the Dutch Islamphobic politician Geert Wilders spoke to a conservative conference hosted by a Christian university in Colorado. The anti-Muslim firebrand served up his usual fare: Islam is not a religion but a “totalitarian ideology,” multiculturalism must be stopped, U.S. courts must end immigration from Muslim countries and mosque construction must be banned. Current Republican State Senator Kevin Grantham took on Dutch Islamphobic politician Geert Wilders’s message that the West “should forbid the construction of new mosques.” Asked about the proposed ban, Grantham told the Statesman he was for considering it: You know, we’d have to hear more on that, because, as he said, mosques are not churches like we would think of churches. They think of mosques more as a foothold into a society, as a foothold into a community, more in the cultural and in the nationalistic sense. Our churches — we don’t feel that way, they’re places of worship, and mosques are simply not that, and we need to take that into account when approving construction of those. [Think Progress]
Muslim civil rights groups boycott NYPD’s Ramadan conference
July 11: Last July, some 400 Muslim New Yorkers gathered at the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) annual “pre-Ramadan conference” at police headquarters. Mohamed Shamsi Ali, the imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, delivered prayers while Mayor Michael Bloomberg told the audience that “New York is a city built on religious tolerance.” But this year, the scene was different. In the wake of the New York Police Department’s spy scandal, a coalition of Muslim groups in New York announced a boycott of the Ramadan conference, which was held this morning. Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, begins later this month. While some Muslims attended, including Muslim NYPD officers, groups that organize around civil liberties issues said no to attending while the NYPD runs a “covert program of warrantless and comprehensive surveillance of American Muslim communities.” 10 community organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (NY chapter), Desis Rising Up and Moving and the Muslim American Society of New York, boycotted the event. In addition, the Islamic Leadership Council of New York supported the boycott, according to CAIR’s Cyrus McGoldrick. Also boycotting the event was John Esposito, a well-known academic expert on Islam invited to the conference. In a statement that CAIR posted, Esposito’s office said: “Esposito declined after his review and conclusion that the mayor and police commissioner's defense of NYPD's surveillance policy fails to distinguish between surveillance with probable cause of specific individuals or groups and the threat to and violation of the civil liberties of the mainstream majority of Muslims.” The coalition’s statement said they boycotted due to the NYPD’s “lack of transparency, accountability and respect.” Since last summer, a stream of revelations from the Associated Press have exposed the NYPD’s surveillance program of Muslims across the Northeast. [mondoweiss]
Florida police accused of anti-Muslim training
July 13: Counterterrorism in the U.S. is traditionally the job of the FBI. But since 9/11, increasing numbers of state and local police have undergone training in spotting and catching terrorists, often funded by federal grants. Muslim groups are now concerned that some of the counterterrorism experts instructing our nation's police are unqualified and bigoted, spreading stereotypes about Muslims that ultimately make our country less safe. One of those experts is Sam Kharoba, president of the Florida-based Counter Terrorism Operations Center. Through an open information request, the Council on American-Islam Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, found that Kharoba had conducted at least 21 separate trainings in Florida between 2005 and 2011, many of them sponsored and advertised by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. A letter, co-signed by 18 other Muslim organizations and a half-dozen Florida mosques, as well as non-Muslim advocacy groups, asked FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey to sever the department's ties with Kharoba; to hire "someone with appropriate credentials and accurate subject matter content" to re-educate the officers who received his training; and to adopt a vetting procedure for counterterrorism experts who train police. The Washington Monthly noted some of Kharoba's particular views about Islam in an investigative story last year. "Islam is a highly violent radical religion that mandates that all of Earth must be Muslim," he told about 60 officers in a lecture at Broward College in Davie, Fla. "When I look at the life of Muhammad, I get a very nasty image," he said at a later point. "I am talking about a pedophile, a serial killer, a rapist. And that is just to start off with. "Anyone who says that Islam is a religion of peace," he added, "is either ignorant or flat-out lying." Several years ago, the Washington Monthly says, Kharoba ran into some trouble with the federal government when an attendee of one of his classes filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Eleven out of the 15 people in that class at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center signed a letter protesting comments that Kharoba had made. The alleged comments included describing "fundamentalist Muslims" as people with "long beards and head coverings," and an assertion that although "we call them radicals" they are actually "practicing true Islam." The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sided with the students. [Jobs AOL]
Boykin Wonders if Obama is a Member of the Muslim Brotherhood
July 18: Family Research Council’s new vice president Jerry Boykin has a penchant for making bizarre, conspiratorial claims about President Obama and extremist attacks on Muslims, and at a Massachusetts synagogue last week even wondered whether President Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Responding to a questioner who asked if Obama is “a member of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Boykin replied, “you probably don’t know, and my answer is, I don’t know.” He went on to allege that Jeremiah Wright brought Nation of Islam theology into the United Church of Christ, and that the NOI is based on the teachings of James Cone, a Christian theologian who was born after the founding of the NOI. Boykin denied that Obama attended a real Christian church and instead claimed Wright surreptitiously preached Cone’s crypto-Islamic theology, and so for Obama “it wouldn’t of mattered whether he was in the Nation of Islam or was in a Christian Church, he got the same theology, which was James Cone’s Marxist, liberation theology, which runs parallel to the whole doctrine of Islam.” [Rightwing Watch]
Conn. GOP Candidate Calls Islam a 'Cult'
July 19: Republican congressional candidate Mark Greenberg questioned whether Islam was a peaceful religion Thursday and said he believed it was "a cult in many respects." His remarks were made in a radio interview on WNPR's "Where We Live" program. Greenberg said he believes the United States is a melting pot of different cultures, but added that Judeo-Christian values are the fiber of the country and what made it great. When asked Greenberg if people who don't share those beliefs also change the country and help make it great, Greenberg said, "perhaps, to a certain extent" and went on to talk about aspects related to the religion that he found objectionable. For example, he said he doesn't believe a mosque should be built near Ground Zero in New York City, and he questioned whether Islam was a religion of peace. "We have to be able to be real about the fact that some folks in that religion are out to kill us," he said. "I think it's more a blueprint for living one's life — a cult in many respects," he said of Islam. "It's a religion, but it's also a way of living."Although Judaism and Christianity are also ways of living, Greenberg said, there is a difference. "Judaism and Christianity are very peaceful religions," he said. "I think they are more peaceful than Islam." [The Hartford Courant]
CAIR seeks removal of anti-Islam instructor
July 24: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) asks Pentagon to remove "Reza Kahlili" from teaching the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy in Elkridge, Maryland, for his anti-Islam views. The CAIR has sent an official request this week that a former CIA agent known as "Reza Kahlili" be released by the Department of Defense from his position as an instructor at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy in Elkridge (Maryland) for expressing anti-Muslim sentiment. Kahlili is a native of Iran and former CIA agent, according to his book, A Time to Betray. On his blog of the same name, Kahlili wrote in 2011 about his religious conversion while a member of the CIA working in Iran: "During all those ensuing years as I witnessed unimaginable crimes committed by the clerics, I believed they misrepresented Islam...So I renounced Islam and began the quest to find the real God, the one who had blessed me so often in very dangerous times as a CIA spy." Another piece of writing—Kahlili’s July 22 article for The Daily Caller about mosques, universities and tech companies as havens for terrorism—was what prompted the council to contact the Department of Defense, according to a council spokesman. “At the end [of the article], he...made the accusation against American mosques,” wrote Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in an email to Patch. Kahlili said in his article that two sources confirmed that terrorist sleeper cells were coordinating out of mosques, including within the United States.Kahlilli is a paid lecturer on Iran for the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy on Deerpath Road, where most instructors are videotaped. Kahlilli, however, delivers lectures via audio to protect his identity, according to the Los Angeles Times. [Elkridge Patch]
Church, mosque plan to build friendship park together in Tennessee
July 28: Heartsong Church and Memphis Islamic Center are planning to build together a friendship park that will become a monument to friendship between a church and a mosque. Memphis Islamic Center chairman Dr. Bashar Shala says "It's not the big things that change America, it's the simple things." Rev. Steve Stone, Heartsong's pastor says "We do hope it will make the world a little safer and a little more joyful." The friendship of Heartsong Church and Memphis Islamic Center began just before Ramadan two years ago when Stone welcomed MIC to their Cordova neighborhood with a big sign and an invitation to use the church's facilities while the mosque was under construction. The Muslims across the street were hoping to gather for a few evening prayers in Heartsong's little theater. Instead, Stone and his fellow church members ushered their Islamic neighbors into the 4,000-square-foot sanctuary. In a world in which Christians and Muslims often find themselves engaged in violent conflict, armed and otherwise, Christians and Muslims being nice to each other can be big news. In the weeks and months following a story about the relationship in media, Stone and Shala fielded calls and hosted visits from media in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, not to mention from all over America. Stone and Shala still get calls, letters and e-mails about their neighborliness. A Turkish TV crew came by a few weeks ago to film part of a report on "Islam in the land of Uncle Sam."The Friendship Park is likely to cost about $5 million and take a year or two to build. So far, the foundation has raised about $100,000. Their next step is to develop more detailed plans and time lines they hope will interest corporate and nonprofit sponsors. [Abridged from The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)]
Tennessee has become a battleground for the anti-Muslim movement
July 24: Lou Ann Zelenik, a Republican candidate for Tennessee’s Sixth Congressional District, on May 30, 2012 released a statement opining: “Islam does not claim to be a religion, but a social and political system that intends to dominate every facet of our lives and ... dominate it’s (sic) host culture by any means including force and violence.” The Williamson County GOP also recently passed a resolution objecting to Gov. Bill Haslam’s decision to appoint Samar Ali, a Muslim from Waverly, Tenn., as the new international director for the state Department of Economic and Community Development. According to the Williamson County resolution, Gov. Haslam “has elevated ... preferential political status to Sharia adherents in Tennessee, thereby aiding and abetting the advancement of an ideology and doctrine which is wholly incompatible with the Constitution of the United States and the Tennessee Constitution.” Thanks to politicians like Zelenik and the Williamson County GOP, Tennessee has become a battleground for the anti-Muslim movement and those who argue that American Muslims are disloyal, subversive and simply “different.” According to the argument, American Muslims are determined to overthrow the U.S and impose a radical form of government similar to what was seen under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Such warnings would seem to point to a radical and new threat to the nation — one that was on the verge of a tipping point. In reality, however, Zelenik and the Williamson County GOP are far from unique, and their alarms should have an awfully familiar ring to them. [The Tennessean]
One in three Republicans say President is Muslim
July 28: Three and a half years into President Obama’s first term as president, half of Americans cannot accurately say what religion he is, according to a poll released this week. Only 49 percent of respondents said that Obama was Christian while 17 percent inaccurately said he was Muslim. Nearly one-third of respondents said they did not know the president’s religion, according to the poll released by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. More people – 60 percent – knew that Romney, who has not held elected office in a decade, was Mormon than knew which religion the sitting president subscribes to. Nearly one in three Republicans said Obama was Muslim, twice as many as in 2008, the Pew study shows. The vast majority of those claiming Obama is not a Christian said he was a Muslim. “Unfortunately there has been a development of a bizarre echo chamber within right wing of the political spectrum that truth and reality have failed to penetrate,” said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director at Council on American-Islamic Relations. “It’s a self-perpetuating, self-reinforcing delusion.” The percentage of people who said Obama was Muslim has stayed fairly steady since August 2010, when firestorm erupted over plans to build an Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. [ABC News]
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