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Chronology of Islam in America (2013)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
July 2013 - Page Two
Amid controversy, Palestinian student allowed to attend Pennsylvania School
July 18: Despite concerns from two members, the Northern York School Board (Dillsburg, Pennsylvania) unanimously approved a Palestinian student’s request to attend high school in the district next year. The approval didn’t come without a caveat, and some passionate bantering from a packed meeting room, however. A controversy erupted, as the board discussed Rami Amjad Yahya's application during a committee meeting. Board Member Michael Barndt and Board Vice President Greg Hlatky said they were concerned about Yahya’s background because of a statement he made on his application. He said he hails from the “occupied territory of Ramallah,” rather than from the “West Bank,” where conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has existed for decades.[ PennLive.com]
NC Senate passes anti-Sharia bill
July 19: The state Senate today passed a bill that would keep courts from recognizing Sharia law. While proponents of the legislation said it would keep people safe from foreign laws, critics derided the bill as sending a message of intolerance and bigotry to followers of Islam. Though the bill doesn’t specifically mention it, (the bill sponsor Senator) Newton was clear during today's session that the legislation targets Sharia law, a legal system based on the religious and moral tenants of Islam. More than 20 states have introduced legislation banning Sharia law or foreign law in state courts. Many bills – including North Carolina’s – would apply only to cases in which the application of foreign law would violate a person’s constitutional rights. The N.C. Bar Association opposed the bill in its former incarnation, House Bill 695. The American Bar Association said in a resolution that the passage of such bills will have a “widespread negative impact on business, adversely affecting … economic development in the states in which such a law is passed and in U.S. foreign commerce generally.” [News Observer]
ADC mourns the Loss of Helen Thomas
July 20: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) joins all Americans in mourning the loss of Helen Thomas, Arab American hero, preeminent journalist, and advocate. Helen passed away today at the age of 92. ADC extends its sympathy to the family of Helen Thomas on behalf of our members and supporters. Helen was the first female journalist who broke all barriers for women. She was the first woman to interview a President, and indeed interviewed all Presidents from President Kennedy to President Obama. She was the first woman to be President of the White House Correspondents Association. Helen exposed the Watergate scandal when Martha Mitchell, wife of the Attorney General called her and gave her inside information. She covered Presidents not only at news conferences, but traveled with them throughout the United States and the world. President Nixon chose her as the only print journalist to accompany him on his historic trip to China. In 2010, ADC honored Helen for her service to the country as a trailblazing journalist who covered the White House for over sixty years.
Known as the "Dean" of the White House Press Corps, Helen covered the White House news for 49 years and reported on every U.S. president from John Kennedy to Barack Obama. She was known for her straight-to-the-point questioning of presidents and press secretaries. ADC is indebted to her for her integrity as she rightfully questioned public officials over the years -- especially regarding issues of utmost importance to Arab Americans. Helen was born in Kentucky, the seventh of the ten children of George and Mary Thomas, immigrants from Lebanon. Her father's surname, "Antonious," was anglicized to "Thomas" when he entered the U.S. at Ellis Island. Helen was raised mainly in Detroit, Michigan, where her family moved when she was four years old, and where her father ran a grocery store. She attended public schools and decided to become a journalist while she was in high school. She enrolled at Wayne State University, in Detroit, receiving a bachelor's degree in English in 1942. [ADC]
Edward Snowden's not the story, the fate of the internet is
July 28: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what he has revealed about the hidden wiring of our networked world. Without him, we would not know how the National Security Agency (NSA) had been able to access the emails, Facebook accounts and videos of citizens across the world; or how it had secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans; or how, through a secret court, it has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its demands for access to their users' data. Similarly, without Snowden, we would not be debating whether the US government should have turned surveillance into a huge, privatised business, offering data-mining contracts to private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and, in the process, high-level security clearance to thousands of people who shouldn't have it. Nor would there be – finally – a serious debate between Europe (excluding the UK, which in these matters is just an overseas franchise of the US) and the United States about where the proper balance between freedom and security lies. These are pretty significant outcomes and they're just the first-order consequences of Snowden's activities.
The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty. Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very contentious. Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps have been abusing their privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable. Third, as (Belarusian writer )Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, the Obama administration's "internet freedom agenda" has been exposed as patronising cant. "Today," he writes, "the rhetoric of the 'internet freedom agenda' looks as trustworthy as George Bush's 'freedom agenda' after Abu Ghraib." [John Naughton - The Guardian]
Intel chips could let US spies inside: expert
July 30: One of Silicon Valley’s most respected technology experts, Steve Blank, says he would be “surprised” if the US National Security Agency was not embedding “back doors” inside chips produced by Intel and AMD, two of the world’s largest semiconductor firms, giving them the possibility to access and control machines. The claims come after The Australian Financial Review revealed that computers made by Chinese firm Lenovo are banned from the “secret” and “top secret” networks of the intelligence and defense services of Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand because of concerns they are vulnerable to being hacked. Internationally renowned security research engineer Jonathan Brossard, who unveiled what Forbes described as an “undetectable and incurable” permanent back door at last year’s prestigious Black Hat conference, told the Financial Review that he had independently concluded that CPU back doors are “attractive attack vectors”. If correct, the allegations would raise the stakes in a growing cyber cold war, and fuel claims that US snooping leaves the Chinese in the shade. A spokesperson for Intel however said there was “no basis for these highly speculative claims”.
Mr Blank, who began his career working as a National Security Agency contractor at its Pine Gap facility, now teaches at Stanford University, writes for The Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal, and in 2013 was nominated by Forbes as one of the 30 most influential people in technology. Mr Blank said when he learned the NSA had secured “pre-encryption stage” access to Microsoft’s email products via the PRISM leaks, he recognized that “pretty much all our computers have a way for the NSA to get inside their hardware” before a user can even think about applying encryption or other defensive measures. He said this may be why the Kremlin is returning to the use of electric typewriters. Russia’s Federal Guard Service, which protects President Vladimir Putin and Kremlin communications, says it was prompted to adopt type-writers by the scale and complexity of the NSA operations leaked by Edward Snowden. [The Australian Financial Review]
Washington DC mosque Imam gives benediction in Congress
July 31: Imam Talib Shareef of Masjid Muhammad in Washington, D.C., opened a session of the United States Congress with a prayer on Capitol Hill. [C-SPAN]
CAIR campaign to stop spying on phone calls and Internet usage
July 31: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, is calling on all Americans concerned about privacy rights to contact their elected official and demand that they address new revelation of warrantless government spying. Today it was revealed in documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency (NSA) is running a secret spying program that allows analysts to "to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals," as reported by the Guardian newspaper. Training materials on the newly revealed NSA program, dubbed XKeyscore, claim that authorities can track "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet," in real-time, needing only an email or IP address. Information obtained by NSA analysts through XKeyscore’s program search fields include emails, address books, buddy lists, internet browser histories, cookies, and the content of Facebook chats or private messages. CAIR has provided a "click and send" letter for all Americans to call on Congress and the President to demand an immediate end to these abusive and unconstitutional government spying programs. Among other requests, CAIR’s letter urges Congress to amend Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to ensure that the unwarranted surveillance of Internet activity and phone records from citizens residing in the United States is illegal and to guarantee that violations would be reviewed in a public court. [CAIR]
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