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Chronology of Islam in America (2013)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
July 2013
Swastika sprayed on New Jersey Islamic center
July 2: What appears to be a swastika spray painted on the Islamic Center of Morris County is "disgraceful," said Dr. Aref Assaf, one of its directors."We're very concerned about this," Assaf said. Police are still investigating the vandalism, and whether it was a hate crime, said Kyle Schwarzmann, Rockaway Borough detective sergeant. The New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said police should investigate the incident as a possible hate crime. "Because of the nature of this incident and because of other recent incidents targeting American mosques, we urge local, state and federal law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive," said Khurrum Ali, CAIR-NJ's civil rights director. Security footage shows a woman driving her car into the parking lot, getting out and then spray painting the symbol on a glass door, Assaf said. She then got back into her car and drove away. The director said the center opened three years ago, and it was the first time it has been vandalized. [NewJersey.com]
TSA: Don't be alarmed at Muslim practices during Ramadan
July 11: The Transportation Security Administration doesn't want summer travelers to be alarmed if they see Muslims engaged in religious rituals on planes or in airports during Ramadan. During Islam's holy month, from now through the first week of August, Muslim travelers may be seen bowing or kneeling in prayer, reciting the Quran, or washing their feet in airport restrooms. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says he hopes the TSA advisory prevents misunderstandings among other passengers. He says it's also good for TSA agents to be alerted, so that Muslim rituals don't give rise to security concerns. [Associated Press]
Chicago-area Muslims urged to boycott Israeli dates
July 11: American Muslims for Palestine, a national group based in Palos Hills Illinois, has called for boycotts of Israeli products and divestment from companies that do business with the Jewish state. The group asks shoppers to boycott Israeli fruit companies and any brands distributed by an Israeli date consortium — business that represents about 35 percent of the world's date market. Kristin Szremski, the organization's media director, said the group hopes to emphasize the importance of justice during Ramadan and make more Muslims aware of its broader efforts year-round. [Chicago Tribune]
Muslims & Arabs accounts also closed in Ohio
July 13: Complaints that Huntington Bancshares and other banks are shutting down accounts of Muslims and Arab-Americans for no apparent reason aren’t just limited to Michigan, where a lawsuit was filed against Huntington this week over the practice. An attorney for the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Ohio, Romin Iqbal, said that banks, including Huntington and JPMorgan Chase & Co., have taken similar steps in Ohio against similar groups. In central Ohio, the group has received about a dozen complaints over the past six months, he said. They are primarily from Arabs and Pakistanis who own gas stations, grocery stores and other small businesses, he said. More complaints have been received in the Cleveland area, where Hindus from India also have been targets, he said. On July 11, an Arab-American civil-rights organization sued Huntington in U.S. District Court in Detroit, accusing the bank of discriminating against Arab-Americans and Muslims, or those who the bank thinks are Arab-American or Muslim. The Arab-American Civil Rights League said it has received more than 100 complaints about banks closing accounts, many from small-business owners. While the group has gotten complaints about banks from as far away as California and Texas, most have been from the Detroit area and involved Huntington. The group said a lawsuit was the only way to get answers for why the accounts were closed, because the bank won’t tell it. The lawsuit seeks class-action status and says damages have totaled more than $75,000. [The Columbus Dispatch]
Muslim groups welcome DOJ civil rights review of Trayvon Martin case
July 16: American Muslim groups have welcomed a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announcement that it is reviewing the civil rights issues associated with the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year in Sanford, Fla. American Muslim Voice Foundation, in a statement expressed its solidarity with African-American brothers, sisters and all people of conscious who mourn the senseless and untimely death of Trayvon Martin. “We believe George Zimmerman targeted Trayvon Martin as a potential criminal because he was black. As Muslims we have been recipients of the same treatment since 9/11. Racial profiling does not work, rather, it hurts our nation by dividing us all.” said Khalid Saeed, National President of American Muslim Voice. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said the DOJ should investigate whether George Zimmerman violated Martin's civil rights by apparently engaging in racial profiling prior to the deadly shooting. Zimmerman was found not guilty of state murder charges Saturday night by a Florida jury. The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) announced that it sent a letter to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division supporting the NAACPﾒs request for an inquiry into whether the civil rights of Trayvon Martin were violated when he was fatally shot by George Zimmerman in February 2012. MPAC asked the DOJ to work with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office for the Middle District of Florida to look into whether federal criminal charges can be brought against Zimmerman.
On July 14, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) President Benjamin Todd Jealous started a petition calling for the Justice Department to open a civil rights case against Zimmerman for the shooting death of 17-year-old Martin. "The most fundamental of civil rights — the right to life — was violated the night George Zimmerman stalked and then took the life of Trayvon Martin. We ask that the Department of Justice file civil rights charges against Mr. Zimmerman for this egregious violation," the petition said. In a statement, the Anti-Defamation Committee (ADC) said it is partnering with the NAACP to urge the Department of Justice to open a civil rights case against George Zimmerman. “When a teenager’s life is taken in cold blood and there is no accountability for the man who killed him, nothing seems right in the world. But we cannot lose hope. We can still achieve justice for Trayvon!, “the ADC said adding: The Department of Justice can address the violation of Trayvon’s most fundamental civil right — the right to life. The Justice Department said on July14 it is looking into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin to determine whether federal prosecutors will file criminal civil rights charges now that George Zimmerman has been acquitted in the state case. [AMP Report]
Broad coalition of organizations team up to sue NSA over illegal surveillance
July 16: In San Francisco, 19 organizations including Unitarian church groups, gun ownership advocates, and a broad coalition of membership and political advocacy organizations filed suit against the National Security Agency (NSA) today for violating their First Amendment right of association by illegally collecting their call records. The coalition is represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a group with years of experience fighting illegal government surveillance in the courts. At the heart of First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA is the bulk telephone records collection program that was confirmed by last month's publication of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) further confirmed that this formerly secret document was legitimate, and part of a broader program to collect all major telecommunications customers' call histories. The order demands wholesale collection of every call made, the location of the phone, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other "identifying information" for every phone and call for all customers of Verizon for a period of three months. Government officials further confirmed that this was just one of series of orders issued on a rolling basis since at least 2006. In addition to the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, the full list of plaintiffs in this case includes the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Calguns Foundation, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, People for the American Way, and TechFreedom. [Electronic Frontier Foundation]
Naming of Muslim student to University of California board stirs controversy
July 17: The University of California appointed a Muslim American woman as a student member of its governing board today in a move opposed by Jewish groups that objected to her pro-Palestinian activism. Sadia Saifuddin, a 21-year-old social welfare major at the prestigious University of California at Berkeley, will become the first Muslim student member of the 26-person board of regents for a year-long term starting in 2014. Jewish groups including the prominent Simon Wiesenthal Center strongly objected to her nomination, citing her involvement in a campaign to divest university funds from companies with business connections to the Israeli military. They also objected to her sponsoring a student senate resolution that condemned a lecturer at the system's Santa Cruz campus for what the resolution said was Islamophobic rhetoric. The groups said it was Saifuddin who showed an intolerance toward opposing viewpoints. Saifuddin's supporters said she was an exemplary student who cared about students of all faiths and has worked to benefit the system as a senator in the Association of Students of the University of California and a member of the Muslim Student Association. [Reuters]
Feds: Dearborn Heights Schools discriminated against Arab Americans in hiring, recruiting
July 17: The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found the Crestwood teachers District in Dearborn Heights violated the federal Civil Rights Act by failing to hire Arab-American and minority teachers, discriminating against Arab Americans in its hiring and recruiting practices and retaliating against a guidance counselor who raised concerns about those and other issues in the district. The EEOC, in the July 11 ruling, is recommending the district compensate the counselor — Hiam Brinjikji — $40,000 and agree to a host of steps to change its hiring practices. Brinjikji in 2011 filed complaints with the EEOC, the U.S. Department of Education and the Justice Department. Akeel said the other complaints — which allege the district is failing to provide required services to students for whom English is a second language — are pending. “I feel a sense of vindication,” Brinjikji said. “Not just for myself, but for the whole student body and for the parents of the students who were not receiving the educational services they were entitled to.” About 3,500 students are enrolled in the district. Brinjikji said a significant number of them are Arab American. State data show that of the 3,500 students, 11% are identified as English-language learners. “With the demographic changes in the district and the number of Arab-American families that have set root in Dearborn Heights, you had a disproportionate representation of Arab-American teachers in comparison to the large and evolving Arab-American student body,” Brinjikji’s attorney Shereef Akeel said. Brinjikji said that up until a year ago, the district only had four Arab-American teachers, one Arab-American counselor, no Arab-American administrators and a few paraprofessionals. Last summer, though, she said the district made more Arab-American hires, which she said she believes is a result of her complaints. [Free Press]
The war on terror is a war on freedom
July 17: In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush guided the Patriot Act through Congress, unilaterally expanded surveillance of Americans, amplified executive detention authority and took other dramatic measures that shifted the balance between liberty and government power significantly, in the name of national security. After the initial Patriot Act was passed, many Democrats perceived the growing threat to civil liberties and started to have misgivings. Now, five years into the Obama presidency enthusiasm for these measures seems to be bipartisan. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 argued that sacrificing liberties in the name of anti-terrorism posed long-term risks. He condemned military commissions and violations of habeas corpus as serious threats to “the great traditions of our legal system and our way of life.” He called the Patriot Act “shoddy” and “dangerous.” Senator Obama sharply criticized President Bush’s surveillance policies as going beyond the boundaries of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment. He vowed that if elected he would run an administration of unprecedented transparency and vigorously protect whistleblowers. President Obama’s deeds have not matched Senator Obama’s words. Indeed, he has raised the stakes. He promised to close Guantanamo by January 2010, but instead slowed down releases from Guantanamo and vastly expanded the prison camp at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
He also has expanded the surveillance operations of the National Security Agency (NSA), monitoring phone and internet traffic in a seemingly indiscriminate manner. The full extent is uncertain, but the goal is “total information awareness,” an idea floated shortly after 9/11. The agency spies not just on Americans, but on residents of U.S. allies and other friendly countries. Germany, where President Obama has enjoyed high popularity, has protested particularly loudly, knowing well the dangers of totalitarian surveillance powers. The administration also has spied on reporters, and Attorney General Eric Holder signed an arrest warrant for Fox News correspondent James Rosen over normal journalistic behavior. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed the agency’s vast surveillance program. Instead of affording him whistleblower protections, the administration now wants to imprison him. In fact, the current administration has used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers more than all previous administrations combined. And to prevent future whistle-blowing, the White House is encouraging federal employees to spy on one another.
Our Democratic law professor president, a self-described progressive, has created a perfect storm. Ten years ago, liberals screamed because the Republican administration took note of what patrons checked out at the library. Today, they seem much more complacent in the face of more intimate forms of mass surveillance. Democrats once talked about prosecuting executive officials for wrongdoing. Today they muse about whether the government should jail journalists like Glenn Greenwald, U.S. columnist for the British newspaper, the Guardian, merely for providing a soapbox for whistleblowers. The president has announced that the “war on terror” is all but over. We need a new approach to the threat. If the war on terror is being ended, the extraordinary measures that threaten our personal liberties also should be ended. Some say that foreign terrorists hate the United States for its freedom. This seems oversimplified at best. But if it’s true, America’s enemies must love what U.S. leaders have done in the nearly 12 years since 9/11. The question isn’t about balancing freedom and security. Determined terrorists can always take lives. But only our politicians, with our acquiescence, can take our freedoms. [Anthony Gregory - Information Clearing House]
Connecticut protesters object to Big Brother spying
July 18: About 40 people turned out in today’s sweltering heat to protest the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ digital communication records at a rally held outside the Old State House. The Connecticut chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union organized the demonstration with several other groups including the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Connecticut Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention. The protest was a response to controversy sparked after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing that the agency has been collecting Americans’ phone records from Verizon as well as domestic Internet usage data. Protesters referred often to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” novel, chanting slogans like, “I have a right to privacy without Big Brother spying on me.” The national ACLU has filed a lawsuit in a New York federal court asking a judge to order the government to stop the collection of data and to require that the NSA purge any telephone records they already possess. “The practice is akin to snatching every American’s address book — with annotations detailing whom we spoke to, when we talked, for how long, and from where. It gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious, and intimate associations,” the lawsuit reads. At the rally, Chris Gauvreau of the Connecticut Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention, called the NSA program an “Orwellian nightmare” and criticized Congress for not seeking to end the program altogether. “Yesterday’s congressional hearings were the occasion for calls for greater transparency and more regulation. But there is no one in Congress today who’s calling for whitening out this program,” she said. [CT News Junkie]
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