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Chronology of Islam in America (2006)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
June 2006
Suit says children services tried to steer kids from Islam
June 2: A Grandview Heights(Columbus, Ohio) mother who fought Franklin County Children Services after her daughters were placed in foster care for a year says that the agency tried to steer the children from Islam to Christianity. Hadiya AbdulSalaam, who was cleared of neglect charges last year, has filed a federal lawsuit in Columbus claiming discrimination and harassment. "It's a despicable and horrifying example of abuse of governmental power," said her attorney, Rex Elliot. The suit contends that caseworkers attempted to persuade the girls to renounce Islam, in part by falsely reporting that AbdulSalaam forced her children to work long hours in the family store to the detriment of their education and well-being, and that she was physically and emotionally abusive. It also says the agency, through the foster parents with whom the girls lived, encouraged the daughters to adopt Christianity. Children Services also initiated contact with the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, which resulted in AbdulSalaam being evicted and made homeless, the suit says. (Columbus Dispatch)
Attorney says Mc Henry County (Michigan) avoiding Muslim jurors
June 2: The family of an Algerian national suing the McHenry County sheriff's office over her jailhouse suicide last year are accusing the county of trying to move the case out of Chicago to avoid dealing with Muslim or Arab jurors. In court papers filed in U.S. District Court this week, the family's lawyer, Janine Hoft, claims county attorneys want the case moved to Rockford where they would be less likely to deal with a racially and ethnically mixed jury. "Transferring this case would change the jury pool to the detriment of the plaintiff," Hoft said. "The defendant's motion amounts to forum shopping to avoid a more diverse jury pool."The charge comes after the McHenry County state's attorney's office last month asked that the lawsuit on behalf of Hassiba Belbachir be moved from Chicago to Rockford. ( Daily Herald)
Poll finds Muslim women admire western values, but don't want to imitate them
June 6: The Gallup Organization has found many Muslim women admire western values, but do not necessarily want them applied in their culture. These findings come from analysis of data Gallup collected in its 2005 poll of the Muslim World, with a focus on the attitudes of women in eight predominantly Muslim countries.The data came from face-to-face interviews with women in eight countries, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Gallup Muslim Studies executive director Dalia Mogahed calls this the first wave of polling the organization is doing in Muslim countries. "By the end of 2006, we will have interviewed Muslims in up to 40 Muslim countries, covering 90 percent of the global Muslim population," she said. Of the poll's findings, Mogahed said strong majorities of Muslim women in nearly all of the countries surveyed believe they deserve the right to vote, the right to drive, the right to work outside the home and the right to serve in government. She said many respondents also expressed admiration for political freedoms and legal gender equality they see in the west. But Mogahed added that, while the respondents expressed admiration for some western values, they did not consider these values necessary for the development of their society. "Muslim women did not choose 'adopting western values will help Muslim progress.' In fact, this statement was least often associated with the Muslim world. The statement most often associated with the Muslim world was "attachment to spiritual and moral values is crucial to their progress," she said. (VOA)
Judge: Chicago terror suspect's statements to Israeli cops admissible
June 8: A federal judge in Chicago ruled Thursday that prosecutors may use statements made to Israeli authorities a dozen years ago by a Chicago man when he comes to trial on charges of laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve said in her 138-page opinion that federal prosecutors had proven in 13 days of hearings that began in March that Muhammad Salah had made most of the statements voluntarily and not after being tortured as he claimed. Salah, 53, is one of three men charged in the indictment with taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included funneling cash to Hamas to commit murders, bombings and other violence. The indictment was announced in August 2004 by then Attorney General John Ashcroft who said at a news conference that the three operated "a U.S.-based terrorist recruiting and financing cell." The evidence prosecutors plan to use at the trial, which is scheduled for October, includes statements Salah made after his January 1993 arrest in Israel on terrorism financing charges. He served five years in Israeli prisons before returning to Chicago. The soft-spoken, Palestinian-born Salah, who has worked as a substitute teacher in Chicago public schools, has long claimed that he made the statements only under torture at the hands of police and interrogators for Israel's Shin Bet internal security service. Salah's legal defense team headed by Chicago attorney Michael E. Deutsch told St. Eve that he was stripped naked, forced to sit in an uncomfortable children's chair, slapped, left for long periods in a tiny freezing cell and subjected to a variety of other tortures. They said he also was forced to listen to music at high volume for long periods. (Chicago Tribune)
New York politicians back profiling
June 9: New York State legislation proposed yesterday would allow law officers to consider race and ethnicity in identifying potential terrorism suspects - a move decried by a civil rights advocate. The bill would allow "the use of race as one of many criteria in the war on terror," said Assemb. Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn). "Suicide bombers and terrorists fit a very specific intelligence profile, and race and ethnicity is very much a part of that profile." The proposed legislation would authorize law enforcement officials to "consider race and ethnicity as one of many factors that could be used in identifying persons who can be initially stopped, questioned, frisked and/or searched." The bill has the support of politicians from both sides of the aisle who joined Hikind for a rainy-day news conference on a Manhattan sidewalk. They included the main sponsor of the bill in the Senate, Serphin Maltese (R-Elmhurst), and Assemb. Vivian Cook (D-South Ozone Park). (Newsday)
Justice lost in diary's translation?
June 9: The Justice Department's year-and-a-half-old quasi-terrorist case against an Albany mosque leader looks more ridiculous at every turn. Yassin M. Aref, 35, is in solitary confinement in the Rensselaer County jail until a September trial. Although issues related to wiretaps by the government in establishing its case will in all likelihood delay that for months, at least. Terry Kindlon, Aref's attorney, has filed a ruthlessly specific and compelling rebuttal in U.S. District Court in Albany to every point in the government's wobbly case as part of yet another bail application. The bottom line to the 43-page memorandum is this: If what Kindlon and his associates are alleging is true, then the government not only has no case against Aref, but it owes him a profound apology. Because, according to Kindlon, in the zeal to make anything stick to Aref the government has deliberately mistranslated the imam's personal diary, which was used against him; and the government has distorted and outright lied to create the impression Aref was a terrorist sympathizer who had insinuated his way into this country as a mole. (Times Union)
NJ: Mosque gets township approval
June 11: Franklin Township (New Jersey) officials have approved the first official mosque in Somerset County in a ranch home that has quietly served as a house of worship for local Muslims for the past several years. "We're absolutely thrilled," said Ibrahim Conteh, one of the imams at the Da'awatu Islamia of Somerset mosque. "We've been fighting for this for quite some time." Conteh, a native of Freetown in Sierra Leone, lives in the neighborhood. He and other founders initially met for pray and religious study at each other's homes. (Star-Ledger)
After 9/11, Arab-Americans fear police acts
June 12: In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Arab-Americans have a greater fear of racial profiling and immigration enforcement than of falling victim to hate crimes, according to a national study financed by the Justice Department. The study also concluded that local police officers and federal agents were straining under the pressure to fight terrorism, and that new federal policies in this effort were poorly defined and inconsistently applied. The two-year study, released today by the Vera Institute of Justice, explored the changed relationship between Arab-Americans and law enforcement in the years since the 2001 terrorist attacks. The Vera Institute is a nonprofit policy research center based in New York.About 100 Arab-Americans and 111 law enforcement personnel, both FBI agents and police officers, participated in the study, which was conducted from 2003 to 2005. Both Arab-American community leaders and law enforcement officials interviewed in the study said that cooperation between both groups had suffered from a lack of trust. "It underscores the importance of community policing, of engaging the Arab and Muslim community in a constructive way and bringing them in to be partners," said Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, a national nonprofit organization of lawyers. (New York Times)
New Bush Aide Karl Zinsmeister says: U.S. at war against considerable part of Islam
June 13: Although Bush avoids casting terrorism as a battle with Islam, (Whie House’s new domestic policy chief Karl) Zinsmeister has not been so reluctant. "First, let's recognize that we're in a full-blown war; that (contrary to mealy-mouthed platitudes) it is indeed a war against a considerable part of Islam," he wrote in 2001. Yet he fretted at American sensitivity. "Would you believe that the number of formal U.S. investigations of how terror detainees are being treated recently reached 189?" he wrote last fall. "What mad self-doubt and softness!" (Washington Post)
Jury awards $61M to two FedEx drivers
June 13: A jury in Oakland, CA, has awarded $50 million in punitive damages and $11 million in compensatory damages to two FedEx drivers who said a manager subjected them to a hostile work environment because of their ethnicity. The two drivers, who are independent contractors for FedEx Ground, claimed that over a two-year period, a manager directed ethnic slurs, such as "terrorists" and "camel jockeys," at them because they are Lebanese-Americans. In the lawsuit, they alleged that they complained to management but the company failed to take steps to prevent harassment. (The Oakland Tribune)
Pompano Beach Council, Florida, grants approval for controversial new mosque
June 14: The Islamic Center of South Florida received the go-ahead yesterday to begin construction on a new mosque, despite a fight from some residents in the neighborhood where it would be built who are opposed to bringing a Muslim place of worship into a predominantly black community. The city council voted 3-2 to change the zoning of the proposed site from residential to commercial, allowing the Islamic Center to erect a larger mosque on undeveloped land on Northwest 16th Avenue (Pompino Beach). Commissioner Pat Larkins was one of the most outspoken critics of a new mosque. Larkins, who is black, said there is a perception in the neighborhood he represents that Muslims do not give back to the community. "I am not opposed to constructing the facility," Larkins said. "I am opposed to the conduct of the Muslim business community in our neighborhood." Areeb Naseer, a member of the Council of American Islamic Relations, objected to Larkins' comments, saying that the decision to allow a new mosque in the neighborhood should not be based on perceptions. "I find it very disturbing, to say the least, especially these comments coming from somebody in the leadership of the city," Naseer said. "Of all people, I think Mr. Larkins should not be the one talking about stereotypes or having perceptions and making decisions based on perceptions." (Media Reports)
New York Judge rules that U.S. has broad powers to detain non-citizens indefinitely
June 15: Federal judge John Gleeson of United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain non-citizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation. The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants detained after 9/11, and it dismissed several key claims the detainees had made against the government. This is the first time a federal judge has addressed the issue of discrimination in the treatment of hundreds of Muslim immigrants who were swept up in the weeks after the 2001 terror attacks and held for months before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported. The roundups drew intense criticism, not only from immigrant rights advocates, but also from the inspector general of the Justice Department, who issued reports saying that the government had made little or no effort to distinguish between genuine suspects and Muslim immigrants with minor visa violations. Lawyers in the suit, who vowed to appeal the decision, said parts of the ruling could potentially be used far more broadly, to detain any non-citizen in the United States for any reason. "This decision is a green light to racial profiling and prolonged detention of non-citizens at the whim of the president," said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the detainees. "The decision is profoundly disturbing because it legitimizes the fact that the Bush administration rounded up and imprisoned our clients because of their religion and race." (New York Times)
Muslim cemetery opens in Westland, Michigan
June 15: A Muslim cemetery with space for 15,000 graves is opening in suburban Detroit, making it easier for families to adhere to Islam's burial traditions, an organizer says. The Islamic Memorial Gardens has been in planning for at least six years and now has begun selling graves. Dearborn is the center of southeastern Michigan's about 300,000-member Arab-American community, many of whose members are Muslim. (The Detroit News)
Arab-Americans sue U.S. over re-entry procedures
June 20: A group of Muslim and Arab-Americans, frustrated by what they say is the climate of suspicion and fear that dogs their re-entry into the United States from trips abroad, sued the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI yesterday, demanding that the courts protect their civil rights. The seven main plaintiffs in the class action suit assert that both the United States Congress and the federal government are ignoring the plight of innocent Americans harassed repeatedly because of problems with the terrorist watch list. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Chicago by the American Civil Liberties Union, contends that the courts alone can ensure that antiterrorism policies do not repeatedly subject ordinary Americans to detention, questioning, fingerprinting and the like. "These are law-abiding citizens, and it is too extreme, too offensive," said Harvey Grossman, the legal director for the A.C.L.U.'s Illinois branch, saying that repeated complaints to Homeland Security as well as senators or congressmen barely get a response. "The court is the only forum where these people have a chance to get a hearing." The lawsuit asserts that repeated border detentions and improper actions of border guards violate the plaintiffs' constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure and their right to travel. (New York Times)
"King"dom of Heaven?
June 20: Iowa Congressman Steve King (R) has sunk political discourse to a new low. According to “Radio Iowa” news director O. Kay Henderson, King told GOP delegates at the state's Republican convention: "There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's] at…And if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas." Henderson reports that King's disgusting comments were met with "extended laughter" from the audience. AAI President James Zogby demanded that King apologize to the Dean of the White House press corps: "Whatever you may think of Ms. Thomas’s political views, she is a revered icon in American journalism, having covered every President since Eisenhower, and having earned a place of distinction in the annals of the White House Press Corps…As an elected official operating in a deeply divided political environment such as the one we have, you owe your constituents more. You should be providing leadership and examples of civil discourse. Unfortunately, in this instance, you chose boorishness and disrespect. You owe Ms. Thomas an apology, to say the least." (The Arab American Institute)
Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh-American organizations object to FBI comments
June 21: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) expressed deep concerned over the comments attributed to John Miller, Assistant Director for Public Affairs at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), regarding the Community Relations Executive Seminar Training (CREST) program. ADC's concerns were shared by the Arab American Institute (AAI), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT), and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF). The following comments were attributed to Miller, "Speaking in plain terms, if I go to you and say, 'Listen, I've got a great plan that we can blow up a building at 50th and third,' and I keep talking to you about it, your job is to pick up the phone and call the police or the FBI - not to say, 'Yeah, well, what kind of explosives would we use, and where would we get them, and how would we get the money.' 'You might call that entrapment because it's my idea. But when you get down to the bottom line, somebody who has no proclivity towards terrorism or violence can't be sucked into one of these plots without some level of intention.' Miller's comments have already been picked up by some media outlets and the following is an example of the headlines already generated- "FBI’s Newest Anti-Terror Tactic: Community Outreach, Make Friends with Potential Enemies." (ADC Press Release)
LA 8: Man renews 20-year battle for citizenship
June 21: A man at the center of a long-running immigration legal fight that came to be known as the "L.A. 8" case returned to court yesterday to renew his two-decade-long quest for citizenship. Aiad Barakat, 45, walked with a pronounced limp to the witness stand in federal court downtown (LA) and in halting English fielded a barrage of questions in a bid to avoid deportation. Almost 20 years ago, federal officials sought to deport Barakat and seven others because of their association with causes promoting Palestinian statehood, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The eight were never accused of an act of terrorism or of any other crime. Rather, they were targeted for deportation on the grounds that they allegedly had raised money for the Popular Front, a group the government suspected of terrorist activities. The group won a victory in 1989 when a judge struck down as unconstitutional portions of a federal law that allowed deportation to be based on political affiliation and advocacy. The charges against the L.A. 8 have been reworked at least three times since, reflecting changes in immigration and anti-terrorism laws, some of which were tailored to be applied retroactively to this case. Constitutional questions are not at issue in the current case. The only question in court yesterday was whether Barakat should be denied citizenship for allegedly lying about his association with Palestinian advocate Ali Kased when he sought U.S. citizenship. (Los Angeles Times)
Muslim sorority opens new doors to American university women
June 21: Fraternities and sororities are an important part of student life on most American university campuses. These privately run clubs organized around common interests and activities provide students with leadership experience, social outlets, support groups, community service opportunities and housing options. They offer a home-away-from-home for the roughly half million students who seek admittance and are selected by current members. Fraternity and sorority members are often active in campus affairs and maintain a lifelong social and professional network with other former members after graduation. Founded little more than a year ago, the Gamma Gamma Chi sorority has dedicated itself to giving young women the positive aspects of a sorority experience while maintaining Islamic traditions. While the group's core principles are Islamic, it opens its membership to all women, Muslim and non-Muslim, who support its mission. (Washington File)
U.S. tracks bank records in terror investigations
June 23: The Bush administration has been quietly tracking people suspected of bankrolling terrorism through a secret program that gives the government access to a massive data base of international financial transactions. Treasury Department officials said they used broad subpoenas to collect the financial records from an international system known as Swift. Stuart Levey, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, called the subpoenas “a legal and proper use of our authorities.” “Since immediately following 9/11, the American government has taken every legal measure to prevent another attack on our country,” Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary, said. “One of the most important tools in the fight against terror is our ability to choke off funds for the terrorists.” Under the program, U.S. counterterrorism analysts could query Swift’s financial data base looking for information on activities by suspected terrorists as part of specific terrorism investigations, a Treasury Department official said. They would do so by plugging in a name or names, the official said.The program involved both the CIA and the Treasury Department. Swift, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a cooperative based in Belgium that handles financial message traffic from 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries. (MSNBC)
FBI: Plot to blow up Sears Tower ‘more aspirational than operational’
June 23: A plan hatched by seven men to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and other buildings was “more aspirational than operational,” FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said. The group of men, who were arrested yesterday when authorities busted their alleged hideout in a Miami warehouse, had no explosives and lacked adequate funding. Their only link to al-Qaida was through an FBI informant fronting as a member of the terrorist group, authorities said today. Five of the defendants, including alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste, appeared in federal court in Miami today under heavy security. Minutes after U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta announced indictments against the alleged terror cell, a Muslim leader took to the steps of the city's federal courthouse and said the suspects "were not known" at either of two mosques near the warehouse in the Liberty City neighborhood where authorities arrested them. Ahmed Bedier, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he and other Muslims feared some would try to connect Islam and the men's alleged plot to blow up a slew of federal buildings and the Sears Tower in Chicago. The seven men accused of plotting terrorism claim to follow teachings of the Moorish Science Temple of America, a religion that blends aspects of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and stresses self-discipline through martial arts, a close friend of one of the arrested men said today. Sylvain Plantin, 30, a distant cousin and friend of indicted group member Stanley Grant Phanor, said the group's leader, Narseal Batiste, followed the religious teachings of the Prophet Noble Drew Ali, who founded the Moorish Science Temple. (Media reports)
Three years on - Ali al-Marri remains in solitary confinement without charge or trial
June 23: President George W. Bush issued an executive order for Qatari national Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri to be detained in US military custody as an ‘enemy combatant’. In doing so, President Bush was once again seeking unchecked executive power in the “war on terror” and exposed Ali al-Marri to indefinite arbitrary detention. To date, Ali al-Marri’s treatment has remained entirely at the discretion of the military and executive authorities. Three years later Ali al-Marri remains detained without charge or trial in a military prison in Charleston, South Carolina, in solitary confinement, often shackled, in a cell measuring approximately three metres by two metres. Amnesty International is concerned that the totality of his conditions of detention have amounted to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in violation of international law and that he has not received adequate treatment for his deteriorating mental and physical health. Ali al-Marri is the only person now held as an ‘enemy combatant’ on the US mainland. He is held in similar conditions to detainees at Guantánamo, facing the prospect of many more years of indefinite detention without charge or trial. In its report on the USA issued on 19 May 2006, the United Nations Committee Against Torture stated that detaining people indefinitely without charge constitutes per se a violation of the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the USA is a State Party. (Amnesty International)
Parking has mosque at odds with neighbors
June 26: Turf battles on Karatzas Avenue (Manchester, New Hampshire) are continuing between homeowners and a planned mosque. Neighbors are calling for the strict enforcement of on-street parking bans, which has mosque officials charging they are being targeted. Construction manager Nermin Cejvan said workers occasionally park two or three cars on the street when they can't be accommodated elsewhere. In response, residents regularly call police, he said. The dispute made it to City Hall last week when homeowners sent aldermen a petition demanding parking remain prohibited on both sides of the road. "We're not making this a mosque issue," said Blaise Blouin, the neighbor who started the petition. "We're making this a no parking issue." But Cejvan and a state representative said residents are trying to hinder the project because a mosque is being built. (Union Leader)
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