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Chronology of Islam in America (2013)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
March 2013
Muslim Students Kicked Out for questioning the anti-Islam bigotry
March 5: The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) today called for a meeting with church officials in Perham, Minn., after two Muslim exchange students were kicked out of an event for questioning the anti-Islam bigotry of the speaker, Walid Shoebat. Shoebat is a notorious Islamophobe who claims "Islam is the devil." The Muslim students, one from Indonesia and the other from Azerbaijan, say they heard falsehoods and distortions from Shoebat, and when they questioned his bigoted views, they were quickly told to leave. "We hope the church will help promote mutual understanding and strengthen interfaith relations in our state by meeting with us and then offering an opportunity for its congregation to hear about Islam directly from Muslims," said CAIR-MN Executive Director Lori Saroya. Saroya noted that Shoebat, who has been exposed by CNN as an anti-Islam fraud, once told a Missouri newspaper that he sees "many parallels between the Antichrist and Islam" and that "Islam is not the religion of God -- Islam is the devil." Shoebat claims that President Obama is a Muslim. In a YouTube video, Shoebat said, "[I]f Islam is not playing the major role in Antichrist spirit, why do you think the devil wants to appoint somebody connected to Islam in the White House?" He told radio host G. Gordon Liddy, "No one is called Hussein unless he is Muslim. So it is very clear that Barack Hussein Obama is definitely a Muslim." According to an official who attended a Shoebat lecture at a conference in Las Vegas, the solution he offered for the threat of "militant Muslims" was to "Kill them...including the children." Shoebat claims to be a former "terrorist," yet the Washington Post noted: "Shoebat. . .says he was recruited by the Palestine Liberation Organization as a teenager. In 1977, he has said, he threw a bomb on the roof of the Bethlehem branch of an Israeli bank. The bank, however, has no record of the incident, and it was never reported by Israeli news outlets." [CAIR]
9th Circuit Court gets tough on border gadget searches
March 8: Border agents need reasonable suspicion to conduct a "forensic examination" of laptops or other digital devices belonging to travelers they stop, the full 9th Circuit ruled today. Several dissenting judges objected to the decision, calling it a significant departure from current understanding of the Fourth Amendment's border exemption, and one that could jeopardize national security. While Judge M. Margaret McKeown called the ruling a "watershed" case of the digital age, its alleged significance does not help the defendant at the center of it all, whose motion to suppress met rejection from the 11-judge, en banc appellate panel.
"Laptop computers, iPads and the like are simultaneously offices and personal diaries," McKeown wrote for the majority. "They contain the most intimate details of our lives: financial records, confidential business documents, medical records and private emails. This type of material implicates the Fourth Amendment's specific guarantee of the people's right to be secure in their 'papers.'" ...... "A person's digital life ought not be hijacked simply by crossing a border," she added. "When packing traditional luggage, one is accustomed to deciding what papers to take and what to leave behind. When carrying a laptop, tablet or other device, however, removing files unnecessary to an impending trip is an impractical solution given the volume and often intermingled nature of the files. It is also a time-consuming task that may not even effectively erase the files."
At the same time, a forensic search of a device can reveal each and every file, even deleted ones."Such a thorough and detailed search of the most intimate details of one's life is a substantial intrusion upon personal privacy and dignity," McKeown wrote. "We therefore hold that the forensic examination of Cotterman's computer required a showing of reasonable suspicion, a modest requirement in light of the Fourth Amendment." [Courthouse News Servic]
American-Muslim makes it to Qatar despite name on no-fly list
March 11: Oklahoma-born Saadiq Long has made it back to Qatar after being mysteriously added to a federal no-fly list while visiting his mother. Long, a 10-year veteran of the US Air Force, was originally denied admittance to the United States after making travel arrangements to fly from Qatar to his hometown late last year. He was eventually allowed to enter and had made plans to return to his family in the small Middle East nation last month, but was once again barred from boarding an aircraft. When both trying to enter and leave the United States — where he was born — Long was told he was on a no-fly list but was not given any explanation as to why. “I don't understand how the government can take away my right to travel without even telling me," Long told The Guardian last year when he first encountered trouble while trying to come to the States. "If the US government wanted me to question or arrest or prosecute me, they could have had me in a minute. But there are no charges, no accusations, nothing."
Long has been attempting to leave Oklahoma since February and had purchased a return flight to Qatar. While trying to board a plane last month, however, he was refused a boarding pass and was handed over to a group of armed police after TSA Agents say his name raised a red flag. "It was very, very strange, by the way, and very intimidating,” Long told the Associated Press. After repeated attempts at resolving the matter, Long says he was running out of options. “I didn't have any other choice after the FBI refused to take me off the ‘no-fly' list,” Long tells The Oklahoman. “I have my family here. I have a job here. I had to get back.” With no viable other option, Long did what any other land-locked American might do: he boarded a bus bound for Mexico and spent over 600 miles with his fingers crossed until arriving at an airport there. Then, after layovers in two other countries, made it back to Qatar. Long had been in the United States since November in order to spend time with his mother, who is suffering from congestive heart failure. He has spent the last several years teaching English in Qatar, where he lives with his wife and kids. [www.rt.com]
CLEAR Project Issues Report on Impact of NYPD Surveillance on American Muslims
March 11: American Muslim civil liberties groups released a new report today, Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and Its Impact on American Muslims, documenting the devastating impacts of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) extensive surveillance program that targeted American Muslims throughout the Northeast and spread outrage throughout the nation. Since 2002, the NYPD embarked on a covert domestic surveillance program that monitored American Muslims throughout the Northeast, from spying on neighborhood cafes and places of worship to infiltrating student whitewater-rafting trips – a program that continued despite the NYPD’s own acknowledgment that, over the course of six years, these efforts had not generated a single lead. The report is an unprecedented collection of voices from affected community members reflecting how the NYPD spying and infiltration creates a pervasive climate of fear and suspicion that encroaches upon every aspect of their religious, political, and community lives. The report was prepared by the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition, and its partner organizations the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project at Main Street Legal Services, Inc. of the CUNY School of Law, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF). American Muslim community members delivered the report to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence David Cohen.
“NYPD surveillance has impacted every facet of American Muslim life,” said Nermeen Arastu, a volunteer attorney with AALDEF. “The program has stifled speech, communal life and religious practice and criminalized a broad segment of American Muslims. The isolationism that comes with being a “spied on” community means that American Muslims are getting a fundamentally inferior opportunity to exercise their constitutional rights.” The extensive, in-depth interviews indicate that fear of surveillance has resulted in a decline participation and level of involvement in religious activities, community and social activities, and Muslim student organizations. The findings document, among other things:
- Impacts on students on college campuses, including silencing their activism, alienating their student groups, and affecting their academic choices;
- Suppressing religious spaces, as mosque congregants become suspicious of one another, imams hesitate when advising their congregants, and individuals refrain from appearing overtly ‘Muslim’ to avoid triggering surveillance;
- Silencing speech and political activism – from engagement in public debates and protests, to friendly coffee-house banter;
- Damaging the NYPD’s own relationship with American Muslims in New York City, breaching communities’ much-needed relationship of trust with those who are tasked with protecting them.
“This report is critically important reading for all Americans concerned with freedom, justice, and equality in 21st century America,” said Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, Majlis Ash-Shura of Metropolitan New York. “It is the authentic voice of real people impacted by unjust policies and procedures, for which Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly remain both defensive and un-apologetic. Further, it is a powerful rebuttal to all who seek to minimize the impact of NYPD surveillance of Muslims as a faith group, even as they strive to do the same with the program known as ‘Stop and Frisk’.” [Cunny School of Law]
Muslim community silenced by NYPD spying, report contends
March 11: Muslim Americans are reluctant to talk about politics, to appear “too Muslim,” and to befriend strangers because they fear New York Police Department surveillance, say the authors of a new report released today. The report details how police surveillance has caused Muslims in New York and New Jersey to curtail religious activity and free speech in their daily lives, the authors claim. They say interviews with 57 Muslim Americans dispel the notion that surveillance is a victimless police program. “It shows that there are many disturbing impacts and consequences of these irresponsible, harmful, costly and completely ineffective surveillance policies,” said Diala Shamas, a lawyer with the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project at the City University of New York School of Law. The authors called for the NYPD to end the surveillance program and destroy records they’ve created, and for the creation of an inspector general office to monitor police. They also called for a federal investigation of NYPD surveillance and religious profiling. The report -- “Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and Its Impact on American Muslims” – was released Monday by civil rights and legal groups and comes a year and a half after news stories broke that showed the reach of police surveillance. The surveillance targeted Muslims at businesses, universities and mosques, including ones in Paterson and Newark, as well as student groups at 16 Northeast colleges, including Rutgers University.
NYPD officials and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg have maintained that the operation was legal and necessary in order to know where terrorists might go “to lie low.” They say they were gathering information that is publicly available and in other cases were following leads. “The NYPD has been in involved, along with our federal partners, in thwarting very real plots against the city since 9/11, and in identifying individuals in the region – including New Jersey - who have provided material support to foreign terrorist organizations,” said police spokesman Paul Browne. “At the same time we respect and protect individual rights, including religious liberty.” But Muslims countered that their constitutional rights suffer when people won’t speak up or join religious groups. On college campuses, where individuals might be most inclined to organize and rally around political causes, students say they are watching their words. At Hunter College, a sign hangs in the Muslim Student Association room asking students to refrain from speaking about politics, said Shamas. Soheeb Amin, a former president of the Muslims Student Association at Brooklyn College, said people are suspicious of newcomers. “You wonder ‘who am I talking to and what am I telling them?’” said Amin. “If anyone brings up the word ‘jihad’ in any way, you suspect them.” In many cases, parents were the ones who put pressure on the students, urging them not to get involved in political and religious groups, the report claims.[www.northjersey.com]
Muslims hurt by NYPD surveillance: Report
March 11: A CUNY School of Law project released a report last week saying the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims in the city has bred self-censorship and distrust of others in the community. The report, “Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and Its Impact on American Muslims,” was written by the School of Law’s Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility Project and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund with oversight from the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition. Diala Shamas, a staff attorney at CLEAR, said the report was conceived after the Associated Press wrote a series of stories about the NYPD sending informants into mosques, hookah bars and Muslim student associations — some outside the city — to listen for radical activity. Shamas said reporters who took part in the initial media coverage did not talk much to the Muslim community. “We wanted to give the communities an opportunity to show how they’re affected by surveillance,” Shamas said. The (NYP) department has said the AP report was filled with inaccuracies and contended the NYPD Intelligence Division has been crucial in foiling terrorist plots.
CUNY School of Law is at 2 Court Square in Long Island City and Shamas said many of the 57 interview subjects were Queens residents, with others coming from the other boroughs as well as Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut. Shamas, one of the principal interviewers along with Nermeen Arastu of the defense fund, said the report was not trying to compile a statistical analysis of how the Muslim community felt about the NYPD’s actions but wanted a range of opinions. “One of the surprising things were how the consequences were felt across the board regardless of income, immigration status, education level, profession, any of that,” Shamas said. The interviewees mainly said the NYPD surveillance discouraged them from being more openly religious, from engaging in any political speech or activism, from trusting their neighbors since they could be possible NYPD informants and from talking to the police. “It’s not like everybody stopped going to mosque — it’s just that everybody looks around wondering who everyone else is,” Queens activist Faisal Hashmi said in the report. The report recommended the NYPD end the surveillance and called for more oversight and auditing of the department from city and state entities. [Times Ledger]
San Francisco officials blast anti-Islam bus ads
March 11: Muni buses are once again riding the streets of San Francisco with advertisements critical of Islam. And while city leaders say the First Amendment protects the ads, they want it known they are staunchly opposed. The ads feature incendiary quotes by Osama bin Laden, the alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hassan, and other Muslims. The ads were purchased by Pamela Geller and the American Freedom Defense Initiative, who also put ads critical of Islam on Muni buses in 2012. Supervisor David Chiu was to introduce a resolution at board meeting, requesting that the proceeds from the ads be used to fund a study on the impact of post 9-11 hate and discrimination on Arab and Muslim communities. ‘While some courts have found these ads may have First Amendment privileges, that doesn't mean that as a city we can't condemn them with the strongest possible statement," said Chiu. Chiu was joined by Supervisors Jane Kim, John Avalos, and Scott Wiener, District Attorney George Gascon and other government and community leaders who gathered on the steps of City Hall to denounce the ads. “Just think in terms of the young kids, the young Arab and Muslim kids who have to ride these buses with this message on the outside." said Theresa Sparks, executive director of the city’s Human Rights Commission "Or the Muni bus drivers, who have to drive these buses with this message on the outside. Just think of what it has to do to them, their self-esteem, their families.” “Over the years, as (Geller’s) placed these ads we’ve heard from young people as well as adults who’ve seen these messages, who’ve said that it makes them uncomfortable to ride the buses, that it makes them worry about their safety, that it makes them think twice about how people are looking at them." said attorney Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in San Francisco. [KQED]
North Carolina University Muslims get place to pray
March 12: Nawsheen Khan and Rukayat Usman pray five times a day. Other Muslim students at N.C. Central University do too. Until recently they prayed in stairwells, empty classrooms, bustling hallways, and sometimes, campus restrooms. Now that’s changed. After a five-month search, the NCCU Women’s Center has offered dedicated space for Muslim students to pray. “I just didn’t want them to continue to feel marginalized,” said Chimi Boyd-Keyes, NCCU Women’s Center director. “I took it upon myself to find a space – it was a priority to me they not feel like that on this campus.” Rachelle Gold, an assistant English professor who advises the NCCU Muslim Student Association, asked Boyd-Keyes about finding space last September. After a few locations didn’t work out Boyd-Keyes decided the best solution was the simplest solution. She offered a space about the size of a small classroom in the lower level of the Women’s Center, which is on George Street, a short walk from the Alfonso Elder Student Union. It’s a space that wasn’t being used, and forcing students to pray in hallways was unacceptable – even oppressive, according to Boyd-Keyes. “I felt like we could do better than that,” she said. Both Gold and Boyd-Keyes said finding a permanent prayer space should be an NCCU priority. “It doesn’t have to be a [solely] Muslim space – a meditation space would be nice,” Gold said. [The Durham News]
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