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The Oklahoman - December 11, 2009
Immigration delays top complaint from Oklahoma Muslims
BY CARRIE COPPERNOLL
Government agencies accounted for more than half of civil rights complaints from Oklahoma Muslims last year, according to a report released Thursday by a state advocacy group.
Most of the complaints reported were regarding immigration delays, said Razi Hashmi, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Immigration problems have been reported by members of other minority communities, particularly Hispanics, Hashmi said.
The number of civil rights cases reported increased from 22 in 2007 to 41 in 2008, according to the annual report, which is the first to be issued by the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
This doesn’t necessarily reflect an increase in prejudice, Hashmi said. It’s more likely a sign that Oklahomans are willing to report rights violations.
Nationally, the number of civil rights complaints increased slightly, but reports of hate crimes declined 14 percent.
Hashmi said he thinks the anti-Muslim sentiment that swelled after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is starting to ebb. "This is encouraging news,” Hashmi said. "We hope the trend will continue.”…..
http://www.newsok.com/immigration-delays-top-complaint-from-oklahoma-muslims-report-says/article/3424218
CAIR - December 14, 2009
Southern California Mosque Vandalized
4th mosque vandalism reported nationwide in past month
LOS ANGELES, CA, December 14, 2009 - Rahmat P. Phyakul, board chairman and one of the founders of Al-Fatiha Masjid, reported that vandals shattered windows and glass doors of the mosque’s office and prayer hall today. A plaque with Quranic verses was tossed on the floor, the sound system was destroyed and donation boxes were broken into.
The mosque has suffered prior incidents of vandalism. In the past, a passerby shouted anti-Muslim slurs at worshipers. The slurs reportedly included: "You, terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, F... your God, F.... you Allah.” Prayer rugs in the mosque were also covered with urine.
The incident appeared to have taken place between 4 and 7 p.m. and was reported by congregants arriving for evening prayer. Mosque officials immediately contacted the Azusa Police Department to report the break-in, vandalism and robbery.
Phyakul added: "For those who have committed hate crimes against people of any faith, especially Muslims, they should know that they cannot silence us, shut us down or cause us to go away. This is our country, and we are here to stay and we are willing to stand for the truth and peace under any circumstances."
On November 30, vandals broke into the back door of a Sacramento mosque and damaged religious wall hangings and a book shelf that held Qurans, as well as other property in the facility, according to a police report. The vandals also stole items from the mosque.
Additionally, an Oregon mosque last month was targeted with hate graffiti. A police report indicated that vandals wrote “Allah is a pig” on the Abu-Bakr As-Siddiq Islamic center’s mailbox on or before November 15th. Local police said they view the incident as a bias crime.
The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) today asked law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive for recent vandalism at an Azusa mosque.
“We urge law enforcement authorities to utilize all their resources to immediately and fully investigate the vandalism at Masjid Al-Fatiha as a possible hate crime, especially because of the nature of the vandalism,” said Affad Shaikh, civil rights manager for CAIR-LA.
Also last month, CAIR called for an investigation of a possible bias motive for repeated vandalism at a North Carolina mosque.
New York Times - December 18, 2009
Muslims say FBI tactics sow anger and fear
By PAUL VITELLO and KIRK SEMPLE
The anxiety and anger have been building all year. In March, a national coalition of Islamic organizations warned that it would cease cooperating with the FBI unless the agency stopped infiltrating mosques and using “agents provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Muslim youth.”
In September, a cleric in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, sued the government, claiming that the F.B.I. had threatened to scuttle his application for a green card unless he agreed to spy on relatives overseas — echoing similar claims made in recent court cases in California, Florida and Massachusetts.
And last month, after an imam in Queens was charged with aiding what the authorities called a bomb-making plot, a group of South Asian Muslims there began compiling a database of complaints about their brushes with counterterrorism investigators.
Since the terror attacks of 2001, the F.B.I. and Muslim and Arab-American leaders across the country have worked to build a relationship of trust, sharing information both to fight terrorism and to protect the interests of mosques and communities.
But those relations have reached a low point in recent months, many Muslim leaders say. Several high-profile cases in which informers have infiltrated mosques and helped promote plots, they say, have sown a corrosive fear among their people that F.B.I. informers are everywhere, listening.
“There is a sense that law enforcement is viewing our communities not as partners but as objects of suspicion,” said Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, who represented Muslims at the national prayer service a day after President Obama’s inauguration. “A lot of people are really, really alarmed about this.”
There is little doubt that a spate of recent cases — from the alleged bomb plot by a former Manhattan coffee vendor, Najibullah Zazi, to the shootings at Fort Hood, in Texas — has heightened Americans’ concerns about homegrown terrorism. Muslim leaders have promised to redouble efforts to combat extremism in their ranks.
Yet they also worry about the fallout for the vast numbers of the innocent. Some Muslims, Ms. Mattson said, have canceled trips abroad to avoid arousing suspicion. People are wary of whom they speak to. Community groups say it is harder to find volunteers. Many Muslim charities are hobbled.
And some law enforcement experts warn of a farther-reaching consequence: the loss of a critical early-warning system against domestic terrorism.
“This is a national security issue,” said David Schanzer, who heads the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University. “It’s absolutely vital that the F.B.I. and the Muslim-American community clear the air and figure out how to work together.”
Even in better times, the relationship has been a challenge to maintain, given that counterterrorism agents operate on multiple levels — holding open meetings at a mosque, say, and seeding it with informers.
The F.B.I. has defended its practices, saying it must pursue suspects wherever they go. Paul Bresson, an F.B.I. spokesman, said in an interview that it tries to resolve anxieties by giving community leaders “explanations, where the circumstances permit, and resolving concerns where possible.”
In October, agents met privately in Queens with more than 40 Muslim and Arab-American leaders to hear their grievances, and agency officials said they anticipated more sessions in New York and other cities. In July, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. took questions about counterterrorism tactics from 200 young Muslims at a Los Angeles mosque.
Mr. Bresson said that no group is spotlighted because of its members’ religion or ethnicity. “The F.B.I. investigates people, not places, and only when we have information or allegations that persons are or may be committing crimes or posing a risk to national security,” he said.
Yet the Justice Department has in the last two years loosened some restrictions on agents’ ability to start and conduct terrorism investigations. The new guidelines, which the F.B.I. confirmed in October in response to a suit filed by the civil rights group Muslim Advocates, make it easier to plant informers and allow agents to include ethnicity and religion in the assessment of targets, as long as those are not the only factors considered.
After four members of a mosque in Newburgh, N.Y., were charged in May with plotting to bomb two Bronx synagogues, the authorities acknowledged that the investigation had begun with an informer who became a linchpin in the scheme. Congregation members said he had frequented the mosque, offering young men money and gifts.
The Queens imam arrested in September as investigators pursued the coffee vendor was an informer who had helped authorities. Last month, federal prosecutors moved to seize several buildings across the country that house mosques, saying they were owned by a nonprofit group with links to Iran. As a rare federal investigation that has ensnared houses of worship, the case stoked apprehensions that the government sees Arab-Americans and Muslims as a people apart.
“We are citizens who care about our country as much as everyone,” said Wael Mousfar, president of the Arab Muslim American Federation, a New York umbrella group. “But people don’t know what to expect — who might report them for speaking about Middle East politics, what someone might get your teenage son to do.”
His community’s relations with law enforcement were rocky in the weeks after 9/11, when the authorities began detaining hundreds of Muslim and Arab non-citizens, most of whom were cleared of links to terrorism and deported. But F.B.I. officials and leaders of Muslim, South Asian and Arab-American groups eventually forged an understanding, maintaining communication channels……
The American Muslim Task Force
The American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections, which threatened to cease cooperating with the F.B.I., has not yet done so.
But by most accounts, the unraveling of ties between the F.B.I. and Muslim-Americans began two years ago, with the F.B.I.’s decision to stop sharing information with the nation’s most prominent Muslim civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The F.B.I. said it was motivated by council executives’ failure to answer questions about links with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The executives denied any such connection, and accused the F.B.I. of staining the council’s reputation without due process.
In June, the American Civil Liberties Union made a similar complaint about Justice Department decisions to shut down six Muslim charities without filing charges. The moves, which froze billions of dollars in assets, have instilled among Muslims “a pervasive fear that they may be arrested, prosecuted, targeted for law enforcement interviews” if they give to any Islamic charity, the A.C.L.U. said.
Imam Mohammad Shamsi Ali, chief cleric at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, in Manhattan, said that his organization had suffered a 30 to 40 percent decline in contributions since 2001, in part because of that fear. He said the center no longer solicits donations from individuals living abroad ”because of the possibility that we could be misunderstood.”
Still, the specter looming largest among immigrant Arabs and Muslims is fear of deportation. And some say the F.B.I. has used that threat forcefully.
Sheik Tarek Saleh
Sheik Tarek Saleh, the Bay Ridge cleric who is suing the government, said he welcomed F.B.I. agents at his storefront mosque after 9/11 when they asked about his kinship with Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a high-ranking Al Qaeda militant and his cousin’s husband.
Sheik Saleh, 46, said he repeatedly discussed Mr. Yazid as well as his own former membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, a sometimes-violent political movement he joined as a teenager in Egypt and disavowed years later. But when he refused to travel overseas to spy on Mr. Yazid, he said, agents told him to forget his pending application for permanent residence.
In February, immigration officials told Sheik Saleh that the application had been rejected because he failed to fill in a section about ties to political groups. He contends that was a minor oversight. F.B.I. and immigration officials would not discuss his case.
Sheik Saleh said that he faced deportation because he resisted F.B.I. pressure. “Your dignity is bigger than the green card,” he said.
Zein Rimawi, a pet store owner and a founder of the Al-Noor School, a private school in Bay Ridge, said anxiety made people cautious about transactions with individuals and institutions — even his school, which he said was $700,000 in debt as a result…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/us/18muslims.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
News-Medical.Net - December 18, 2009
One quarter of Detroit-area Arab Americans
reported personal or familial abuse since 9/11
University of Michigan researchers find discrimination, bad experiences led to adverse health effects among large, well-established Arab community
One quarter of Detroit-area Arab Americans reported personal or familial abuse because of race, ethnicity or religion since 9/11, leading to higher odds of adverse health effects, according to a new University of Michigan study.
The study was published today in the American Journal of Public Health.
Muslim Arabs also reported higher rates of abuse than Christians, said lead author Aasim I. Padela, M.D., a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar in U-M's Department of General Medicine and clinical instructor in the Department of Emergency Medicine.
Padela says those who reported abuse showed a higher probability of having psychological distress, lower levels of happiness and poorer perceptions of health status.
What's disturbing about the findings is that residents in Greater Detroit live in a large, well-established Arab community, where they might be expected to be protected from abuse, Padela says. Most of the respondents also had access to health insurance.
"Negative associations of perceived post-911 abuse or discrimination might be much worse in less concentrated Arab populations within the United States," Padela says.
Approximately 490,000 Arabs reside in Michigan, and more than 80 percent of those live in metro Detroit's Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Arabs are the third largest ethnic population in Michigan, with a history dating back multiple generations. This community is the largest concentration of Arabs outside of the Middle East.
Padela and co-author Michele Heisler, M.D., associate professor of Internal Medicine and of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health, used data from a face-to-face survey of Arab Americans administered in 2003.
This is the first representative, population-based investigation of the health and psychological impacts of September 11 on Arabs and Muslims living in the United States, the researchers say.
Racial and ethnic abuse and discrimination can have lasting effects, and many of those afflicted may not be seeking adequate care, Padela says. Some may fear racial or ethnic discrimination from health care providers, he says.
Others may worry about the stigma of admitting to a mental health problem, made worse by a culture that historically has not fully accepted mental illness, Padela says.
"Untreated psychological distress leads you to do something bad, like smoking, drinking, or other unhealthy responses. It becomes a vicious cycle," Padela says. "We may be missing an entire spectrum of people who are most stigmatized."
The study shows the need for partnerships with religious and community organizations to encourage Arab-Americans to get the mental health services they so crucially need, Padela says.
"We know that anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes are still higher than they were pre-9/11," Padela says. "Years after, we think this is over. But not only is it not over, it's having negative health consequences and we're not doing anything to address it."
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20091218/One-quarter-of-Detroit-area-Arab-Americans-reported-personal-or-familial-abuse-since-911.aspx
Washington Post - December 17, 2009
Documents show DHS improperly spied on Nation of Islam in 2007
By Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson
The Department of Homeland Security improperly gathered intelligence on the Nation of Islam for eight months in 2007 when the leader of the black Muslim group, Louis Farrakhan, was in poor health and appeared to be yielding power, according to government documents released Wednesday.
The intelligence gathering violated domestic spying rules because analysts took longer than 180 days to determine whether the U.S-based group or its American members posed a terrorist threat. Analysts also disseminated their report too broadly, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group.
The disclosure was included in hundreds of heavily redacted pages released by the Justice Department as part of long-standing FOIA lawsuits about the government's policies on terrorist surveillance, detention and treatment since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It marks the latest case of inappropriate domestic spying under rules that were expanded after the terror attacks to give intelligence agencies more latitude.
In a written statement, Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman Matthew Chandler said the agency has since implemented "a strong and rigorous system of safeguards and oversight to ensure similar products are neither created nor distributed."
The agency, he said, "is fully committed to securing the nation from terrorist attacks and other threats, and we take very seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people." The 2007 study, titled "Nation of Islam: Uncertain Leadership Succession Poses Risks," was recalled by agency lawyers within hours. The lawyers said it was not reviewed by the department's intelligence chief before release.
Charles E. Allen, who was DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the time, said that although violations were unintentional and inadvertent -- only publicly available information was collected -- the report should never have been issued.
"The [Nation of Islam] organization -- despite its highly volatile and extreme rhetoric -- has neither advocated violence nor engaged in violence," Allen wrote in a March 2008 memo. "Moreover, we have no indications that it will change its goals and priorities, even if there is a near-term change in the organization's leadership."
DHS clarified its intelligence collection rules in April 2008, and last December, then-Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey issued new terrorism and other domestic investigation guidelines…..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/16/AR2009121604096_pf.html
USA Today - December 15, 2009
'Sinister Muslim' stereotype fades
By Souheila Al-Jadda
Muslim voices are finally being heard by and from Hollywood, and it's in Tinseltown's best interest to listen.
Negative stereotypes of Muslim characters date to at least the black-and-white era, but by the 1990s and the end of the Cold War, one-dimensional Muslim terrorist characters were the generic "bad guy" in countless movies and television shows, including True Lies ('94) and Executive Decision ('96). Even the cartoon Aladdin ('92) portrayed villains with Middle Eastern accents while the hero and heroine had standard American voices.
Such repeated portrayals have colored public perceptions of Muslims and Middle Easterners. The events of 9/11 crystallized and, for some, affirmed the stereotype. But nearly a decade later, Hollywood seems to be changing its tune toward Muslims and Arabs.
Recently, especially on television shows, Muslim characters are being treated differently. On 24, federal agent Jack Bauer protects the U.S. against terrorist attacks, but those attacks aren't all coming from stereotypical Muslim characters anymore.
Howard Gordon, executive producer of 24, recently appeared on a Link TV show, co-produced, Who Speaks for Islam? Muslims on Screen. Asked why most terrorists on the show were Arab or Muslim he said, "When we tried to make ... the terrorists Swedish terrorists, it was somewhat less convincing."
That was in the beginning. As public perceptions began to change in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and other events, 24 had to evolve. Gordon said, "We began to realize that by portraying Muslims strictly as terrorists on the show, we were ... unwittingly exploiting some of the fears of our audience members."
Gordon acknowledged the responsibility he feels to represent America to the rest of the world. "I think that the impact of our content or creative content is one of our greatest exports," he said. "It becomes a very powerful instrument for understanding each other in this terrible ... divide we find ourselves in with the Muslim world."
So 24 started creating more textured Muslim characters and showed its hero interacting with Muslims in new ways. A female Arab agent became the acting head of the counterterrorism unit. Agent Jack Bauer befriended an imam, whom he had originally accused of being a terrorist.
Other Hollywood shows and movies are making changes, too. Law & Order and CSI have begun including Muslim characters that don't fit the terrorist stereotypes, and the CW's Aliens in America followed the story of a Muslim exchange student from Pakistan living with an American Christian host family in Wisconsin. Several recent movies have also offered deeper and more nuanced views of Muslims, even while exploring the complex subjects of war and terrorism.
Perhaps pressure from Muslim Americans and Muslims who work in the movie industry has helped encourage Hollywood to make changes.
Kamran Pasha wrote for the Showtime program Sleeper Cell, in which an African-American Muslim FBI agent infiltrates a cell of terrorists. On Who Speaks for Islam?, Pasha said he criticized the show during his job interview. He critiqued a scene in which two Muslim terrorists are talking to each other at a urinal.
"This is something that most people who are not Muslim don't know," Pasha said. "Most religious and conservative Muslim men don't like to pee standing up. They consider it as unclean." The creators of Sleeper Cell were apparently looking for this kind of advice. Pasha said of his critique, "I think that was the moment I got the job."
Some Muslim and Arab actors are turning down roles that reinforce negative stereotypes. Ahmed Ahmed, an actor and comedian, began refusing terrorist roles after going on the Hajj pilgrimage. Instead, he looks for ways "to enlighten people through humor."
The same is true for Maz Jobrani. He plays Dr. Bhamba on the ABC sitcom Better Off Ted. He also played Mohammed, a good-guy federal agent in the 2005 thriller The Interpreter. Jobrani said when it comes to "Middle Easterners and Muslims, you tend to see only the negative. And so that's where I've made the stance and why I've said, 'No more.' I don't audition anymore for terrorist roles."
Muslim advocacy groups are also helping to transform Hollywood. Two such organizations — the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Council on American-Islamic Relations — first approached Gordon about the portrayals of Muslims on 24 and persuaded him to make adjustments. Muslims On Screen and Television (MOST), a non-profit resource center, provides research and information about Muslims to Hollywood insiders…
Souheila Al-Jadda is co-producer of the Who Speaks for Islam series on Link TV.
http://www.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2009-12-15-column15_ST_U.htm?csp=34
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