|
NY City Limits Weekly – November 2, 2009
'Suspects' talk back: Muslims complain to FBI
By Heather Appel
Many Flushing residents object to their treatment in the wake of a terrorism investigation, and they're doing something about it.
Almost two months after a suspected terrorist visited New York, setting off a chain of law enforcement activities including police raids of homes in Queens, activists are methodically collecting and recording complaints from Queens residents who allege a spectrum of harassment by law enforcement from verbal abuse to home entry without a warrant. The complaints will be logged by CUNY School of Law and given to Joseph M. Demarest Jr., the assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York City office…
“An entire community and religion should not be profiled because of an investigation,” said Monami Maulik, executive director of the South Asian advocacy group DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving), which led a rally last month outside the Flushing branch of the Queens library. Yet some say this is exactly what has happened. In the weeks since the raids, staff from DRUM say they have spoken with more than 100 families in Flushing and have heard numerous stories of people being questioned on their way to or from work, and being asked for identification in their own homes, said organizer Ayesha Mahmooda...
Incidents like these have led DRUM to partner with the CUNY law school on creating a complaint database, and to submit a series of recommendations to the FBI which it believes could help safeguard civil liberties and promote a better relationship between law enforcement and the South Asian community.
The recommendations include creating policy change and accountability mechanisms beyond "diversity training," and ending the use of agent provocateurs in mosques, Muslim businesses, organizations, and other neighborhood sites. “This practice makes a racial and religious presumption of criminal activity that is biased,” DRUM's letter states and lower attendance at mosques in Flushing reflects the current climate of suspicion, some report…
Advocates say the latest series of raids and interviews has rekindled fears in the community that began in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Tensions escalated again in 2007 when the NYPD released a report titled “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” which made sweeping generalizations about the city’s Muslim communities.
This September, the NYPD added a “statement of clarification” to the two-year-old report which retracts the original report's statements linking the practice of Islam with terrorism, and states that increasing religiosity among Muslims "cannot be used as a signature of someone potentially becoming a terrorist." It also backs off from the conclusion that our area's Muslim communities have been "permeated" by radical ideologies.
Faiza N. Ali, community affairs director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY), said the clarification was an important step, but additional measures should be taken in order to safeguard both civil liberties and national safety. They are laid out in a letter to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly from the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition, of which CAIR is part. "We remain concerned that the standing report sends mixed messages: the clarification decouples religion from terrorism but the core language continues to criminalize religious behaviors,” Ali said. “The NYPD report risks alienating mainstream Muslims, and if translated into policy, will only deepen mistrust between law enforcement and community members.”…..
http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=3830
Loon Watch – November 2, 2009
Robert Spencer’s new anti-Islam websites
by Zingel
Imagine if the scientific research belonging to a scholar of marine biology was accessible online via the URL “f**kmarinebiology.com” or if a scholar of Jewish Studies put out his material under the URL “f**kyahweh.com” or “f**kjudaism.com”.
What would that say about the scholarly ways of such a scholar? Would such a buffoon be taken seriously by anyone? Would his work carry an ounce of credibility?
Well imagine no more, Loonwatch has gone digging and sure enough, Robert Spencer, a long discredited anti-Muslim hatemonger posing as an “Islam scholar” has shown his scholarly objective ways with the heinously named URL’s “f**kallah.com” and “f**kislam.com” redirecting to his cesspool of subjectivity, the David Horowitz funded hate blog, Jihadwatch.org.
In doing so, Robert Spencer may have been trying to actively market his hate material to like-minded audiences. It is a well known fact that keywords are a crucial factor in the popularity of a blog. This is damning evidence of the true gutter intent behind his little blog project which is to attract and further incite those with Islamophobic tendencies, his primary audience.
In that respect, Jihadwatch.org has grown into a special-interest niche, a hate cult that attracts a small but vociferous number of anti-Muslim Spencer groupies while having little credibility with the mainstream.
Now, it is often said that hatemongers are cowards, and we believe that Robert Spencer is no exception. So expect Spencer - now that he has been publicly exposed- to try to wiggle his way out of this one. Expect him to deny responsibility, claim ignorance, and deflect blame.
After all that was his strategy when it was revealed that he had become a fan of an anti-Muslim genocide-promoting hate group on Facebook. Despite being unable to deny the fact that he had willingly signed up to this group, he still ventured to argue that he had not meant to and that the meticulous researcher and astute observer in him had somehow failed to notice the plethora of in-your-face literature that permeated the group’s Facebook page from beginning to end.
Unfortunately for the career liar, Mr. Spencer, he seemed to have forgotten that he had previously promoted the logo of the group’s supremacist philosophy on his website (as documented by LoonWatch with screen still shots from Jihadwatch.org) thus cementing his complicity and premeditated intent.
This time, expect Spencer to argue that he redirected those vile and vulgar slogan url’s by mistake. Or that someone else did him the favor without his consent or knowledge. Given Spencer’s track record of intense hatred for Islam and his knack for lying his way out of trouble, one would not be inclined to believe him.
But let us for the sake of the argument ask “what if”? Well then Spencer would have to explain why he has not yet disavowed and apologized for the association? He would also have to explain why someone would choose Jihadwatch.org out of the internet’s 200 million websites. Why not the Islam page on PBS or the BBC or Beliefnet? Could it be that these sites are deemed objective and that someone filled with the intense hatred required to register “fuckallah.com” and “fuckislam.com” could not find a more fitting site that would resonate with his hatred than Jihadwatch.org. That in itself is a blatant referendum on the editorial content of Jihadwatch.org.
The fact that the petty Robert Spencer is anything but a serious objective scholar of Islam and is instead every bit of a paid anti-Muslim polemic and agitator who is a prized tool in David Horowitz’s shed is not breaking news for most people.
The serious question then is this: how could any self-respecting church, Synagogue, college, or institution even think of associating with such a discredited buffoon and mire their reputations with his? To think that the likes of the American Library Association almost got duped by this guy sends shudders down our spine. As the number of the blissfully ignorant victims of his two-faced marketing campaigns who are quickly catching on continue to dwindle, expect his antics to get more desperate and more pathetic.
Editor’s note: Our apology to our readers for having to reprint those vulgar URL’s
http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/11/loonwatch-exclusive-robert-spencers-fkallahcom-fkislamcom/
News Observer - November 5, 2009
Muslims say attacks are more than vandalism
DURHAM, North Carolina - As Iqbal Ahmad surveys the damage to the Fayetteville Street mosque - smashed windows and doors, stolen computer monitors, Sunday school supplies knocked over - he concludes this was no ordinary burglary.
"A burglar doesn't break all the windows and doors," said Ahmad, who is in charge of maintenance at the Jamaat Ibad Ar-Rahman mosque. Ahmad discovered the damage when he came to pray early Monday morning.
More worrisome to Ahmad and other leaders at the mosque, sometimes called a "masjid," is what they see as a pattern. This summer someone smashed some of the same windows and doors. And six months ago, during a prayer service, two men opened the doors and began hurling rocks while shouting obscenities. The incidents were reported to the police, but no arrests were made.
Mosque leaders as well as a national Muslim advocacy group are wondering whether the intrusion should be investigated as a hate crime.
"We are asking law enforcement to at least investigate it with an eye toward a bias motive," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington.
The mosque lies within a few hundred yards of a police substation next to the Food Lion on Fayetteville Street.
Durham Police Captain Rick Pendergrass said that an investigation has begun and that it was too early to comment. "We take all crimes seriously but especially if it's a religious institution," Pendergrass said.
The mosque, housed in a low-slung brick building near the N.C. Central University campus, may be the oldest in the Triangle. It was founded in 1981 and moved into its current location in 1988. It draws a diverse group of Muslims, most of whom are recent immigrants.
About 500 people attend Friday noon prayers. But like many mosques, the space functions as a community center. There's a playground out front, and offices and Sunday school classrooms are beside the worship hall.
Vandalism is not uncommon in mosques across the nation. A spokesman for CAIR, a Muslim advocacy group, said it noticed a spike in such incidents during the recent Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In October, a mosque in Houston was defaced, and the house of a Muslim woman running for city council in San Francisco was egged...
http://www.newsobserver.com/life/religion/v-print/story/175602.html
Media Reports – November 5, 2009
US to pay five Muslims $1.26m in damages
NEW YORK, Nov 3: In a settlement of unlawful imprisonment of Muslim men in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, the US government has agreed to pay five Muslim men $1.26 million as damages, lawyers for the men said on today.
The five said they suffered inhumane and degrading treatment in a Brooklyn (New York) detention centre, including solitary confinement, severe beatings, incessant verbal abuse and a blackout on communication with their families and attorneys.
The government admits no liability or fault under the terms of the settlements, filed late Monday in United States District Court in Brooklyn. Charles S. Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the government would not comment.
Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Centre for Constitutional Rights who brought the case in Brooklyn federal court, told journalists it was the largest settlement so far for claims of abuse in the United States following the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The Justice Department agreed to settle the suit, which was filed in 2002 after hundreds of immigrants were rounded up and held for months, according to the CCR.
The five men were all eventually released after being cleared of any connection to terrorism but then deported.
In a telephone interview to New York Times from Alexandria, Egypt, Yasser Ebrahim, one of the five Muslims, said the settlement was a reluctant compromise for plaintiffs who had become increasingly frustrated by seven years of motions, cross-appeals and delays in the case. His payment — $356,250, of which he will receive $270,000 after legal expenses are subtracted — is the highest of the five because he was in maximum security detention the longest, for more than eight months without charges.
“Being held in that place for 249 days — $270,000 is not going to make up for that experience,” said Mr. Ebrahim, who had a Web site design business in Brooklyn before he and his younger brother, Hany Ibrahim, a deli worker, were arrested 19 days after 9/11 and held as “persons of interest” to terror investigators.
The plaintiffs said they were physically abused from the moment they arrived, chained and shackled, at the jail, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where they were slammed face first into a wall where an American-flag T-shirt had been taped.
The daily experiences described in the lawsuit include escort teams that cursed them as terrorists and shoved them into walls whenever they were taken from their cells, twisted their wrists and fingers and stepped on their leg chains so they fell, their ankles bloody.
Several of the federal guards accused of abusing the detainees have since been disciplined, and some, including a captain, were criminally convicted in the beating of other inmates.
The Turkmen lawsuit, filed as a class action in 2002, was the first broad legal challenge to the policies and practices that swept hundreds of immigrants into the Metropolitan Detention Center and other jails on visa violations in the weeks after 9/11.
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. The reports also documented widespread abuse at the Brooklyn jail.
The plaintiffs whose claims were settled include another Egyptian living in Alexandria and two natives of Pakistan, one who now lives in France, and the other, a physician, in Toronto. Two other plaintiffs, Ibrahim Turkmen and Akhil Sachdeva, who had been held in the Passaic County Jail, remain in the suit.
Plaintiffs in Turkmen V. Ashcroft
1. ASIF-UR-REHMAN SAFFI is a native of Pakistan and a citizen of France. He currently lives on Reunion Island with his wife and three children. He is a Muslim. An employee of Pakistani International Airlines for the past 19 years, Saffi came to the United States on July 6, 2001 on a three-month tourist visa. He has no criminal record in this country or in any other country. Saffi has never been involved with terrorists, terrorist organizations, or terrorist activity. Indeed, he abhors terrorism.
2. SYED AMJAD ALI JAFFRI is a native of Pakistan and a landed immigrant of Canada. Jaffri, a Muslim, has a wife and four children who reside in Lahore, Pakistan. Since May 1997, Jaffri has periodically visited family and friends in the United States, entering this country from Canada or Pakistan on tourist visas. He has no criminal record in this country or in any other country. Jaffri has never been involved with terrorists, terrorist organizations, or terrorist activity. Indeed, he abhors terrorism.
3. YASSER EBRAHIM and HANY IBRAHIM (“H. Ibrahim”), brothers whose surnames are spelled differently, and who are not related to plaintiff Ashraf Ali Ibrahim, are natives of Egypt and Muslims. Since 1992, Yasser has visited the United States on four occasions, each time on a tourist visa. In 1996, while in this country on a tourist visa, he married a United States citizen, with whom he lived in Queens, New York, until they separated in 1998. Shortly thereafter, Yasser returned to Egypt. In September 2001, Yasser and Hany were in the United States on tourist visas. Neither Yasser nor Hany has a criminal record in this country or in any other country. Neither has ever been involved with terrorists, terrorist organizations, or terrorist activity. Indeed, both Yasser and Hany abhor terrorism.
4. SHAKIR BALOCH is a native of Pakistan. Baloch, a Muslim, comes from a prominent political family. He himself is a member of the Progressive Peoples Party, which is dedicated to the promotion of progressive secularism in Pakistan. Baloch holds a medical degree from Bolan Medical College in Quetta, Pakistan. He briefly worked as a family physician in government service in that country. Baloch became a landed immigrant in Canada in 1989 and a Canadian citizen in 1994. He has a wife and a 15 year old daughter, both of whom reside in Toronto. Unable to find work in Canada, Baloch has entered and stayed in the United States for several extended periods over the past decade, most recently in April 2001. Baloch has never been involved with terrorists, terrorist organizations, or terrorist activity. Indeed, he abhors terrorism.
5. ASHRAF IBRAHIM (“A. Ibrahim”) is a native of Egypt. He entered the United States on a six month visa in January 1992. A. Ibrahim lived continuously in the United States for ten years without petitioning for an adjustment of status. In August, 2001, A. Ibrahim started up a bottled-water distribution business in Philadelphia. Mr. Ibrahim has never been involvedwith terrorists, terrorist organizations, or terrorist activity. Indeed, he abhors terrorism.
|
