LOS ANGELES, December 9, 2013—Hanukkah 2013 is now in the history books as America shifted its focus to Pearl Harbor Day, the Winter Solstice, Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Before leaving Hanukkah behind, it is worth commemorating a very special occurrence that made this Hanukkah like no other.

By Josh Saul

A man acquitted of attempted murder after shooting four members of a Borough Park community-watch group in self-defense says his attackers were yelling, “Kill him, he’s a f–king Muslim!”

By Stephanie Dubois

Edmonton police have approved a design for a hijab headscarf for female officers of Muslim faith.

Details of the assault on Imam Hafiz Salih, 60, have only just emerged. His son Ateeq Salih said his father was driving home last Saturday evening from his daughter’s house next to the Hull Mosque and Islamic Centre when two men and a woman tried to stop his car.

Dutch anti-Muslim racist Geert Wilders has published an open letter to the Pope…Wilders urges, Pope Francis should “defend the West’s Judeo-Christian and humanistic civilization” and “speak the truth about Islam – the largest threat to mankind in this present age”.

Pamela Geller is telling her fellow anti-Muslim activists to convince Congress to reject a resolution “urging the Government of Burma to end the persecution of the Rohingya people and respect internationally recognized human rights for all ethnic and religious minority groups within Burma.”

The image above was posted on the right-wing website, FreePatriot.org, in an article titled “Muslim Mob Justice–15 year old girl thrown from Third Floor window.”

by Mark Adomanis (Forbes)

Earlier this week Daniel Pipes had a piece in the Washington Times about Russia’s rapid transformation into a Muslim-dominated society. The piece makes a number of arguments, but its central thesis is the following.

The British government tried to cover its tracks. But a new cache of documents Robert Spencer and I have received in our battle to overturn our being banned from Britain reveal that a chief reason why we were banned from the country was because we strongly support Israel…

A YMCA in St. Paul, Minnesota recently teamed up with the St. Paul Police Department to offer a swim class for Somali-American girls. The class respects the girls’ religious beliefs, and Minneapolis Star Tribune recently reported on the need for the program and its success.

Richard Eaton is the Wikipedia, the Google and, many would argue, the last word on medieval and Islamic history in India. His bibliography is too vast to list, but the vast repertoire includes Islamic History As Global History, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204 -1760 and Social History of the Deccan, 1300 -1761: Eight Indian Lives.

TEENAGE thugs bashed a young Muslim girl wearing a hijab in what has been described as a racial attack in Wantirna South. The high school student was walking home from Westfield Knox along Stud Rd when she was set upon by a group of teenagers, according to Knox councillor Joe Cossari, who said it was a racial attack.

Last November, we posted what turned out to be a very popular article about Abdul Hadi Palazzi’s apparent conversion to Hinduism. For years he enjoyed notoriety for his novel stance on Zionism. Palazzi claimed to be a Muslim and an Islamic scholar.

Notice the messages seem to assume Muslims are not native to Ireland, suggesting they should “go back” to where they came from. Although it is true many Muslims are immigrants, this attitude seems to trace back to the notion Islam is alien–and frightening.

Simply dismissing people’s fears and concerns as bigotry is not going to solve the problem. Suppressing expression of these concerns only drives them deeper, and in some cases, fuels anger, hatred, and even violence. Muslims who are on the receiving end of growing resentment also have legitimate concerns.

She will take up the post next year but has already been the target of abuse by users on xenophobic online forums and Twitter who have slammed Jackelén for her beliefs and even her hairstyle.

Daniel Streich was a member of then Swiss People’s Party (SVP) in Switzerland. A well-known politician, Streich led the calls for a ban on minarets across Switzerland. He was active in building anti-Muslim sentiments throughout Switzerland. This sustained campaign led to him being given a high ranking position in the Swiss Army.

Five years ago, A Common Word between Us and You began as an interfaith initiative to strengthen ties between Muslims and Christians. Since that time, more than a hundred scholars and faith leaders have signed the initial letter.

MOSCOW — No more mosques will be built in Moscow, despite the huge crowds that swamp the city’s four public mosques on Muslim holidays, because they are mainly used by temporary workers, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has decided.

Speaking in Parliament Thursday, Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panayiotaros said that plans to build a place of worship for Greece’s Muslim community were a “provocation” for Greeks, saying that the project should be put to a national referendum.

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday

On today’s 700 Club, Pat Robertson defended a viewer who told him that she asked a neighbor who was staying with her to leave her house after finding out he was a Muslim.

By Eric W. Dolan

Anti-Islam activist and blogger Pamela Geller lashed out at Pope Francis on Tuesday, claiming he condoned violence against Christians.

By Hesham Hassaballa, Patheos

The infamous Islamophobe David Gaubatz, in announcing his retirement via email to his supporters, admitted what most have suspected: That the majority of anti-Islam groups simply exist to make money.

BY NEHA SAHGAL, PEW Research Center

A new study by Carnegie Mellon University found that in the most Republican states in the country, employers may be less likely to interview job candidates whose social networking profiles indicate that the applicants are Muslim.

Two of the city’s Bravest, Anthony Harper and Rolando Romero, say they were subjected to harsh treatment that included exclusion, slurs and physical assault. They both have filed notices of claim informing the city of their intent to sue for at least $5 million each.

In a previous article I noted that the so-called “counterjihad” is really a confederacy of covetous and ideologically opposed individuals and groups with inflated egos loosely united by hate for, and an irrational fear of, Islam and Muslims.

The graffiti also includes a line that reads, ‘Stop driving taxis!’ The vandalized ad was originally found and captured by New York photographer Robert Gerhardt on the downtown platform of the Buhre Avenue 6 train stop in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx.

Glenn Greenwald, the civil rights attorney and journalist who helped reveal evidence that the U.S. was spying on its citizens and allies, said it’s crucial to safeguard the civil liberties of American Muslims to ensure the rights of all Americans.

Israeli occupation forces have been busy lately in the West Bank city of Nablus. Last week, they demolished a water reservoir serving the Kherbit al-Taweel, southeast of Nablus. Demolition orders have also been issued for a several structures in a park in the village of Burqa.

“Despite the shocking nature of the crimes committed, the EMB enjoins Muslims not to respond to the provocation, unless by peaceful and legal means, in accordance with what Islam advocates,” Semsettin Ugurlu, the chairman of the Muslim Executive of Belgium (EMB), said in a statement cited by Saphir News.

A federal judge ruled on Friday that targets of the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims can probe the department’s files. Brooklyn U.S. District Judge Pamela Chen’s order comes at an early phase of a lawsuit against the NYPD, one of three such ongoing legal efforts.

An anonymous donor in Utah’s Islamic community will match donations up to $100,000 for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ typhoon relief efforts in the Philippines.

Spencer’s usual claim is that he is opposed to Islam and those it inspires to violence, not to Muslims as such, and on occasion he will even say that he welcomes attempts by Muslim reformers to reframe their faith in non-violent terms.

The Christian American Patriots Militia is openly calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama on their Facebook page. The Christian militia calls Obama a “dictator,” and claims the “authority to kill Obama comes from the 2nd Amendment of our Constitution.”

“The process of legalization of Islam has not been approved by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, their mosques would be closed until further notice,” Rosa Cruz e Silva, the Angolan Minister of Culture, was quoted by Agence Ecofin on Friday, November 22.

A deal at last. An interim deal that still has to be finalized, but nevertheless, this is another setback for warmongers in both Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as hawks who have long occupied Western capitals. The anticipated easing of sanctions which have strangled Iran for far too long is another huge dividend of this agreement.

Pop Francis is winning high praise from many Muslims these days: Muslim leader says Pope Francis ‘resonates with the Muslim world’. The president of the Islamic Affairs Council of Maryland offered high praise for Pope Francis, saying the Catholic leader “resonates with the Muslim world,” much like the saint from whom he takes his name.

Even those who are most eager to see the Assad regime deposed are highly skeptical of Western intervention. As we’ve seen many times before, so-called “humanitarian intervention” may very well ensnare Syria in yet another sinister plot cooked up by the imperial powers.

srael’s blockade of Gaza has long been known for it’s cruel results in strangling the population. But two recent happenings – namely Egypt’s destruction of Gaza’s smuggling tunnels and Israel’s decision ratchet up the blockade by blocking construction materials – have made Gaza virtually “uninhabitable,” according to the UN.

The resolution called for the government to provide equal access to citizenship, to free political prisoners, and to crackdown on Buddhist violence against the Rohingya and other Muslims in the southeast Asian country.

Warning: some viewers may find the video quite disturbing. Shocking video footage has emerged of a suspected racist or Islamophobic shooting on the Moscow metro as two men armed with handguns attacked another passenger.

Two men who set fire to a Gloucester mosque were former members of the EDL, a court heard. Clive Michael Ceronne, 37, from Gloucester, and Ashley Henry Juggins, 21, from Cheltenham, had both been on the controversial group’s marches prior to starting the blaze at the Masjid-E-Noor in the city’s Ryecroft Street.

When I pointed out the prevalence of anti-Semitism and homophobia within British Muslim communities earlier this year, I was accused by some of my co-religionists of “selling out”, of “fuelling Islamophobia”.

Delhi–The Hindu Hriday Samrat (“Emperor of Hindu Hearts”) of the Shiva Sena has surely perishedbut the divisive politics of regional and religious chauvinism which he bred and propounded for decades will undoubtedly be carried forth by the Shiv Sainiks for years to come.

L’Alsace reports that on Sunday morning graffiti attacking Muslims and French president François Hollande was discovered on the wall of a disused service station on the road between Hirtzbach and Carspach in Haut-Rhin, having been sprayed on the previous night.

We have already covered the backlash against a plan to establish Tahiti’s first mosque, resulting in its closure shortly after opening and death threats directed against its imam, Hishan el-Barkani. Des Dômes Et Des Minarets draws our attention to a 400-strong anti-mosque demonstration that took place last weekend in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia.

Israeli sources reported Sunday [November 17, 2013] that a number of extremist Israeli youths invaded an Islamic graveyard in occupied Jerusalem, broke tombstones and wrote racist graffiti on tombstones and buildings adjacent to the graveyard.

The scholar recounts his brief detention and interrogation at JFK airport. On the evening of November 13, I flew back from Gwangju, South Korea – where I was invited to participate in Gwangju Biennale – to JFK airport in New York.

by Rabbi Marc Schneier and Russell Simmons for Huffpo

There is a widely accepted belief that Muslims and Jews are enemies and will always remain so. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

In a historic advancement for the LGBT rights movement, the Senate on Thursday approved ENDA, a bill that protects against workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The only “liberals who have lost touch with what the ideas they positively stand for” as Alan Johnson put it are the so-called “9/11 liberals,” including individuals he cited, such as Paul Berman.

It is worth noting that Yaxley-Lennon himself is already on record as giving an interview to the Norwegian media in which he publicly praised Anders Breivik, promoted Breivik’s manifesto, and claimed Breivik’s mass-murdering terrorist attack would have been “easier to justify” if the people killed had been Muslims.

The discrimination and in some cases persecution of any religious group is no doubt an affront to Islam but many Christian websites and Islamophobic groups are guilty of ratcheting up hostility and fears of Islam and Muslims with dubious stats that not only don’t tell the whole story but skew reality.

“Because of its specific association with Sufism and its ensuing identification with Islam, dervishhood is an order comprised almost exclusively of Muslim practitioners. The two Jewish dervishes pictured here in this rare photograph are among the very few who had successfully been integrated into the order without converting to Islam.

by Elizabeth Lee

LOS ANGELES — For decades, Arab actors have been successful in Hollywood. Among the most successful are Omar Sharif, Tony Shalhoub, and F. Murray Abraham; the latter won an Academy Award for his role in Mozart.

Dave Gaubatz, author of the book Muslim Mafia, reportedly sent an email to his supporters on Saturday announcing his retirement from his fight “to expose Pure Islam” and explaining his reasons for quitting.

Iraqi War vet, Sean Bujno, who is suing to use the license plates “ICUHAJI,” had his case dismissed for a second time by a circuit court judge. The license plate is deemed offensive and racist towards certain groups, such as Arabs and Muslims. Bujno’s attorney say it a First Amendment issue.

The total is now up to 24 the number of complaints filed by Muslim employees against DHL Global Mail allegedly for praying at work. Mohamed Maow, fired from DHL Global Mail in Hebron, Kentucky, is the latest person to file a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

by Jacob Hausner

The US military’s “Islam problem” captured news headlines even before Wired.com ‘s 2012 breaking story about a military course teaching soldiers that the USA was at “war with Islam.”

SOFIA – In an effort to protect the religious minority, Bulgaria’s police forces have stepped up security in streets nearby Sofia’s Banya Bashi mosque, after a young Muslim was brutally attacked near the landmark mosque. The decision came after anonymous men attacked a 28-year-old man of Turkish origin, beating him up in Sofia on Saturday.

By Matthieu Aikins (Rolling Stone)

The video was floating around on Afghan social media pages, but has since apparently been removed. The Americans are visible around the one-minute mark.

The above photo was taken in Sarajevo in 1941, showing a Muslim woman walking with her Jewish neighbor and covering her yellow star with her veil. “The Jewish family was actually staying with the Muslim family after their home was destroyed.

The leader of France’s nationalist Front National is meeting Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch anti-Islam party PVV, on Tuesday and the two will hold a joint press conference about their plans for the European elections.

Has it come to this? Municipal employees in upscale Hampstead, in Montreal, have never been known to wear their religious beliefs on their sleeves. But Mayor William Steinberg tells the Montreal Gazette that some want to start sporting banned religious symbols if Bill 60, Quebec’s odious charter of “state secularism,” becomes law.

In the summer of 2011, Rebecca Watson found herself alone in an elevator with a man at an atheist convention. The man propositioned her, and the encounter made her uncomfortable. She decided to use the incident as an example of how not to behave at a public event, where she believed women were entitled to feel safe and comfortable.

We devote a great deal of our resources to countering the shrill voices of the looniverse. It’s been more than a decade since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the opportunists who seized upon the horrors of that day in 2001 have arguably reached their zenith and begun their inevitable decline.

Today is Muhammad Iqbal’s 136th birthday, which was celebrated with much revelry and reverence. We are swimming in a very different historical moment. We live in a time when, sadly, “Muslim thinker” will strike many as an oxymoron. Yet Muhammad Iqbal was arguably one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century.

Via CNN

Arsalan Iftikhar (senior editor for The Islamic Monthly) speaks with CNN anchor Carol Costello about why LAX airport shooter Paul Anthony Ciancia should be considered a “terrorist”.

The Front National has been enjoying a surge in popularity with a poll suggesting 24% of the French populace backs the fascist party. That may change however after the leader of the FN, Marine Le Pen, remarked that a group of freed French hostages have “astonishing beards” and could have “Stockholm syndrome,” i.e. they may be secret Muslims.

With most superheroes, when you take away the colorful costume, mask and cape, what you find underneath is a white man. But not always. In February, as part of a continuing effort to diversify its offerings, Marvel Comics will begin a series whose lead character, Kamala Khan, is a teenage Muslim girl living in Jersey City.

By Chris Joseph

Parents upset about a history textbook that they say emphasizes Islam more than other religions protested outside Volusia County school district headquarters.

A mosque in Cairns in far north Queensland has been targeted by vandals. The front of the Cairns North mosque was sprayed with large red letters early yesterday, calling for the worshippers to “integrate” or return to their “homelands”.

The protest took place on Unity Day, a national holiday established in 2005 to replace commemorations of the Bolshevik Revolution. Many demonstrators carried Russian imperial flags. One group displayed a banner reading “Young People Against Tolerance.”

“Homeland” has, or more precisely, has had, a lot to recommend it. The show’s depiction of Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) and his conflicted feelings about America and its role in the world — and the actions he took against America in the show’s early going — were among the most realistic depictions of the contemporary state of villainy available on TV.

By ASHLEY JOST

The Islamic Center of Central Missouri celebrated its 30-year anniversary by challenging members and others in the community to help prepackage 30,000 meals to send to children in need overseas.

In a new report that makes contextualizes the torturous force-feeding of Gitmo hunger strikers, it has been revealed that under CIA and DoD orders, doctors tortured terror suspects to gain intel after 9/11.

By Matt Chorley, Mailonline Political Editor

Boris Johnson has boasted of being the first Mayor of London of ‘Muslim extraction’ as he sought to attract billions of pounds of Arab money for the capital.

Regular readers will be aware that the United Kingdom’s Home Secretary has banned the American anti-Muslim propagandists Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller from entering the UK. Spencer and Geller had intended to speak at the English Defence League’s demonstration in London on 29 June 2013.

Dion says she does so because “foreigners” (all Muslims are by default “foreigners“) need to adapt to “our country” (If you’re a Muslim born in Canada you still aren’t Canadian) that has been so “hospitable” to them.

The un-elected regime in Saudi Arabia has no authority over the global Muslim community. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that the global Muslim community isn’t widely judged by the behavior of the Saudi regime. In fact, the misdeeds of the regime are often trotted out as an indictment of Muslims and Islam as a whole.

A new lawsuit filed Friday in Brooklyn Federal Court charges that a 10-year-old Brooklyn boy was called a “terrorist” and banned from boarding a bus when he recited a Muslim prayer in Arabic after losing his MetroCard.

While I appreciate this article from Imagine2050 exposing Geller and her ilk, my one slight critique would be that they seem to unintentionally buy into the whole narrative of “moderate Muslim” (i.e. good Muslims) vs. bad Muslims.

Four AK Party deputies, Sevde Bayazıt Kaçar, Gönül Bekin Şahkulubey, Nurcan Dalbudak and Gülay Samancı, announced that they had decided to cover their heads in line with their religious beliefs after performing hajj in Mecca in October.

Critical to the success of ISIS’s efforts and the endless self-promotion of its president, David Albright, are the dutiful stenographers in the media who eagerly promote to large audiences their claims as unchallenged fact, without even a shred of skepticism or hint of journalistic integrity.

Prof. Asad Q. Ahmed follows his debate with an article in which he further explains his historical analysis and thesis regarding the origin of the “decline narrative” and the reasons for the present state of rational sciences in Muslim majority countries.

Following Génération Identitaire’s anti-Muslim stunt in the Lorraine capital of Metz, two other Islamophobic groups held an anti-mosque protest in the city last Saturday. Thankfully, as you can see from the photo, it didn’t attract much of a turnout.

by Bob Pitt

Footage of a man wanted in connection with an attempted arson attack at a mosque has been released by the police.

Des Dômes Et Des Minarets reports on the latest anti-Muslim initiative from the French far-right group Génération Identitaire, who were responsible for a widely publicised occupation of a mosquein Poitiers last year (and presumably also for the anti-Islam banner hung from the same building earlier this month).

Last March, we cross posted the story from Wajahat Ali’s blog: Goat Milk: Death by tweet? How Hamza Kashgari’s fate will shape the face of Islam today. Arrested in February of last year, he spent 20 months in jail facing charges of apostasy and a possible death sentence for an “offensive” Tweet.

By BAYLY WINDER

Several weeks ago, my political science professor asked the class, “What is the biggest problem the U.S. government has with Indonesia?” One student replied, “The Muslim majority.”

WASHINGTON — He thought little of the U.S. drone buzzing over his family’s house one day last year, its incessant sound just one more addition to the rhythm of daily life in northwest Pakistan.

Barely a century after the life of Muhammad, a gold coin was minted in Anglo-Saxon England, bearing the inscription ‘there is no God but Allah alone’. This series tells the rich, under-told and often surprising story of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, beginning with King Offa of Mercia and this enigmatic gold coin.

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM)

A decision by Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez to allow Muslim inmates in the Dallas County Jail to receive special meals during Ramadan has sparked controversy.

(Delaware Online)

Hours after vandalism was discovered at the Islamic Center of Delaware, the afternoon prayers by religious leaders there carried a message of peace.

BBC News

Two undercover white reporters, one a Muslim in traditional dress, traveled across the city to inquire about 40 jobs being advertised in shop windows.

We have already noted the Times‘ misleading report of the assault on US student Francesco Hounye, which tried to link the attack to earlier incidents involving the so-called Muslim patrol, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever to indicate such a connection.

When Keith Ellison ran for Congress he was incessantly attacked by the Islamophobia industry. For years he was assaulted by hostile Conservative organizations and lobbyists as a “stealth Jihadist.”His victories were viewed as a sign of “creeping Islamization.”

The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France points out that it was just the latest in a series of shock covers about Islam, and not only inl’Express. It shows a shop window with mannequins with headscarves, accompanied by the headline “Islam, the danger of communalism”, which as the CCIF points out suggests that the mere act of wearing the hijab represents a threat to social cohesion.

TIME

The biggest donor to Republican Party political groups said Tuesday that the United States should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran to spur the country to end its own nuclear program.

A Dutch politician who once helped produce a film depicting Islam as evil and extreme has performed the Hajj after declaring his conversion to the religion earlier this year.

When Jedediah Stout, 29, was charged Friday with two arson attempts at the Joplin, Missouri, clinic on October 3 and 4, authorities made no mention of his suspected involvement in an August 6, 2012, blaze that gutted the Islamic Society of Joplin mosque.

By Garibaldi

We have noted the unstable nature of the “counter-jihad” fascist movement since the day Loonwatch began. Cracks and fissures between various groups and websites were apparent from the start.

Two influential human rights groups say they have freshly documented dozens of civilian deaths in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, contradicting assertions by the Obama administration that such casualties are rare.

However despite the group’s grand relaunching of its anti-Halal agitation, the campaign is unlikely to make waves until CHOGM is concluded in Colombo in mid November, sources told Colombo Telegraph.

BBC

Mohammed Saleem was stabbed by Pavlo Lapshyn in Small Heath on 29 April, less than a week after Lapshyn had arrived in the UK.

BY ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch

Nameera Perwez picked up on her lesson fast, and she was eager to put it in action.

RNS () — The Council on American-Islamic Relations has hired a Jewish filmmaker and interfaith activist as executive director of the advocacy group’s Philadelphia office. Jacob Bender is the highest ranking non-Muslim in the Washington-based organization, and the first to lead one of its chapters.

In an era of narcissistic self-obsession, there’s something to be said for the value of self-awareness. This week, atheist philosopher Sam Harris leapt forward to claim Malala Yousafzai as another trophy in his one-man jihad against Muslims and the weak-kneed “Muslim-apologists” he perceives on the left.

After a new mayor takes office in New York City next year, schoolchildren could very well have an additional two days off in observance of Muslim holidays. Both mayoral candidates, Democrat Bill de Blasio and Republican Joe Lhota, say they support the idea.

(Denver Westword Blog)

Christopher Lucki’s moniker definitely doesn’t apply to his current problems with the law.

MOSCOW — Moscow is now home to 2 million Muslims – more than any other city in Europe. So when the faithful gathered Tuesday for the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday, tens of thousands of men unrolled their prayer mats on the asphalt of Moscow’s streets. Last year, they prayed outside in rain and snow.

Representatives of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars and the Crimean Muftiate (the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea) are shocked by recent attacks on mosques in Crimea and are demanding that the law enforcement agencies take decisive measures to uncover these crimes.

The Muslim community in Poland decided to refrain from the Eid Al-Adha tradition this year due to a new law that Muslim and Jewish groups are describing as a violation of their Constitutional rights.

by Assed Baig, Huffpo UK

When Malala Yusufzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen simply because she wanted to gain an education it sent shockwaves around the world.

Days before the 12th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, 40 members of the San Angelo, Texas Tea Party gathered to discuss the purported threat of Muslims in America.

A round of applause for “Fox & Friends” host Anna Kooiman. Two weekends ago, she committed the inexcusable error of taking seriously a “story” on the Web site of the National Reporter saying that President Obama had dug into his own pocket to fund the International Museum of Muslim Cultures.

(Americans United)

One Alabama high school decided this year to offer an Arabic language class in place of a French course, and that has a number of local residents crying: “Sacre bleu!”

On other holidays, the choice has been difficult: Education or faith? But this year, with the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Adha on Tuesday, the Shraim family decided against school. Their teenagers might fall behind in their classes. They might feel torn. But they will stay home to celebrate.

Angered by the closure of national landmarks due to the partial government shutdown, a crowd of conservatives removed barricades Sunday at the World War II Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial as they rallied against President Barack Obama and Democrats for their role in the ongoing stalemate.

Arabic and Hebrew Love Poems in al-Andalus investigates a largely overlooked subset of Muslim and Jewish love poetry in medieval Spain: hetero- and home-erotic love poems written by Muslim and Jewish religious scholars, in which the lover and his sensual experience of the beloved are compared to scriptural characters and storylines.

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama met in the Oval Office Friday with Malala Yousafzai, the Pakastani girl who was shot in the head on her school bus by Taliban gunmen for criticizing their rule, including banning education for girls.

by JILL MAHONEY

Police have arrested three men and are searching for a fourth after several Muslim students in Kingston, Ont., were attacked in what investigators are calling a hate crime.

In a recent reform package that aims at greater democratization in Turkey the headscarf has been legalized for public officials and civil servants. This was a long battle of over 20 years that has seen the extreme secularists lose to the mainstream of Turkish society; hopefully France can become more democratic and follow Turkey’s example.

A crazed English Defence League supporter from Rowley Regis has been jailed for brandishing an air rifle as he shouted racial abuse at a Muslim family’s home. Neighbours of the Muslim family were terrified after seeing Shaun Havelin, aged 28, screaming and shouting racial taunts with the gun whilst wearing an EDL sweater.

Bachmann let her inner-Dominionist go all out in an interview with the extremist radio show Understanding the Times: Obama is an enemy of the USA who supports Al Qaeda. We are in the End Times. Not to worry though…Jesus is coming back because the “fig leaf is on the tree.”

Sex sells. And al-Qaida is eager to grab attention. But the combination of the two — sex jihad — is simply irresistible. Scores of young women are reportedly offering themselves to jihadists, according to one of the latest horror news stories coming out of Syria.

How ironic to witness Richard Dawkins pseudo-scientifically prattle on about Muslims and Nobel prizes: “All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge” he said, undoubtedly with his nose turned up high in the air and a snobbish English accent.

She’s not a tourist visiting a foreign country, but Melona Clark carries her papers with her at all times — to prove she has permission to wear a hijab.

Hand in hand as many as 200-300 people formed a human chain outside the St Anthony’s Church adjacent to the District Police Lines at the Empress Road, in a show of solidarity with the victims of the Peshawar church attack two weeks back, which resulted in over a 100 deaths.

Fox & Friends Saturday criticized President Obama for offering to personally pay for a “museum of Muslim culture” during the government shutdown, a claim that originated from a satire website.

[He] sais “neither Pagan nor Mahamedan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.”
 — Thomas Jefferson, quoting John Locke, 1776


Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY

The popular TGI Friday’s restaurant chain has been accused by a Muslim woman of intentionally putting pieces of bacon in her tea.

(Voice)

A WOMAN has been ordered to pay a total of £355 after being found guilty of punching and racially abusing a Somali woman wearing a burka.

by John Geddes

In the early evening of Sept. 17, before dark, a 17-year-old girl strolled from the Al-Noor Mosque in St. Catharines, Ont., to the plaza across the street.

A man was captured on surveillance video stealing a pair of shoes outside a South Florida mosque. The footage shows the man riding his bicycle and practically going shopping for a pair of shoes during Tuesday night’s prayer service at the Pembroke Pines Islamic Center.

MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) – A worship center in the Grand Strand filed a trespassing complaint after a man drove into their parking lot and made several insulting statements.

Women’s groups are reporting a spike in verbal and physical assaults against veiled Muslim women in Quebec since the introduction of the province’s Charter of Values, evidence that the Parti Québécois’s bid to curb religious symbols in some workplaces is inflaming social tensions.

BARTLETT, TN -(WMC-TV) – A booth at a festival for family fun is sparking outrage in Bartlett. Action News 5 received calls about a booth covered with anti-Muslim displays. One caller was too afraid to go on camera, but stated she found the display inappropriate and offensive.

Smashed windows, arson attacks and anti-Muslim threats have left town centre businessmen claiming Weston has a “very big racist problem” and that they are being targeted because of their nationality.

BY KHIN MAUNG WIN

THANDWE, Myanmar (AP) — Terrified Muslim families hid in forests in western Myanmar on Wednesday, one day after fleeing a new round of deadly sectarian violence that erupted even as the president toured the divided region.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party gained over one-fifth of the votes in Sunday’s general election, while the ruling two-party centrist coalition got its worst-ever result. The swing comes amid a Europe-wide surge in support for the far right.

BY NATASHA LENNARD

Along with the development of the NYPD’s “mini-CIA” after 9/11 came the shift towards constitution-defying preemptive policing.

A row has broken out over four MPs of Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party who wore badges in the Dutch parliament this week featuring a well-known neo-Nazi insignia which has links to the country’s infamous national socialist party of the 1930s.

It was around 04 o’clock Friday night that a passersby found the pig head outside Central Jamaat-E Ahl-E Sunnat mosque in Oslo. When TV 2 came to the place in the night saw the pig head lying in a trashcan at the mosque, but traces of blood were evident on the stairs at ingangsdøren.

By BART JONES bart.jones@newsday.com

In classrooms where Catholic girls once studied the Bible and prayed the Our Father, young Muslims now study the Quran and pray in Arabic.

Encouraging supporters across the country to “educate” their fellow Americans by entertaining conspiracies about the supposed threat Muslims in America pose to freedom of speech, tomorrow’s events are likely to appeal to extremists of many stripes.

(Telegraph)

Faced with a long afternoon trapped in the house with her five children last Saturday, Katherine Walton decided on a quick excursion – a trip to Nairobi’s popular Westgate Mall.

ST. CATHARINES, Ont. — A teenage girl roughed up by a trio of girls while walking from the mosque said she always felt safe in the community until now. The 17-year-old received a bump on her head, scrapes and minor injuries to her hands and nose during the confrontation.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham have finally found something they disagree about. Two weeks ago, McCain insisted to Fox & Friends derp-machine Brian Kilmeade that, no, “Allahu Akbar” is not something only terrorists say.

By now you have probably already heard of the harem of Tunisian sex-warrior slaves heading to Syria in order to give up their young bodies to the appetites of deprived rebels to fulfill ‘jihad al-Nikkah’ — “Sexual Jihad” — and are coming back to the country with bellies full of Jihadi babies.

HuffingtonPost

Bob Beckel made more anti-Muslim comments on Tuesday’s “The Five” in the wake of the deadly attack on a mall in Kenya.

Throughout his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), professional Islamophobe Robert Spencer misleads the reader by selectively comparing Muhammad to Jesus.

The Islamophobia that is alive in this country – from the anti-Muslim legislation to the illegal spying by the NYPD – casts a wide net on Muslims, citizens and non-citizens, similarly to the way it is casted on immigrants.

Yangon ( AsiaNews / Agencies) – The Dalai Lama has appealed to Burmese Buddhist Monks asking them to act according to the principles of the Buddha, avoiding violence or targeted attacks against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.

According to a New York Police Department source, Dr. Prabhjot Singh, who is Sikh and wears a turban and a beard, was attacked at 8:15 p.m. while walking along 110th Street near Lennox Avenue in upper Manhattan.

The menace that is Anders Breivik has not ended with his imprisonment in an IKEA furnished Norwegian jail. The ideology that he embraced, “Counter-Jihad,” continues to inspire misfits, including John Roddy and Tobias Ruth who fancied themselves “Knights Templar” Crusaders.

Outgoing Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has challenged Siv Jensen, leader of the anti-immigration Progress Party, to publicly apologise for using the term “sneak-islamization”.

(Via CAIR National)

CAIR’s report “Legislating Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the United States” is now available. The report’s key findings are the following…

The lawsuit filed Monday against Des Plaines and five of its aldermen is the latest to take on a “knee-jerk reaction to something Islamic or Muslim,” said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Chicago.

By Travis Gettys, Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman has again called for an Egyptian-style coup to remove President Barack Obama from office.

Religious tension in Quebec seems to have boiled over in this video captured on a Montreal city bus.The exclusive clip, obtained by Huffington Post Quebec, was taken Aug. 28. In it, a male passenger angrily tells a woman in a hijab to go back to her own country.

When the criminal is non-Muslim, in this case Alexis was a practicing Buddhist (you know they never commit violence), there is never an assumption or discussion on whether he or she is a “terrorist,” such explanations are reserved for Muslims. Alexis killed as many people as Nidal Hassan.

by Wells Fargo

Anyone who was watching Twitter as they watched the Miss America 2014 pageant saw a pretty ugly sight as the winner was announced.

Woman alleges she and family were verbally assaulted and spit on while shopping. A Muslim woman says she and her family were verbally assaulted, her son was spit on and they were told to “change your religion” while on a recent trip at a Quebec City shopping centre.

Paranoid anti-Muslim savior of western civilization Pam Geller must go through a lot of undies, considering her ability to soil them at the slightest hint of MUSLIM JIHAD TERROR.

The rabbi of Nashville’s largest and longest-practicing synagogue used the most holy night of the Jewish year to invite his congregation on an unusual trip.Going to the beleaguered mosque in Murfreesboro, he told them Friday, is part of Yom Kippur’s call to introspection.

Jon Stewart has seen some crazy political stunts, but Michele Bachmann, Steve King, and Louis Gohmert holding a joint press conference in Egypt was just too much for him. Stewart sighed, facepalmed, and begged to the comedy gods, “Please be a Jimmy Kimmel prank…”

By Tesla Rodriquez l tesla.rodriquez@winonadailynews.com

Winona Islamic Center founder Ahmed El-Afandi sat at a table Friday at Central Lutheran Church in Winona, exhausted but not without his voice, which he used to pass praise as far and wide as he could.

TORONTO – A Canadian Muslim organization is calling on Ottawa to spell out how it decides whether to allow controversial foreign speakers into the country ahead of a planned appearance by two conservative American bloggers.

I’m always surprised at hypocritical Islamophobes who will not fail to report on whether a Muslim picks his nose but have no time for injustices carried out in the name of their own faith.

(WMNF.org) The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Tampa, Hassan Shibly, told WMNF he found burnt pages from the Quran outside the CAIR Tampa office Thursday morning. He later posted a photo of the charred remains on […]

One of the more ridiculous outcomes of Watters’ jaunt into Muslimville, USA was the conversation O’Reilly and Watters had afterwards in which they claimed that all terrorists (or most) today are Muslims and Christians never commit acts of terror.

By Alf Gunvald Nilsen (The Guardian)

The results from today’s Norwegian elections are more or less clear: with some 26.8% of the vote, the Conservative party (Høyre) is poised to head Norway’s next coalition government.

VENICE – What was billed as a 9/11 memorial service took on elements of an anti-Islamic rally Wednesday, including a lengthy speech by the leader of what has been labeled an anti-Muslim hate group.

The anti-Muslim violence that erupted in Uttar Pradesh the past few days was instigated by Hindutva activists who forwarded a video they claimed showed Muslims lynching two Hindu men, in fact the video was from Pakistan and had nothing to do with Hindus. T

Youth sports, As part of its widespread surveillance of Muslims and Arabs, the New York Police Department has classified entire mosques as terror cells to monitor them, paid informants to “bait” Muslims into crimes, and spied on Muslim student associations at area universities.

I settled on a rock in Central Park, the New York skyline behind me. A glassy new skyscraper neared completion in its stretch toward the skies. I was striking a few poses in my superhero costume when a young boy perched higher on a rock chimed in.

Opinion by Nathan Lean, special to CNN

(CNN) – The attacks of September 11, 2001, were unthinkable, and are rightfully memorialized with the somber reflection that marks other tragedies of our nation’s past.

According to figures from the Australian Electoral Commission, the party received 38,856 first preference votes, representing 0.37% of the electorate. Of course, the real point of such parties is to gain publicity and to nudge the mainstream parties in a particular direction rather than to win lots of votes…

In a study due to be released in full at the end of the year, economists at the University of Linz in Austria examined whether wearing a headscarf affected women when applying for jobs at German companies.

Shaker Aamer left the comfort of England to do charity work in Afghanistan. He went there to help build schools for girls, which should be applauded by Western governments, especially given their incessant harping on the lack of educational opportunities for women and girls in the region.

By Ellie Bogue of The News-Sentinel

There is a new mosque going up on the south side of Fort Wayne. It’s the first time since the mid-1970s, either inside or outside of Burma that a new Burmese Muslim mosque is being built.

by Sheila Musaji

Just when you think that the Islamophobia echo chamber must have run out of possible nonsensical Muslim jihad plots to discover, they come up with something else.

Hani Khan, a former stockroom worker for Abercrombie & Fitch Co. who was fired for refusing to remove her Muslim headscarf, listens to a question during a news conference in San Francisco, Monday, June 27, 2011.

A microphone reverberated with the deep and sonorous Muslim call to prayer shortly before 2 p.m. Sunday. “Allaaaaaah — uh — Akbar!” An entire congregation bowed its head in prayer — a Jewish synagogue filled with Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hare Krishnas, Mormons, Pentecostals, Greek Orthodox, Baha’i and others.

The screenshot of Wal-Mart employees Facebook post. Photo courtesy of Council on American-Islamic Relations. After a photo was posted with anti-Muslim comments, an employee of the Wal-Mart Supercenter located on Southwestern Boulevard, Hamburg was terminated from his position as assistant manager.

Posted by Kaitlin Glanzer

A group of Muslims from West Hartford and the Farmington Valley will take over use of an empty Episcopal Church building in Avon, according to the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut.

On July 1st, two days before the coup that deposed President Mohamed Morsi, Juan Cole wrote an article titled, How Egypt’s Michele Bachmann Became President and Plunged the Country Into Chaos. The article detailed the major errors that Morsi made in his one year in office and also drew parallels between his movement and the Tea Party…

by Ethan Rothstein

Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ and the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center of Falls Church will co-host a “Day for World Peace” service this Sunday.

The Afghan Taliban forced women to wear burqas, and the Tory Taliban wants to force them not to. It seems peculiar to take away women’s freedom to choose their own clothing in the name of granting women greater freedom.

Recently, Aminata Toure became Senegal’s second female Prime Minister, it is unfortunately news that is bound not to make a ripple in the broader media. She is a widely popular figure in Senegal who is best known for her successful anti-corruption campaigns and efficiency.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — John Catsimatidis says the anti-Muslim rants that reportedly appear on the Facebook page of a retired Port Authority cop featured in one of his TV commercials are wrong, but the Republican mayoral candidate is standing behind the ad’s message.

The controversial Rise Up Australia Party, known for headline-making, anti-Islam and anti-multiculturalism policies, has endorsed Dale Edwards as their candidate for Leichhardt.

In light of the impending strike on Syria, a blast from the not-so-distant past.

Does anyone remember when the USA lied about using Mark 77 incendiary bombs on Iraq, successors to the napalm used in Vietnam?

As the author of the Muslim-conspiracy “Eurabia” thesis, Littman has served as a major source of ideological inspiration to the “counterjihad” movement, not least to the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

The Zubaida Foundation will host the grand opening of its food pantry Saturday in Lower Makefield, organizers said. “The pantry aims to serve the working poor and others who may be homeless,” said Lee Phillips, a spokeswoman for the mosque. “This is part of the mission of Zubaida Foundation to create opportunities for its membership to do hasanaat (good deeds) for the community.”

by TOM KLUDT, TPM

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) pushed back hard Tuesday against a Fox News host who raised concerns over a Syrian rebel’s use of a ubiquitous Islamic phrase.

The Canadian Press

CHICOUTIMI, Que. – Police in Quebec’s Saguenay region have been called in after a local mosque was vandalized over the weekend — splattered with what could be pig blood.

Two comedians are tackling the sensitive topic of Islamophobia in the way they know best: laughter. Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah are the co-directors of “The Muslims Are Coming!” which tracks a group of Muslim-American stand-ups as they perform across the country and tackle people’s stereotypes.

by Sheila Musaji

In 2009, Dean Obeidallah wrote The Muslims Are Coming! in which he talked about an early Muslims Are Coming efforts:

by Linda Sarsour

I learned a few days ago that the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division labeled my non-profit organization a “Terrorism Enterprise.”

Under the headline “Stephen Fry hits back at accusations of Islamophobia”, the Independent on Sunday reported yesterday on the controversy over Stephen Fry’sendorsement of Nick Cohen’s “superb” defence of their fellow atheist Richard Dawkins and his position on Islam.

At a conservative conference this weekend that drew several GOP presidential hopefuls, one of the speakers told the crowd that Republicans have been too nervous to criticize Obama “because the color of his skin is black.”

by Uzma Kolsy (The Guardian)

I was watching President Obama employ his devilish charisma, in routine fashion, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in early August.

The Daily News reports that the two Muslim teenage sisters say the NYPD ripped off their hijabs and shoved them to the ground after they were ordered to leave a Bronx park Monday night, at the Lester Patterson Houses in Mott Haven.

Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke successfully created a buzz and a backlash by invading our conscience with their bizarre and racialized twerkin’ sketch at the VMA’s. Hoping to once and for all bury her Disney fashioned Hannah Montana persona, Cyrus thought this was a good idea.

Subscribers to various cable TV packages may have noticed a new channel recently, but a New York State assemblyman wants it removed — and is threatening to boycott the provider.

Burlington residents driving down Lexington Street this morning were faced with an upsetting and unsettling sight. It appears someone vandalized the Islamic Center of Burlington’s sign (that is placed at the mosque’s entrance) overnight with white spray paint.

(France 24)

A 16-year-old girl, who filed charges against a pair of skinheads for what she said was an Islamophobic attack on August 12, attempted to commit suicide on Monday by jumping from a window in her apartment block.

BY DAVID SIROTA

“The Muslims are coming!” That is the tongue-in-cheek name of a new documentary by Muslim comedians. But it is also the deadly serious shriek echoing through the American right in response to the launch of Al Jazeera America.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory [official website] on Sunday allowed a bill that prohibits North Carolina judges from considering Islamic law in their decisions to become law.

NEW YORK — The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorist organizations, a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Fresh sectarian violence struck north-western Burma yesterday when a 1,000-strong Buddhist mob burned down dozens of Muslim homes and shops following rumours that a young woman had been sexually assaulted by a Muslim man, the police said.

NPR Boston

The Bible has inspired countless works of art: paintings, sculptures and murals that transform the text of Christianity into images.

A man launched a smoke grenade into a mosque and threatened to kill Muslims after he “snapped” following his brother’s death. Geoffrey Ryan, 44, approached the Al-Falah Braintree Islamic Centre, in Silks Way, Braintree, armed with two knives on the evening of May 22.

In Enemies Within, the new book from Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman on the NYPD’s indiscriminate and probably illegal spying program, reference is briefly made to a “real yellow cab, complete with an authentic taxi medallion registered under a fake name” used by the department’s intelligence division to conduct surveillance operations.

By DOMINIC GOVER

Terror police are investigating a DVD featuring Nazi propaganda and hardcore pornography which was sent to mosques and Muslim centres in London and around the UK.

Last week, federal Judge Vicki Miles LaGrange issued a permanent order striking down an anti-Islamic amendment to the Oklahoma constitution. Moreover, this order followed asimilar decision by a bipartisan panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upholding a temporary block on the same amendment.

Ipswich Muslims have defended their faith in the wake of Rise Up Australia Party candidate Anthony Mackin’s calls to eradicate mosques and ban the burka. Mr Mackin, a bible teacher, is the Blair candidate for a party that has banning the burka as one of its key policies.

A government program to screen immigrants for national security concerns has blacklisted some Muslims and put their U.S. citizenship applications on hold for years, civil liberties advocates said Wednesday.

Amina Sboui, a Tunisian activist who was detained for nearly three months, said on Tuesday she had left the radical women’s protest group Femen, accusing it of Islamophobia. “I do not want my name to be associated with an Islamophobic organisation,” she told the Maghreb edition of the Huffington Post.

BY IMRAN AWAN

As has been reported, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, was detained at Heathrow airport this weekend, in London under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

A state law-enforcement board and Lombard officials canceled plans for anti-terrorism trainer Sam Kharoba to teach a class Monday after a Muslim advocacy group labeled him a “Muslim bigot” and claimed he would be “promoting hate.”

STOCKHOLM — Scores of Swedish women from various faiths have posted pictures of themselves online wearing hijabs, or traditional Muslim headscarves, to show solidarity with a Muslim woman who was attacked in a Stockholm suburb for wearing one.

“Since the 1980’s, a shadow has darkened India’s polity and threatened the fundamentals of its social and political existence. This is the Hindutva movement, organized, led and driven by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its front organizations – the Sangh Parivar.”

In discussions on Egypt, Rios and Gaffney proudly supported the massacre against Cairo anti-Coup sit-ins (predominantly Muslim Brotherhood) in terms that are downright bloody-thirsty, gleeful and exuberant.

ISLAM and immigration have slipped out of Denmark’s political discourse since the centre-left government led by Helle Thorning-Schmidt came to power two years ago and dismantled the ministry for refugees and immigrants. Now they are back in the news, because the country’s first big purpose-built mosque is soon to open its doors.

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma constitutional amendment that would bar the state’s courts from considering or using Sharia law was ruled unconstitutional Thursday by a federal judge in Oklahoma City.

A CANDIDATE for the Prime Minister’s seat of Griffith has put outlawing the Islamic faith front and centre of her election campaign, branding it a “religion from hell” and claiming that building mosques in Australia is “high treason”.

Aissetou

This shocking piece was written by a 16 year old girl who lives in the western Parisian suburb of Trappes. It first appeared on HuffPost France. Warning, strong language

Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) claimed individuals tied to the Muslim Brotherhood have “infiltrated” President Barack Obama’s administration. “[W]e do have Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups and individuals infiltrated into this current Obama administration,” West wrote on his Facebook page. “This is serious.”

The appeal of non-violence as a means of social transformation is almost universal. Few deny its awesome power when unleashed with discipline. However, in the face of an impeding danger, especially one known to be as brutal as they come, it takes a lot of courage to remain nonviolent.

By Sabrina Siddiqui

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) coined a new term to describe the push for climate change action: “environmental jihad.”

Anti-Obama ugliness resurges as birther-in-chief Donald Trump joins top Republicans in Iowa. Coincidence? It’s been quite a week for anti-Obama racism. At the Missouri State Fair Sunday, rodeo fans cheered to see a “clown” in an Obama mask get run down by a bull.

Buddhists and Muslims clashed after the attack, and police imposed a curfew in the area.

Last month, a group of Buddhist monks had protested near the mosque, demanding it be relocated.

Richard Dawkins recently ignited a minor furor by pointing out that “All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge”. His defenders rushed to point out that his statement was merely a fact and as such there was nothing bigoted about it whatsoever.

The Missouri State Fair has permanently banned a rodeo clown whose imitation of US President Barack Obama has been widely criticised as disrespectful. In a statement on Monday, fair officials said that the rodeo clown has been barred from ever performing at the fair again.

Muneera and Nour went to the Urban Muslim Woman Show, an annual networking event that took place earlier this summer, in order to meet new contacts who might guide them in their careers. Like many Muslim women, they fear their professional identity may be distorted by the hijab and the presumptions people have about it.

Fox News guest Jonathan Hoenig suggested today that Keith Ellison’s ‘Wall Street transactions tax’ idea could be seen as ‘Sharia creep’ given that Ellison is a practicing Muslim and that, as Hoenig says, Sharia law prohibits trading of derivatives and speculation of any kind.

Placards that read, “No Muslim parking in the Westview Shopping Center” were recently posted outside of a local mall. In addition to issuing the faith-based crack-down, the text also pledged to tow anyone who violates the stated rule. The mysterious messages have since been removed.

One Brevard School Board member believes a textbook used in many ninth-grade classrooms has a pro-Islamic bias, but the board chair said the book was properly vetted before Brevard Schools adopted it. A third board member wants more information.

Momentum is growing in France for a ban on wearing religious symbols in the country’s universities. A new report recommends prohibiting students from wearing religious symbols, such as Christian crucifixes, Jewish Kippah skullcaps and Muslim headscarves.

Mike Huckabee tore into Islam earlier this week, using a recent terror threat that put United States embassies on high alert to suggest that the Muslims were “uncorked animals,” encouraged to be violent by the religion itself.

File this away under “What if this were a Muslim…?” Shimon Gapso, mayor of the Israeli city of Upper Nazareth, has recently published an article for Ha’aretz in which he lays bare his racist and extremist religious ideology. Gapso implicitly endorses a policy of ethnic cleansing, and defends his statements calling for the “Judaization” of his city.

The Italian-American singer/conceptual fashion embryo has been trying to make “burqa swag” happen for a while by traipsing around in burqa-like garments; now, a track that’s allegedly leaked from her forthcoming album ARTPOP indicates that she’s planning on unleashing her cultural appropriation on the innocent ears of America.

Stephanie Banister, a 27-year-old mother of two, is facing criminal charges after allegedly placing anti-Muslim stickers, like “Halal food funds terrorism”, on Nestle products in a supermarket. Never mind that though. Ms Banister has bigger problems.

A raucous crowd of supporters and protesters from both ends of the political spectrum showed up outside President Barack Obama’s appearance in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, with some of his detractors turning to racially charged attacks to express their opposition.

A Muslim family from Khirbat Al Mukhayyat near Madaba has been the guardians of the Church of Sts Lot and Procopius for over 80 years after an ancient mosaic was found under their kitchen floor, eldest son Abdullah told The Jordan Times.

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the president of Pakistan was warmly greeted by the US president, the first lady, and throngs of ordinary Americans, lined up in the streets to catch a glimpse and celebrate his arrival. It’s hard to imagine the Pakistani president being greeted with ticker tape parades in New York City, and standing ovations in Congress.

Guilt after time working at Camp X-Ray prompted ex-soldier to reach out to former inmates. Brandon Neely, 29, was a guard at Camp X-Ray when hundreds of detainees were held in grueling conditions in the open-air cages when the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay naval base opened.

ROUBAIX, France — Wearing head scarves and long skirts, the women glide along the faded back streets of this poor French town as they make their way to the mosque to hear the last prayer of the evening.

A new cartoon series in Pakistan is turning stereotypes on their head. It’s centered around a woman who doesn’t wear a burqa in the daytime but puts one on to transform into the “Burka Avenger” – and what’s more, she’s fighting for female education.

The so-called ‘scandal of the marriage of Aisha to the Prophet Muhammad’ is a favorite topic for Islamophobes and anti-Islam polemicists alike. It is a distorted topic that they luridly present, attempting to create the narrative that Islam allows men to have sex with prepubescent girls and that the Prophet Muhammad was a “pedophile.”

Erstwhile television host and right-wing shock jock Michael Savage — whose real name is Michael Weiner — expressed skepticism on Saturday about the weekend’s Middle East terrorism alert, which has closed U.S. embassies throughout the region.

Lauren Green’s interview of Reza Aslan backfired on Fox News. Green’s obvious bias generated sympathy for Aslan. Many Americans were horrified at her blatant display of Islamophobia.

The Skokie Plan Commission on Aug. 1 unanimously recommended a special use permit to the Kaleemiah Foundation, which would use the building at 4255 Main St. as a mosque – a Muslim place of worship – and not as a community center.

The note, written in capitalized block letters read, “Headwear may not be worn during the examination without prior written approval. We have no record of you being given prior written approval. Please remove your headwear and place it under your seat for the afternoon session.”

In a demonstration of what the Vatican spokesman called Pope Francis’ “particular attention to relations with the Muslim world,” the pope on Friday personally signed the Holy See message for Muslims at the end of Ramadan, calling for “mutual respect through education” between Christianity and Islam.

In the early hours of Monday morning, as a 55-year-old woman returned home after Suhur (closing fast) at a friends, she was brutally attacked in London’s exclusive Mayfair area in the UK. A man grabbed her from behind and repeatedly punched her in the back of the head.

For years, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a key propaganda asset for warmongers pushing for the US to invade Iran. Ahmadinejad could be counted on to make incendiary remarks that sparked widespread outrage in the West, and when what he actually said wasn’t radical or ridiculous enough, it could always be embellished, distorted, and amplified…

Regular readers will be aware that the United Kingdom’s Home Secretary recently banned the American anti-Muslim propagandists Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller from the UK (details here,here, here, here, and here).

Today his article in the Gawker inspired comments that ranged from thoughtful to outright hateful, with some clearly suggesting that Islam discourages education for women–a misconception that has been widely reinforced by the media blitz surrounding the shooting of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan.

The hateful emails that circulate about Muslims should be renamed ‘I’m frightened. Can we talk?’ since they stem from the universal pain and anxiety that arises from fear and uncertainty.

Last week, I was among several dozen Muslims who attended an iftar at the White House with President Obama. This has now become an annual tradition where the President extends greetings to the Muslim community and occasionally chooses to speak to other relevant issues.

MURFREESBORO — An Islamic Center of Murfreesboro leader Tuesday questioned why plaintiffs opposed to government approval of mosque construction continue to appeal their case.

An increasing number of individuals have lent their support to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement, including icons such as the physicist Stephen Hawking. The growing strength of the BDS campaign highlights the controversial nature of visiting Israel as it continues to brutally violate human rights through its occupation of Palestine.

Fox News and its right-wing supporters were cast into shame after Fox News’s interview with Reza Aslan went viral on the internet. Embarrassed and reeling from this intellectual beat-down by Reza Aslan, the right-wing responded by questioning Aslan’s credentials.

A police check of a Muslim woman wearing the full-face veil recently sparked riots in a Paris suburb, and has reignited a debate about the controversial ban of full-face veils in public spaces from 2011.

The book focuses on refuting the fundamental premise of Islamophobia–that Islam is somehow the most violent religion on earth. Sadly, more white Americans than not believe this to be true, which is why it’s extremely important that a book of this type is written.

Colombo Telegraph

As crimes continue with impunity, attacks against mosques around the country have become more obscene and portentously fatal.

A Fox News panel on Friday managed to expose the real story that the rest of the media has managed to miss in the New York City mayoral race: the deep Muslim Brotherhood ties that Huma Abedin supposedly possesses.

Anti-Shariah activists have a new target in their sights: Crayola. Late last week the Pickens County (Ga.) Republican party posted a call to action on its website about a new promotion from the world’s leading crayon manufacturer, which had begun offering free Islamic-themed coloring pages in honor of Ramadan. Zut alors!

Reza Aslan is one of my favorite authors and religion scholars. There aren’t many who are as capable as Aslan of igniting religious debate and dialogue within our broader culture today. Aslan’s most recent book, Zealot, is a look at Jesus in light of the historical context in which he lived.

Grinning brazenly as he lifts up his shirt to reveal an inflammatory image of a mosque being blown up, this man was pictured openly with his offending tattoo at a far-right rally.

Paula Doneman, Yahoo!7

FIRST ON 7: An alleged food contamination scare involving one of Australia’s favourite foods has exposed a One Nation candidate’s anti-Muslim campaign.

It is said, in Los Angeles, that Abdulwahab Benyoucef’s call to prayer is so lovely and so clarion that Muslims come to the mosque just to hear him. About three times a week, the Algerian actor — who has shortened his name to Ben Youcef — comes here in his traditional tunic to stand before the men kneeling toward Mecca.

A U.K. poll found that Muslims in that nation donate more on average to charity than other religious groups, NBC News reports. Adherents of Islam gave an average of $567 to charity in 2012, according to the survey of 4,036 U.K. residents by ICM Research. Jews gave $412, Protestants $308, Roman Catholics $272, and atheists $177.

BY ALEX PAREENE

A paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal to NYPD Commissioner and would-be Homeland Security Chief Ray Kelly’s WSJ op-ed.

By Garibaldi

It is with great sadness that we learned about the passing of Helen Thomas, who is being remembered in various media outlets for her amazing coverage of the White House as a trailblazing reporter who asked the tough questions.

Army veteran Wade Michael Page killed six people and then himself one Sunday morning at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee, Wis., as number of people gathered there for services last August. The attack is being treated as a hate crime and is considered by the FBI to be domestic terrorism.

By Bob Pitt (Islamophobia-Watch)

For those who question the links between the English Defence League and fascism, or indeed the clear parallels between Islamophobia and antisemitism, this is a cartoon recently posted on the EDL London Division’s Facebook page.

Aimed at offering the community a chance to understand the month of daily fasting that breaks at sundown each day, the open house at Islamic Center in Jacksonville hit the limit early, said Fawad Mansoori, a member of the board of directors.

By Annalise Frank — afrank@newsobserver.com

RALEIGH — The state Senate on Friday passed a bill that would keep courts from recognizing Sharia law.While proponents of the legislation said it would keep people safe from foreign laws, critics derided the bill as sending a message of intolerance and bigotry to followers of Islam.

They said the party needs a candidate with a strong background in national security — a credential that two of the GOP’s potential 2016 candidates, Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky, do not have. King has chaired the House Committee on Homeland Security.

If it was reported that police believed Muslims were behind such a campaign of terrorism and bomb attacks you can be assured that this would be front page news across media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. However when it is reported as an ‘anti-Muslim terror campaign’ there is considerably less attention.

It happened. A heckler. At my first solo book reading.

I was promoting my debut novel, Painted Hands, at Cambridge’s Porter Square Books. Though I was an attorney in a past life, I was ridiculously nervous.

By Richard Bartholomew (Barth’s Notes)

Richard Bartholomew notes Rev. Deacon Spencer’s associations with radical extremist organizations some of whom have the ear of Conservative politicos in the Republican establishment.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The University of California’s governing board plans to vote Wednesday on a new student member who would be the first practicing Muslim to hold the post and whose nomination is being vigorously opposed by some Jewish groups.

(NBC San Diego)

San Diego police arrested a man after he entered a mosque during early-morning prayer, yelled “terrorist rats” and made death threats.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found the Crestwood School 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…

A Norwegian musician with links to mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been arrested in France on “suspicion he was preparing a major terrorist act”.

The French interior ministry said Kristian “Varg” Vikernes constituted “a potential threat to society”.

A reader has informed us that one of the most discredited and increasingly obscure Islamophobes on the internet today, Debbie Schlussel, has smeared a prominent Arab Muslim environmentalist, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Ali Nuaimi.

The prosecutor told AFP that a preliminary investigation had been opened after a veiled young woman was assaulted on Friday while crossing a park in the centre of Reims by a man who was “probably drunk”.

It’s perfectly understandable that we don’t having a precise image of who lives here and the extent of key social issues – but the scale of our collective error is startling, as highlighted in a new survey by Ipsos MORI for the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London.

The dumped animals were found at the Rockingham Regional Memorial Park by cemetery staff on Monday morning. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board said the carcasses were removed as “a matter of urgency” and the local council and WA Police were notified.

The Department of Defense celebrated its 15th Iftar meal, July 12, at the Pentagon. Attending the event were senior defense leaders, White House and congressional staffers, foreign dignitaries, defense attachés, imams, Gold Star families, and Muslims who work in the defense community.

I am not generally a fan of David Aaronovitch and I couldn’t disagree more with him that Douglas Murray combines “intellectual and street-fighting skills” but other than that his following article, originally published in the Jewish Chronicle, is spot-on and hits a number of points we have made in the past as well.

by Sheila Musaji

Pamela Geller has posted Muslim “Youth” looting the dead at French Rail Crash.

Austin Community Newspapers Staff

Spectators who lined the July 4 route through downtown were treated to a wide variety of sights and sounds, among the approximately 110 entrants in Round Rock Sertoma Club’s annual Independence Day parade.

Former mayor of Reykjavík claims a mosque will threaten Iceland’s culture and safety. Ólafur F. Magnússon, who was mayor for little less than 7 months in 2008, is highly pessimistic about plans of a mosque being built in the open space of in the eastern part of Reykjavík, Eyjan reports.

Football player Oday Aboushi, recently drafted to the New York Jets NFL team, is the target of an escalating media smear campaign to associate him with terrorism and extremism, apparently for no other reason than his Palestinian ancestry.

A number of roads around Binfield Street in Tipton have been cordoned off after residents reported hearing a loud bang before finding nails and debris.

There are no reports of any injuries, West Midlands Police said, but streets were evacuated as a precautionary measure.

(FifeToday)

EXTRA police patrols are being sent out around a Muslim family centre in Kirkcaldy after it was targeted in a sickening hate crime.

via. AlJazeera English

Tens of thousands have gathered in Bosnia for the funeral of 409 newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide on the 18th anniversary of the atrocity in which about 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered.

By JoAnne Viviano, The Columbus Dispatch

Muslims in central Ohio are inviting their non-Muslim neighbors to learn more about the Islamic holy month of Ramadan by partaking in one of the evening fast-breaking meals that mark the observance.

By TODD PITMAN Associated Press

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar — Their bones are scattered in blackened patches of earth across a hillside overlooking the wrecked Islamic boarding school they once called home.

Ever since Bob Beckel has gotten a pay check from Fox News he’s jumped on the bandwagon of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim animus.

(AlJazeera English)

The belief that so-called “honour killings” are justified continues to be common among Jordanian teenagers, a new Cambridge University study says.

Lawyers for four inmates have also filed petitions with the US government to stop this procedure during the religious festival. Islamic community leaders are asking Barack Obama to stop the practice of force-feeding Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay who are on hunger strike during Ramadan.

ROCKAWAY — Morris County Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of whoever sprayed a swastika on the Islamic Center of Morris County. The symbol was sprayed on a glass door outside the building sometime between June 21 and 23, said Dr. Aref Assef, one of the center’s directors.

The Catholic Diocese of Sacramento acted wisely in canceling Robert Spencer’s speaking engagement on church property. Kolbe Academy Home School should now consider canceling his speech entirely at their conference in Sacramento later this month.

The Transportation Security Administration is advising travelers that the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins Tuesday, and that devout Muslims may be seen washing in airport bathrooms, praying aboard planes and constantly whispering prayers to themselves.

Pamela Geller is once again attempting to defend herself against those who find her efforts to be bigoted, anti-Muslim hate speech. This time she is upset about an article in The Times of LondonDon’t Bar the Demagogue.

The overwhelming and predictably jaundiced view from Western media has often resorted to a cartoonish black and white commentary on the competing political power centers in Egypt with some commentators even devolving into Eugenicist analysis, describing Egyptians as incapable of democracy because they lack the basic “mental ingredients.”

When it comes to the threat of terrorism versus the NYPD’s pervasive spying on Muslims, the At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn is where the rubber meets the road. The mosque is one of six plaintiffs, charging in a lawsuit filed last month by the American and New York and Civil Liberties Unions, that the NYPD has unlawfully and unconstitutionally engaged in “religious profiling and suspicionless surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers.”

Inspired by the overthrow of Egypt’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, Brooks put his racist, colonial mentality on full display, suggesting Egyptians are too stupid, and “Islamists” (Muslims?) too inept, to govern themselves.

(Reuters) – Anti-Muslim attacks and insults have risen steadily in France in recent years as some politicians and media increasingly present Islam as a problem for French society, a Muslim rights group said on Wednesday.

By Katie McDonough, Salon.com

The antiabortion additions to the measure were announced unexpectedly during a committee meeting late Tuesday.

by Ilisha

Mohammad Assaf received a hero’s welcome upon his recent return to Gaza, after winning the Arab Idol talent show in Beirut, Lebanon. His victory was celebrated throughout Palestine with chants, fireworks, and tears of joy.

“Observing the adhan on Channel 4 will act as a nationwide tannoy system, a deliberate ‘provocation’ to all our viewers in the very real sense of the word.” Lee said that the “vast majority of people in Britain” would not be aware of the “mass act of personal sacrifice and worship” about to commence.

We recently reported the bizarre story of two extremists arrested in New York City for plotting to smite the “enemies of Israel” with a homemade death ray gun. Muslims, referred to by the plotters as “medical waste,” were their primary targets.

How did this happen? How did the wheels fall off Ray Kelly’s NYPD?

How did Kelly’s policies manage to alienate the City Council, groups of Muslim-Americans and African-Americans, the New York Times, the FBI and even the Obama administration?

Lawyers for four hunger-striking Guantanamo prisoners filed a motion Sunday in federal court in Washington, DC, asking a judge to intervene and stop prison officials from force-feeding the men and administering medications associated with the procedure without their consent.

A FAMILY has condemned the suspected racists who left pig heads in their garden in Bradford. Members of the Ditta family were sickened to discover the pig heads on their front and back doorstop at their home in the Bolton area of the city.

A local newspaper in Georgia recently published a column ostensibly about U.S. Middle East policy but took a hard right turn into birtherism and racism, highlighting the Islamophobia problem at the local-level.

MUSLIM graves at a Newport cemetery have been desecrated with racist graffiti.The vandals used white paint to write “Lee Rigby murder”, “white power” and drew swastikas on four gravestones at Christchurch Cemetery.

A Forest Hills man was charged with using anti-Muslim slurs while repeatedly stabbing a man who was unlocking a Kew Gardens Hills mosque for morning prayers last year, the Queens district attorney’s office said Friday.

Now Reuters has filed a special report detailing the “official blessing” bestowed on anti-Muslim monks by state authorities. It is a must read and I am afraid that the tide of religious chauvinism and hatred is not far from reaching a crescendo that will witness a horrific genocide.

During the last weekend in July, The Kolbe Academy, a Catholic homeschool program located in Napa, California will host a conference in Sacramento where educators and home school instructors will gather to discuss how they can “engage the culture in a year of faith.”

Around half of mosques and Muslim centres in Britain have been subjected to Islamophobic attacks since 9/11, academics have warned as the far-right English Defence League prepares to march to the south-London scene of Drummer Lee Rigby’s murder.

(Seattle Times)

After a wave of criticism from politicians, advocacy groups and the public, 46 bus ads featuring photos of wanted terrorists will be taken down within the next few weeks, officials said Tuesday.

The revelation in 2011 that the New York City Police Department was spying on law-abiding Muslims rightly attracted scrutiny from the Justice Department, which announced last year that it intended to review the program.

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have been prevented by Home Secretary Theresa May from entering the UK to speak at rally of the English Defence League in Woolwich, close to where a British soldier was killed by alleged Muslim militants in May.

by Charlotte Silver, The Electronic Intifada

Khaled Gareb, a Muslim American living in San Francisco, did not need to read a sociological study to learn that his community has suffered from increasing hostility since11 September 2001.

Sam Harris posted a recent blog about my views on Jihadis that is unbecoming of serious intellectual debate, if not ugly. He claims that I told him following a “preening and delusional lecture” that “no one [connected with suicide bombing] believes in paradise.”

by Bob Pitt, Islamophobia-Watch.com

The Islamophobic myth that Muslims are engaged in the gradual but inexorable conquest of the West takes different forms, depending on where you live.

By Dan Amira, NYmag.com

We know. You’re already lost. Why would a KKK member want to help Israel? What is a Death Ray? These are fair questions.

A suspicious package found near a mosque in Walsall was a small home-made explosive device, West Midlands Police said tonight.

Almost 40 homes close to the mosque in Rutter Street, Walsall, were evacuated after bomb disposal experts were called to the scene

by Bob Pitt

Over at Exposing the English Defence League, Julie Blackadder draws our attention to a recent post at Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs blog, headlined “UK teen brutally beaten by 15 Muslims”.

It’s quite a wonder to behold, how ‘Tommy Robinson’ is fast becoming the Hugh Grant of far right nationalism. While poor old Nick Griffin, a fading light, does everything he can to capture our attention, his younger rival is racing rapidly up the Hate Hit Parade.

Deep seated Israeli paranoia and Islamophobia has backfired. A Jewish man who said “Allahu Akbar” was assumed to be Muslim by a security guard (who has obviously watched way too much “Homeland”) and killed because the obvious conclusion was that he must be a “terrorist.”

Having seen the type of headlines about Islam and Muslims that have proliferated over the decades I recoil at the association of a religion, Buddhism, with “terror” and violence. This kind of sensationalist treatment is unnecessary and when it becomes a cultural meme can have near irreversible consequences.

Bernard McGuirk, the executive producer of the radio program Imus in the Morning, on Thursday used the movement known as Christian Domestic Discipline to launch an attack on Muslims.

by Emperor

I know one place that needs a #MyJihad campaign: Florida. Some Southern Florida citizens went into freakout mode when they saw the word ‘Jihad’ tagged on the side of I-95 North near Delray Beach, not too far from Miami.

(NBC Philadelphia)

First it was a synagogue, then a church and now the property at 7401 Limekiln Pike will be transformed into a mosque.

Homes Secretary Theresa May was today urged to ban two US “anti-Islam” campaigners from entering Britain to speak at an English Defence League rally. Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are due to join the march next Saturday in ­Woolwich, where Drummer Lee Rigby was killed.

By Lauren Carasik (AlJazeera English)

Yet Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan has been caught up in a vortex of politics beyond his control. June 19 marks the somber 11th anniversary of Mattan’s detention in the inhumane confines of Guantanamo Bay.

By David Edwards (The Raw Story)

A Florida professor who teaches a class on terrorism is facing a formal complaint after he claimed that Muslims are taught to hate “from the cradle.”

ALBANY, N.Y. — An industrial mechanic with General Electric Co., who is also allegedly a member of the Ku Klux Klan, designed a deadly mobile radiation device that he intended to sell to Jewish groups or a southern branch of the Ku Klux Klan, according to a federal complaint unsealed Wednesday in Albany.

Gloucestershire Police said lit petrol was poured around the door of the Masjid-E-Noor mosque on Ryecroft Street about 01:00 BST. A spokesman said a man left the scene at speed at about 01:00 BST in a dark-coloured car being driven by an accomplice.

Abercrombie & Fitch is having a hard time proving in court that the Muslim headscarf worn by an employee who was fired in 2010 hurt the clothing company’s sales, Law360 reports.

Civil rights lawyers will urge a federal judge to declare the New York Police Department’s widespread spying programs directed at Muslims to be unconstitutional, order police to stop their surveillance and destroy any records in police files.

by Sheila Musaji (The American Muslim)

A man who might be a Somali, and who was not known to any of the regular worshipers in attendance at the mosque in Britain, came into the mosque, became agitated and and attacked worshipers with a knife.

A pregnant Muslim woman who was allegedly attacked in the suburbs of Paris by two ‘skinheads’ for wearing an Islamic face veil has suffered a miscarriage, it was reported on Tuesday.

Pamela Geller puts on her hate goggles and makes the connections between NSA spying and the SEKRIT MOSLEM CONSPIRACY: OBAMA ADMIN IS LISTENING IN ON YOUR PHONECALLS “SIMPLY BASED ON AN ANALYST DECIDING THAT” – Atlas Shrugs

by Sheila Musaji

Now we are asked to believe that Jihawg Ammo is only meant as a deterrent to “radical Muslims”, or as Sheik Yer’Mami called it, a culturally-sensitive solution to dealing with sudden jihad syndrome…”.

Two groups are seeking answers to what they say is a growing practice of Muslim and Arab-American groups having their bank accounts closed without cause or explanation.

by Pat Cunningham, rrstar.com

Sarah Palin, political guru to the brainless, said this the other day in arguing against American military intervention in Syria: “Let Allah sort it out.”

WASHINGTON — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin criticized the Obama administration’s decision to supply weapons to the rebels in the civil war in Syria today, arguing that the U.S. should “Let Allah sort it out” until there is a stronger leader in the White House.

From the “most moral army in the world”: Mr. Pundak believes it wasn’t “unnecessarily cruel” to raze Palestinian villages but he drew the line with Ariel Sharon on “killing enemy fighters” in exchange for “a glass of champagne.”

It’s not exactly breaking news that China has serious issues with freedom of religion and as an officially Atheist state is often very repressive against those observing religious rites. China has once again leveled restrictions on the persecuted Uighurs when it comes to practicing Ramadan.

27 year old Taylor-trash Chapman essentially ruined her life by posting a hate filled rant against two Dunkin’ Donuts employees, bizarrely threatening them with “nuking from Mars” and hurling the word “sandnigger” at one of them.

NEW YORK (AP) – A film student has pleaded guilty to hate-crime charges in what authorities called an anti-Muslim attack on a New York City cab driver in 2010. Michael Enright entered the plea Tuesday in state court in Manhattan. He is expected to be sentenced to 9 ½ years in prison.

A Republican congressman claimed on the House floor on Tuesday that members of Muslim communities in the United States have not condemned acts of Islamic extremist terrorism against the U.S. and therefore are complicit in those and any future attacks.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade told the leader of a violent nationalist hate group that targets British Muslims, “We got your back” and “it’s great what you’re doing.”

Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) boiled down the entire religion of Islam to “honor killings, beheadings [and] suicide bombings” in a message tweeted Monday night in response to a column by comedian Bill Cosby.

(Reuters) – Myanmar’s Immigration Minister has expressed support for a controversial two-child limit on a Muslim minority group that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the United Nations call discriminatory and a violation of human rights.

Watford’s MP has written to the Home office after anti-Muslim graffiti appeared outside a West Watford infant school.

The words “Quran is rubbish” have been scrawled on the pavement near Chater School, in Harwoods Road.

This past weekend, Cosby penned an op-ed for The New York Post in which he detailed some of the flaws in modern society. He also suggested we should take a page out of the Koran if we want to have healthier families, less crime and more productive people.

Mr. Snowden, a native of North Carolina, told The Guardian that he signed up in 2003 for an Army Special Forces training program because he wanted to fight in Iraq. “I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression,” he said.

Middle Tennessee got socked by outside instigators who “hijacked” a public meeting last week, turning what was meant to be a step toward harmony into something more akin to a KKK rally, according to a member of the Muslim panel that sponsored the event.

Via Salon.com

Support of any kind for a group on the State Department’s list is now grounds for a trial on charges of terrorism

An Islamic boarding school was set alight by ‘intruders’ in a suspected arson attack, just days after an Islamic centre was burnt to the ground in London. About 130 children and staff were evacuated from Darul Uloom, a Muslim madrassa or religious school, in Chislehurst, Kent, just before midnight on Saturday.

It is redundant to point out that Fox News has essentially adopted Islamophobia as a cornerstone theme that it seeks to widely disseminate into mainstream American culture. What is different is that the propagandizing of Islamophobia has only accelerated since the Boston Bombings and has reached levels that are reminiscent to the worst of post-9/11 coverage on Islam.

By Helen Hunt, Liverpool Echo

Shopkeeper was verbally abused and is now in hospital after trying to put the fire out himself

I’ve noted before that Pamela Geller Does Not Understand Freedom of Speech when she found fault with American Muslims and others for denouncing her hate ads. This she called an attempt to “impose blasphemy restrictions on free speech”.

(Via antiwar.com)

The governor of Afghanistan’s Kunar Province has reported a US drone strike against the Manogi District has killed at least three civilians, all children, and wounding seven others.

By Richard Engel, Chief Foreign Correspondent, NBC News

A former Air Force drone operator who says he participated in missions that killed more than 1,600 people remembers watching one of the first victims bleed to death.

Days after bombs went off at the Boston Marathon finish line, the New York Post splashed a photograph of 16-year-old Salaheddin Barhoum and 24-year old Yassine Zaimi across its cover under the headline “BAG MEN: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.”

Rumsfeld was invited to speak at an event hosted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. David Horowitz of course is the kooky, conspiracy theorist, racist, anti-Muslim bigot who uses money from wealthy donors to perpetuate the Islamophobia network.

(The Local)

Some 20 graves were found vandalized on Sunday morning in the Muslim part of a cemetery at Vitry-sur-Seine, 7.5km southeast of the French capital.

In late May, a threatening letter laced with the deadly chemical ricin was sent from Shreveport, Louisiana, to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a response to the mayor’s outspoken support for stricter gun control laws.

MANCHESTER, Tenn. — U.S. Attorney Bill Killian was greeted with shouts of “traitor,” “serpent,” and calls to “resign” or “go home” Tuesday night at an event aimed at improving relations between local residents and their Muslim neighbors.

Aside from the faulty attempt to imply that the fall of dictatorships in Arab countries was a result of “Islamists,” describing the protests in Turkey as a “Turkish spring” is nothing more than an exercise in useless rhetoric.

By Eric Nicholson

It may have been just a random prank: two dozen paintballs fired behind the Sonic in a McKinney strip center in the middle of Saturday night.

“Our nation’s leaders must be held accountable if they use foreign proxies to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens,” Gadeir Abbas, Staff Attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who is co-counsel in the lawsuit, said in a statement obtained by OnIslam.net.

Abass Darab closes his eyes, unwraps the prayer beads from around his wrist and clutches them in his lap. A half-minute or so later, he opens his eyes. He is ready, he says, “to help people know what my school stands for.” Often, that means explaining what Zaytuna College, a liberal arts college founded by American Muslims, does not stand for.

(Via Loonwatch.com)

Cathie Adams of the Texas Eagle Forum fearmongers about the stealthy Mooslim Grover Norquist.

In the eastern state of Shan a Buddhist mob went on a rampage after allegations that a Muslim attempted to set fire to a Shan Buddhist after the two had an altercation at a petrol station.

The FBI’s track record with the Muslim American community has been less than stellar to say the least. They have used former criminals such as Craig Monteilh as spies to infiltrate US mosques as “undercover/fake (one might say ‘stealth’) Muslims” who are tasked with finding, at times, even inducing incriminating “intelligence.”

Racist graffiti has been daubed at Muslim cemetery section.

Pictures of the racist graffiti was sent in by a reader. It shows anti-Islamic and racist grafitti written on the Muslim building used for funeral at Pleasington cemetery, Blackburn.

Vandals sprayed the words “London Justice” and some other similar phrases on the building. Police are investigating if the damage is in response to the Islamic radical attack on a British soldier last week in London.

by Glenn Greenwald

Two men yesterday engaged in a horrific act of violence on the streets of London by using what appeared to be a meat cleaver to hack to death a British soldier.

A York mosque dealt with a potentially volatile situation after reports that it was going to be the focus of a demonstration organised by a far-right street protest movement – by inviting those taking part in the protest in for tea and biscuits.

The local authorities in the western state of Rakhine in Myanmar have imposed a two-child limit for Muslim Rohingya families, a policy that does not apply to Buddhists in the area and comes amid accusations of ethnic cleansing during earlier sectarian violence.

By Ben Brumfield, CNN

Fears were growing in Britain on Monday of a surge in Islamophobia in the wake of the knifing death of a British soldier last week that his suspected attackers claimed was revenge for the deaths of Muslims worldwide.

Among other hostile statements, the anonymous caller said, “I’m going to throw a bomb in your (expletive) school,” according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which reported the incident to the FBI and the San Diego Police Department.

Civil rights leaders slammed an amendment added to the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill that would subject immigrants from Muslim countries for extra scrutiny.

WASHINGTON – While Muslim teams have been deployed to help those in need, US Muslim leaders have appealed to the sizable minority to join efforts to aid victims of a devastating tornado in Oklahoma that wiped whole blocks of homes and killed scores.

After growing religious tensions between some Christian missionaries and local Muslims, the annual Arab International Festival in Dearborn has been canceled for this year, organizers said Friday.

AFP, Athens -

Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn has threatened to mobilize 100,000 people against plans to build a mosque in Athens, state television reported on Monday.

Next time Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent Erick Stakelbeck talks about religious liberty, just remember that he doesn’t seem to extend that freedom to Muslims.

Yet another Islamophobic ad from a group linked to Pamela Geller has appeared in the Washington, DC Metrorail system, this one lamenting what it claims to be “apartheid” against non-Muslims and calling for the U.S. to cut off all funding to “Islamic” states.

The Cambridge University theologian Dr Tim Winter, one of the UK’s leading Islamic scholars, apologised on 2 May after footage emerged showing him calling homosexuality the “ultimate inversion” and an “inexplicable aberration”.

Legendary rock legend Gene Simmons sparked outrage in Australia earlier this month when he made anti-Muslim comments on a Melbourne radio station. “This is a vile culture and if you think for a second that it’s willing to just live in the sands of God’s armpit, you’ve got another thing coming,” the Israeli-born musician said on Melbourne’s 3AW radio.

Several commenters pointed out to us that the site we linked the previous story to has indulged in bizarre conspiracy theories. We instead link you directly to the research conducted by the Cancer & Birth Defects Foundation that concluded that genetic damage in Falluja, Iraq was worse than Hiroshima.)

FOX News Channel (FNC) has hired former U.S. Representative Allen West (R-FL) as a contributor, announced Bill Shine, Executive Vice President of Programming for the network.

A Muslim doctor has applied for permits to open a hospital in an area of Chicago with a large Muslim population. The hospital would be for the entire community, no matter what their religion, but would accommodate Muslim religious and cultural customs to make Muslim patients more comfortable.

Talk about irony, in the same state in which politicians wanted to make Christianity the state religion you have a move to ban the non-existent threat of ‘Shariah,’ if they had their way they would probably really like to ban Islam altogether (their real intent).

Helping their players to fulfil their religious duties, German football giants Bayern Munich have decided to build a mosque to help Muslim footballers to perform their prayers. The German football club agreed to a request to build a mosque in the Allianz Arena stadium to serve its Muslim players and fans.

(Via Huffingtonpost)

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) opened the door to a comeback for former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) Friday, saying he’d be a “great” pick for his second in command.

An Electronic Intifada investigation uncovers evidence that Thor Halvorssen, the founder of the Oslo Freedom Forum, receives significant funding from the same financiers who support the Islamophobes who inspired anti-Muslim Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik.

One small issue I have is with describing Geller’s activities as “criticism.” Criticism is not the right word but understandably the more accurate “batsh** crazy rants” to describe Geller’s activities wouldn’t fit the professional language required of an official press release.

By Cavan Sieczkowski

A Saudi Arabian student living in Michigan says he was questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after neighbors saw him with a pressure cooker and alerted authorities.

by Rondrell Moore

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) – A military man’s beliefs have been changed for the better, thanks to a new addition to his family.

A UKIP councillor has announced he will probably have to step down after less than two weeks because he posted a series of offensive messages about Jews and Muslims online.

AlJazeera

Are we witnessing a slow genocide?

Will the genocide be accelerated if powerful nationalist groups get elected? The humanitarian crisis continues in Myanmar.

By Lisa Wangsness (Boston Globe)

On a rainy afternoon in early April at Boston’s largest mosque, the sheikh in the seersucker suit was in his office, offering comfort and advice.

This nine minute exchange between Bill Maher and his guests: Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian,Joy Reid of the Miami Herald and Charles Cooke of the National Review Online is very telling.

RALEIGH – Sgt. 1st Class Naida Hosan is not a Muslim – she’s a Catholic. But her name sounded Islamic to fellow U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and they would taunt her, calling her “Sgt. Hussein” and asking what God she prayed to.

COLLEGE PARK, Md., May 7 (Reuters) – Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tuesday decried Buddhist monks’ attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, saying killing in the name of religion was “unthinkable.”

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — Fresno police say they’re disturbed by the brutal attack on an 81-year-old Sikh man. They upgraded the charges against 29-year-old Gilbert Garcia. He now faces attempted murder and will likely be charged with hate crime and elder abuse.

After the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were revealed to be Muslims who investigators said were motivated in part by radical Islam, American Muslims were quick to condemn the bombings and plea for Americans to not retaliate against the peaceful majority.

A member of a Chicago-area civil rights group made a disturbing discovering when she found a neighborhood card and novelty shop selling a card that depicted a young hijab-wearing Muslim girl — as a terrorist.

Inside Washington, the battle line is between a small coalition of peace and security, non-proliferation and religious groups opposing war and favouring a peaceful solution to the standoff with Iran, and a well-funded war machine comprising of neoconservative organisations who believe war with Iran should have started years ago.

An Algerian-American from Cambridge was attacked outside a Back Bay restaurant Saturday night, say police and a Muslim advocacy group,the latest of several assaults on Muslims since the Boston Marathon bombings three weeks ago.

On 18 April, three days after a bombing killed three and left many more wounded at the Boston marathon, a figure unknown to most Americans stepped suddenly into the national spotlight.

ELKADER, Iowa — Amid an expanse of undulating farmland, deep in the steep valley carved by the Turkey River, the town of Elkader sits most of the year in remote obscurity. Population 1,200 and gradually shrinking, it is the seat of a county without a single traffic light.

Farea al-Muslimi, stated that he came to the USA as an ambassador for Yemen to America and that he left the USA as an ambassador for America to Yemen. Below Muslimi speaks passionately at a Senate subcommittee hearing on so-called “targeted drone strikes” which are in fact terrorizing Yemenis.

While York Regional Police supports Ms. Geller’s right to free speech, there is an expectation of all members of our organization to act in accordance with our values and the expectations of our community.

As advocates condemn “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya, officials say no such group exists. YANGON, Myanmar — From the depths of obscurity, Myanmar’s highly beleaguered Muslim Rohingya ethnicity has become something of a global cause célèbre.

by Martin Robbins (Guardian)

Sam Harris is about as consistent as Glenn Greenwald is concise, which made their exchange of multi-thousand word cowpats last month particularly grueling reading.

An Army reservist and Iraq veteran who works as a cabdriver says a passenger he picked up early Friday at a Northern Virginia country club accused him of being a terrorist because he is Muslim, then fractured his jaw in an attack being described by Islamic activists as a hate crime.

“This may just be a picture to him, but for us it is very threatening,” said Kokoye, an Antioch resident who has lived in Tennessee for 17 years. “Muslims in Coffee County should not feel safe to walk outside their homes.”

There have been several stories over the past month of violence directed at Muslims that we have not covered but suffice it to say the perpetuation of hate and violence continues in Burma.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he still wants to close the military prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that he’s renewing efforts to work with Congress to shut it down.

The Anti-Defamation League turned 100 this week. Renowned for its early anti-racism efforts, the group can, and should, boast of its role in American Jewry’s unabashed and unqualified rise into the nation’s establishment.

Former Fox News contributor Jane Hall says that her ex-colleagues at the conservative network have been “waging a campaign” to link the words “radical” and “Islam” following the bombings at the Boston Marathon earlier this month.

The FBI said it is hoping surveillance video will help lead them to a pair of vandals who targeted an Oklahoma City mosque last weekend. The American Muslim Association on the 3200 block of N.W. 48th St. was damaged when the suspects spray painted racial slurs and other graffiti on the walls.

Though the vast majority of his speech focused on the ADL’s importance in fighting hate crimes, some conservatives have become outraged that Holder denounced “misguided acts of retaliation” against Muslims. Kelly addressed the issue during a segment on Monday.

Weeks after bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev’s alleged attack on the Boston Marathon that left three dead, local Yemeni woman and fervent jihadist Adila Nasser told reporters Monday that she wished her sons could be as dedicated…

By Hayes Brown on Apr 25, 2013 at 12:11 pm

Fox News is sounding the alarm about Muslim extremists in the aftermath of the Boston bombings and is using the tragedy to argue that President Obama is too weak or afraid to confront the threat.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) during a hearing on Friday said that he believes that Islam as a whole is a threat to the United States, labeling it as a religion that will “motivate people to murder children.”

Introduction

This is the first in a series of articles that will discuss the relationship between Zionism and Islamophobia. The impetus for this series is what many have already observed:

Update: We just received a statement from Hunter Todd about the event in which he confirms that he did search the backpack of a woman because she was wearing a hijab and says he had to do it to protect his audience.

More than a week before three people were killed and more than 260 people were injured in the Boston Marathon bombings, a Jersey City man carried two homemade explosives on an NJ Transit train, authorities say.

It is heart-warming and inspiring to see the evidently deep friendship between satirists Jon Stewart and Bassem Youssef, two popular comedians in their respective nations who have a finger on the pulse, not only of their own culture but global culture.

In the days following the Boston Marathon bombings, Fox News has become a haven for talk about the extreme threats posed to the United States by Muslims. Day after day, the network’s hosts and pundits have warned about an Islamic menace which is poised to take down the country.

After the September 11th attacks, many Americans wondered, “why do they hate us?” President George Bush gave his now famous explanation: “They hate our freedoms.” Radical Islam, we are told, is to blame.

by Juan Cole (Informed Comment)

Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions. Murder rates in most of the Muslim world are very low compared to the United States.

So let me start with the standard roll call: As an American Muslim, I condemn all violence in the name of religion. Terrorism has no religion and Islam is no exception. If the Tsarnaev brothers are guilty of the Boston bombings, then I hope they are brought to justice.

Controversial televangelist Pat Robertson is known for many things, especially for building a lucrative Christian media organization and leading a cohort of conservative evangelists.

Appearing on Fox News Republican talk show “Hannity” Monday night, right-wing columnist Ann Coulter said she’s sad that not only does she think the Boston bombing should shut down the nation’s immigration reform debate, she would like to see the alleged bomber’s widow in jail too, not for committing a crime but for “wearing a hijab.”

On his radio broadcast today, Bryan Fischer renewed his call for a ban on immigration from majority Muslim nations, claiming that our immigration policy should simply consist of the question “do you believe that the Quran is the holy book of God”?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) smacked down Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) attempt to link Boston bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to Islamic extremists based in the American Muslim community with no evidence, an allegation that emerged as part of a theme among House Republicans on Sunday morning.

Were you one of the pundits or newspapers who too quickly jumped on the Saudi “person of interest” story, only to have some egg on your face when authorities later cleared him of wrongdoing? Well, thankfully, Fox News’ favorite “terrorism expert”Steve Emerson has found an escape clause.

Predictably, the Boston Marathon bombings have spawned a renewed interest in “jihadist” (why is this in quotes?) terrorist activity. We are once again reminded of the “looming threat of radical Islam.” We are told that this is the existential struggle of our generation.

Muslim, Muslim-Americans, Tamerlan, Dzhokhar Tsarnev, Nevertheless, stereotypes of Muslims appear to be an important ingredient in how Americans think about policies targeted at terrorism. The Boston marathon bombing is likely only to reinforce this.

Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of his local mosque for ‘crazy’ behavior after getting involved a ‘shouting match’ with his imam according to one member of the congregation.

by Wajahat Ali

The twin bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, which killed two and injured at least 176, inspired divergent responses to a sudden, senseless tragedy.

Aliyah Frumin (MSNBC)

President Obama cautioned the nation not to rush to judgment about the Boston Marathon bombers. But that’s not stopping Republican Rep. Peter King.

Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert (R) on Wednesday connected the Monday bombings in Boston to the immigration debate and warned that “radical Islamists” were “being trained to come in and act like Hispanics.”

France’s national railway company banned its black and North African employees from working during President Shimon Peres’ visit last month over fears they “might be Muslim,” newspapers in Britain reported overnight Monday.

Right-wing Christian evangelist and famed Skeletor impersonator Pat Robertson is at it again, implying that the Boston Bombings were committed by Muslim terrorists. To be clear for the hundredth time, no one knows who committed this horrible act, or why.

Guardian

Nigeria could face a battle between rival terrorist groups after Christian militants threatened to attack Muslim targets in response to bombings carried out by the Islamist group Boko Haram.

The building site of a future mosque in the city of Coulommiers, east of Paris, was defaced with racist graffiti – including Nazi swastikas – over the weekend. “A pig’s head and Nazi tags were found inside the site,” Abdallah Zekri, president of France’s Observatory of Islamophobia told the AFP news agency.

A MAN racially abused a Muslim woman and demanded she took off her hijab before putting a kitchen knife to her throat.

David Norris, 39, approached Farduja Jama who was with her eight-year-old son in Morton Street, Barton Hill at 9am.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Police are asking for the public’s help in finding a suspect who allegedly menaced a man as he left a Queens mosque. The incident occurred after the victim left a mosque on Kissena Boulevard around 8 p.m. last Friday.

BY NATASHA LENNARD

A lengthy independent review found that the country’s highest officials and president condoned torture

Sen. Alan Hays, sponsor of an anti-Sharia bill, told constituents that supporting the bill meant they were standing up for Jesus Christ. Doesn’t that imply that Christians hate Muslims?

In an essay at Salon, Chris Stedman, an interfaith leader, assistant chaplain at Harvard, and author of the memoir “Faitheist,” urged the company to reconsider its support for provocative AFDI ads that pitted Muslims and gays against each other.

By Townsquare News Network

American Muslim organizations are condemning the Boston Marathon bombings and urging Americans of all faiths to join them in praying for the victims and their families.

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD

Going beyond even Pamela Geller, Fox News regular Erik Rush responded to the Boston Marathon bombing today by suggesting that we round up Saudis and then kill them — but don’t worry, he was mostly joking.

BY JILLIAN RAYFIELD

As information continues to unfold about the attacks, pundits continue to react badly [UPDATED]

Calls from some legislators to ban American Muslims from following Islamic law are born of a “bogeyman fear” that Muslims will try to impose their way of life on others of different faiths, an imam and author of books on Islam said Sunday at Congregation Beth El in Voorhees.

By SAMIR NAJI al HASAN MOQBEL

ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago. I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

Recently, a friend forwarded me a link to a web blog. The link points to a 400-page document, titled “Islam Virus”, which is a collection of misinformation about Islam – how cruel, inhumane and scary Muslims are.

It is an adage of war that if you want to emerge victorious, you must ‘know your enemy,’ but Akbar Ahmed’s The Thistle and The Drone proposes that the Western combatants of the ‘war on terror’ have completely failed to understand who they’ve been fighting for the last decade.

As names can be an indicator of how a civilization views itself and the outside world, names parents choose to give their children are at least something of a guide to what they hold in high regard and what they wish for their children. And as Muslims often choose names related to war and violence, could those possibly be indicative of their values?

by Jai Singh

There is currently increasing journalistic scrutiny of the atheist British scientist Richard Dawkins and his ally Sam Harris’ statements about Islam and Muslims.

(via LGF)

The founder of Rabbis for Romney says he won’t divulge the names of its members because he fears they will be criticized for breaking with the majority of Jews who support President Barack Obama.

A Long Island synagogue has canceled a controversial speech by conservative firebrand Pamela Geller. Geller was set to speak Sunday at the Great Neck Synagogue. She had been invited by the men’s club at the synagogue to give a speech on Sharia, the religious and moral code of Islam.

“They are always apprehensive about the drones, about their lives,” said Pehshawar psychiatrist. A report from the AFP this week finds that the psychological trauma suffered by Pakistanis living under the threat of U.S. drone strikes and Taliban fighting is “unprecedented.”

Members of Alif Laam Meem held signs that said “Muslims Say No to Domestic Violence” and “Muslims Say Yes to Women’s Rights” at the Men’s Rally Against Domestic Violence in Dallas on March 24 to protest the abuse of women and to put a positive face on a religion they say is often misunderstood.

Are there some extremist Muslim scholars, and some who have issued fatwas that require a response from mainstream Muslim scholars. Absolutely! Are mainstream Muslim scholars attempting to counter these extremists with clarifying fatwas and statements? Absolutely!

The Oklahoma legislature passed a bill Monday to prevent the use of religious or foreign law in state courts. Between 2010 and 2012, lawmakers in 32 states introduced similar bills, and six states – Oklahoma, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota and Tennessee – enacted such bills into law.

FEMEN “International Topless Jihad” protests seemed to have been a good way for Eurocentric feminists to ignore Muslim feminists while at the same time gaining significant media attention.

A police spokesman Sunday said that it is almost certain that the fire Saturday morning in a mosque in Enkhuizen was lit. How the arson was carried out, the police did not disclose. It is not yet clear in which way the perpetrators must be sought.

It’s important to highlight that there are conflicting reports on what caused this tragic fire and that it is not established that it was the result of arsonists. The persecution that Muslims have faced in Myanmar has been on a horrific scale and does not engender trust in the authorities.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A fierce battle between U.S.-backed Afghan forces and Taliban militants in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan left nearly 20 people dead, including 11 Afghan children killed in an airstrike and an American civilian adviser, officials said Sunday.

A mosque was vandalized in a Palestinian village south of Bethlehem in an apparent “price tag” attack retaliating for the serious injury of an Israeli girl. Graffiti spray-painted Sunday on the mosque read “revenge for Adele Biton,” “regards from Adele” and “price tag.” The tires of a car parked nearby also were slashed.

New York City,Kelly is asked how the department’s surveillance methods have changed in the wake of a Pultizer Prize-winning investigative series and the revelation that the very same surveillance program has generated zero leads. His reply: “Nothing…”

by Clint Cooper

On Friday, about 75 young people — Muslims, Christians and Jews — will gather at the DuBose Conference Center in Monteagle, Tenn., and talk about all that supposedly weird stuff they do in their particular faith.

A month ago vandals spray-painted racial slurs onto the exterior walls of the Guelph Muslim Society Community Centre. Police labelled it a hate crime. “We’d never felt any sort of hate crime so to see that happen was kind of a shock”, says Muslim Society member Noorie Nash.

Western feminists seem to have a love-hate relationship with Muslim women. On the one hand, they want to “save” them from what they perceive as their cultural and religious bondage. On the other hand, they seem rather quick to stereotype and dismiss them as brainwashed idiots.

The Family Research Council’s President Jerry Boykin said this week that U.S. Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Louis Gohmert (R-TX) are “standing on the word of God” in their mission to find and punish Muslims and Muslim supporters in the U.S. government.

Leftist Jewish groups are calling on a Long Island synagogue to cancel a speech by an outspoken Jewish blogger known for her anti-Muslim views — raising questions about a double standard on free expression.

Revelations on the sexual abuses by the Tuzla bishop – Karadžić and Mladić’s spiritual guide – have dragged the Serbian Orthodox church through one of the major scandals of the latest years.

BY CHRIS STEDMAN

Anti-Islam crusader Pam Geller’s effort to foment hate between the two groups is based on lies and doomed to fail. I have an earnest and sincere question for the LGBT community: Do you support Pamela Geller?

By Adam Peck

Tennessee is not the first state to try and carve out exemptions to education funding that target only Muslims.

Buoyed by its meteoric domestic success, the far right party is planning to expand ‘wherever there are Greeks’ Emboldened by its meteoric rise in Greece, the far-right Golden Dawn party is spreading its tentacles abroad, amid fears it is acting on its pledge to “create cells in every corner of the world”.

Two columns have been published in the past week harshly criticizing the so-called “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens: this one by Nathan Lean in Salon, and this one by Murtaza Hussain in Al Jazeera.

ACCORDING TO BARRON, the first Jewish-Arab Seder in D.C. was held 25 years ago, bringing people together to work toward peace in the Middle East. “We are still working,” said Barron, “but look how far we’ve come and how many friendships we have built together.”

A reputed member of a white supremacist group has pleaded guilty to hate crime charges in the beating of 2 Middle Eastern men in New Jersey. U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman says 28-year-old Michal Gunar pleaded guilty Tuesday to hate crime conspiracy and assault charges. He faces up to 15 years in prison when he’s sentenced.

Remember Daniel Pipes, the guy who former President George W. Bush nominated to lead the “US Institute of Peace,” and who was supported in that endeavor by the AJC, ADL and Neo-Con outfits such as his buddy Johnathan Schanzer‘s Foundation for the Defense of Democracies?

by Glenn Greenwald

As two more Afghan children are liberated (from their lives) by NATO this weekend, a new film examines the effects of endless US aggression

By Janice Neumann, Special to the Tribune

Christianity, Islam and Judaism may seem like totally different religions, but participants at an interfaith forum in Frankfort learned they all share some basic principles.

Sometimes expressions of community manifest at unexpected yet necessary moments. Illustrative is the American response to the recent proliferation of anti-Muslim hate advertisements on government owned public transit systems in cities around the country.

Self-identified as Muslim by religion, Arab by race and American by culture, an OU alumna cleared misconceptions about Islamic women’s rights at a question and answer session Monday.

RANGOON—Satellite images released by Human Rights Watch on Monday revealed that during the recent unrest between Buddhists and the Muslim minority in Meikhtila town, mobs burned down three neighborhoods covering 60.5 acres and containing at least 828 homes.

A Madison, Wis., gas station sign board known for its quirky messages is causing a stir for its latest posting. As CBS affiliate WISC-TV reports, a sign posted outside of the BP in the Willy Street neighborhood Thursday morning read: “DONT DIE A VIRGIN TERRORISTS ARE UP THERE WAITING FOR YOU.”

As I reported in a piece for the print magazine last summer, Florida has emerged as sort of the Thunderdome of the anti-Shariah movement, with a host of lawmakers at the municipal, state, and federal level working hand-in-hand with a dedicated group of activists to combat the invisble spectre of Islamic law.

The Western press and social media often seem to exercise two options for dealing with the Muslim population of the world: overt, unabashed Islamophobia or slightly subtler Islamophobia.

ROME – Pope Francis reached out in friendship to “so many Muslim brothers and sisters” during a Good Friday procession dedicated to the suffering of Christians from terrorism, war and religious fanaticism in the Middle East.

Pamela Geller has published Islamic ruling encouraging “Sexual Jihad”: Prostitution for the holiest in which she introduces an article from Al Monitor Tunisians Raise Alarm on Possible Fatwa Encouraging ‘Sexual Jihad’

BY NATHAN LEAN

How the New Atheists’ anti-Muslim hate advances their belief that God does not exist is not exactly clear. In this climate of increased anti-Muslim sentiment, it’s a convenient digression, though.

by Juan Cole

The pope washed and kissed the feet of 12 inmates, two of them women and two of them Muslim (one of the women was Muslim).

Hatef Mokhtar of The Oslo Times had a very interesting interview on a wide range of subjects with Tarja Cronberg, a member of the European Parliament, the whole interview is well worth the read if you are interested in European issues that effect the whole world.

Christians face discrimination in many places in the Muslim world, including in Egypt, however it certainly doesn’t help when Fox News, a bastion of Right-Wing fundamentalism (of both the political and religious variety) pushes misleading stories.

JERUSALEM — Every Christian knows the holiest places in Christendom are in Jerusalem. The holiest of all, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was erected in 325, over the site where it is believed Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead.

Muslims are trying to do their part to help others. The Islamic Society of Michiana held a blood drive Friday organized by the South Bend Medical Foundation.The drive was open to the public and held immediately after the Friday prayer service which over 250 people attend.

Police officers in Russia forced three men in a Muslim cafe to cut their beards at gunpoint, it has been claimed. During an inspection of a Muslim cafe in the Russian city of Surgut police officers apparently threatened some visitors with automatic weapons and with a lighter.

The Nubian Benevolence Association was the official sponsor for the Muslim Women in (STEM) presentation at the Lorton Community Library on Saturday, March 23, but there was little doubt that Hajjar Ahmed, daughter of the organization’s co-Founder Hossam Ahmed, was the driving force behind the event.

After a series of attacks on mosques, wild rumours about animal slaughter and an attempt to outlaw the halal system of classification, the BBC’s Charles Haviland investigates how Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority is being targeted by hardline Buddhists.

Intellectuals sign online petition after Supreme Court ruling

(ANSAmed) – PARIS, MARCH 25 – The Islamic veil is still very much a national controversy, data from a front-page BVA survey in Le Parisien newspaper showed on Monday.

Glenn Beck suggested Tuesday that the ethics investigation into the erstwhile presidential campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is retribution for the congresswoman’s outspoken crusade against what she has called the threat of radical Islam.

The most interesting thing about Argentine Pope Francis may be not just that he’s the first Latin American to head the Vatican, but also that he may become the Church’s biggest champion of interfaith dialogue ever.

(Via Comedy Central)

Despite Tennessee lawmakers’ best efforts, Sharia law manages to work its way into the state building’s men’s room.

In an upcoming biography of Fox News president Roger Ailes, author Zev Chafets reports that Ailes hasn’t donated to any Muslim charities, and connects that decision to comments tying all Muslim charities to terrorism.

Toronto police say a male suspect allegedly hit and harassed a pregnant woman on the street because she was wearing a hijab. Police allege a jogger went out of his way to strike the woman in two separate incidents during the last month on Yonge Street near Eglington Avenue.

Oh noes, it appears the wily stealth Mooslims installed a terrorist sink in the Tennessee state legislature! Or so thought a couple of Tennessee House and Senate members, namely Republican Sen. Bill Kreton and Rep. Judd Matheny.

Rejecting of their hate message against Muslims, many Swedes have showed up in the southern city of Malmo to protest against a far-right group, leading to abort the anti-Muslim rally. “There were angry skirmishes after the anti-racists marched from Möllevångstorget square to the Stortorget square around noon, a lot of people seemed ready for a fight,” said The Local’s Patrick Reilly from the scene.

One does not even have to wonder whether the media or Islamophobes would react in a similar manner if Holmes converted to Judaism or Christianity and proclaimed to justify his actions through those religions!

The man who introduced the CIA’s Chief Technology Officer, Ira “Gus” Hunt, at yesterday’s GigaOM Structure:Data conference in New York City thought it would be funny to quip, “If you don’t give a big round of applause for our next speaker, he’s gonna find out and it’s gonna go on your permanent record.”

Seeking a bigger support among German youth, a rightist group is using Facebook, YouTube and other social media websites to spread its racist, anti-Islam message. “They are clearly racist,” Alexander Häusler, an expert on right-wing extremism at University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf, told Deutsche Welle.

(Via LoonWatch.com)

Anti-Islam vandalism increases in Kandy Sri Lanka. In order to hurt the Muslims in Kandy, filthy English wording has been written on the iron doors of a closed shop.

(Guardian)

Burma‘s president has declared a state of emergency after two days of sectarian violence in a central town that has killed at least 20 people.

(The Local)

Germany’s security service the Verfassungsschutz is a hornet’s nest of conflict, envy, jealousy and inappropriate insults, wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung, citing inside sources.

Agence France-Presse

A Frenchman who ripped a Muslim woman’s veil off her face as she strolled in a fairground was Wednesday given a five-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to compensate his victim.

This was the main slogan of a protest rally organized by a group of Georgian nationalists outside the government’s house. Members of the non-governmental organization named “National Front” staged the protest against construction of a new mosque in the sea-side city of Batumi near the Turkish border.

Islamophobic acts, jokes in bad taste or overtly racist provocations? In the past few days, mosques in several regions of France, received by mail envelopes containing pork. Some mosques, such as the one in Mulhouse, decided to lodge a complaint.

A Scottish reverend has invited Muslims to pray alongside Christians in an Aberdeen church because the nearby mosque is so small that some worshippers were forced to pray outside.

When local school officials in the sparsely populated far east of the Stavropol region announced that girls in hijabs, the Islamic head covering, would no longer be allowed in government schools, the Salikhovs had to make changes.

by Glenn Greenwald

US-born Hamid Hayat was sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly attending a terrorist training camp when he was 19.

The mainstream media is a bit more reflective, realizing it rubber stamped government propaganda and fed into the hysteria of invasion with patriotic fervor. Questions regarding blowback, repercussions, ramifications from this war however have not really been analyzed in-depth.

In 2005, then Pope Benedict quoted from an obscure medieval text which declared that the Prophet Mohammed, founder of the Islamic faith, was “evil and inhuman”, enraging the Muslim population and causing attacks on churches throughout the world before an apology was issued.

BY EMAAN MAJED

A justification for targeted killings in the middle east was to shield women from violence. They’ve made it worse.

While the University considers itself a diverse community, some students have felt left out of the equation — until now. The Second Reformed Church, located at 100 College Ave., will now offer a place for practicing Muslims to go for their Friday worship, Pastor Doug Shepler said.

Lawrence Krauss was under the impression that attendees of the debate were being forced to sit in segregated seating when clearly the troubles began when a few atheist men demanded to sit in-between Muslim women who had voluntarily chose to sit apart from men.

by Kevin McDermott (StL.Today)

JEFFERSON CITY • In what has become a regular ritual here, a state Senate committee heard testimony Tuesday on a bill that would prevent Sharia Law from taking over Missouri.

Hate group leader, Far-right Catholic fanatic and anti-Muslim Crusader/terrorist-inspirer, Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer of Our Lady of the Cedars Church, a full-time paid shill for racist David Horowitz has been pretty sore that I exposed the fact he is an ordained deacon.

(Via RollingStone.com)

New report details the damaging effects of the NYPD’s Muslim surveillance regime.

A 53-year-old man is charged with a hate crime, accused of setting fire to a Green Bay convenience store owned by a Sikh American – seven months after the most deadly U.S. attack on Sikhs in recent memory at an Oak Creek temple.

We covered the #MyJihad ad campaign back in December, a campaign that seeks to reclaim the term Jihad from Muslim and anti-Muslim extremists alike.

FrontPage Magazine is edited by David Horowitz, a conservative activist who once gave money to Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders. But Mark Tapson says that it’s all part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s plot to win “the hearts and minds of the young.

Jerusalem’s Mamilla, or Maman Allah, cemetery has been a Muslim burial ground since the 7th century. It is said to hold the remains of companions of the Prophet Muhammad, soldiers and officials from the rule of Saladin in the 12th century, as well as generations of Jerusalem’s most important families.

BRADFORD – Extending their hands to their Jewish neighbors to save their worship place, Muslims in the northern British city of Bradford are rallying efforts to raise funds for preserving the last remaining synagogue in the city.

Swedish Muslims have slammed the government for failing to combat discrimination, submitting a report to the UN with a list of proposed measures, such as setting up an inquiry into the abuse of Somali migrants in the tiny town of Forserum.

by Garibaldi

John Brennan‘s appointment to head the CIA reached the senate floor in a final phase that was supposed to witness a quick “stamp of approval” but in a stunning move Sen. Rand Paul announced that he would filibuster the appointment…

An engineering student at Kandahar University, Abdul Qayum was at the center of a major incident over the weekend, when he was detained by a CIA “strike force” that attacked his university and tortured in detention before President Karzai secured his release.

The New York Police Department’s surveillance of the Muslim community has had harmful consequences, according to a report being released Monday from the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition and its partners.

If the Washington Post’s deceptively titled article, ‘Rise of a Bosnian Mayor With Headscarf Challenging Assumptions about Islam,’ is the best our major media can do, then perhaps it’s good they’re dying. The title’s half the length of a tweet and it happens to do everything but challenge assumptions about Islam.

(Guardian)

The majority of Muslims physically attacked, harassed or intimidated because of their faith are women, according to the first results from the UK’s official helpline for victims of Islamophobia.

I headed to the dining hall and opened the Tufts Daily, only to see an advertisement (scroll down to see the ad) with the boldfaced words “FACES OF ISLAMIC APARTHEID” with pictures of individuals behind photo-shopped crosshairs within the advertisement…

WESTMINSTER, Md. — A citizens group aims to limit new construction at a former Catholic school complex in rural Howard County that an Islamic community is considering buying.

BY JILLIAN RAYFIELD

Florida is once again mulling a ban on sharia law, this time passing a bill out of the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee that would prevent courts from considering “foreign law” when handing down legal decisions.

Tablet has a roundtable about the Israel lobby. All the voices are Jewish. The best commenter is Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace, though Noah Pollak of the Emergency Committee for Israel lets his guard down in a remarkable manner.

“What are they doing at CPAC? Essentially, they are enforcing the Shariah,” said anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller. “Under the Shariah, the blasphemy laws, you cannot say, you cannot offend, you cannot criticize and you cannot insult Islam. That is effectively what they’re doing, they are enforcing the Shariah.”

Guelph police are investigating after racial graffiti was discovered on a mosque. Police say “numerous” spray-painted graffiti markings were discovered on the outside of the Guelph Muslim Society’s mosque at 286 Water Street early Tuesday.

By Hayes Brown on Mar 5, 2013 at 10:15 am

A grassroots campaign aimed at countering hateful anti-Muslim ads in New York’s subway system has gone live, placing posters in ten locations across New York City.

Alleging defamation, France’s interior minister Manuel Valls is trying to shut down a website which gives a voice to the victims of police harassment. The site has become especially popular with France’s Muslim population, who often claim that police target, harass and even kill them with impunity.

Two exchange students attending school in Perham, Minnesota say they were kicked out of a church there when they questioned a nationally known speaker who says “Islam equals terrorism.”

The annual Israel lobby confab has once again put its seal of approval on Islamophobia. A key member of what has been termed the “Islamophobia network” appeared Sunday at an officially scheduled session at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference.

Is Van Doorn’s conversion sincere or a Far-Right political stunt? He claims it is sincere and confirmed the speculation regarding his conversion to AlJazeera.

Quebec has the second largest Muslim population in Canada. The census bureau says about 200,000 Muslims live in Quebec. It is perhaps the fastest growing religion in Canada and is expected to triple within the next 20 years, but critics say with all of its diversity, Quebec is also perhaps one of the most Islamaphobic provinces in the country.

Vera Eyzendooren, president of the San Bernardino County Federation of Republican Women, accused a San Francisco attorney who is running for a leadership role in the state party of being a terrorist sympathizer, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

On Sunday night at Beitar’s Teddy Stadium, members of La Familia were in place an hour before kick off in the league game against Maccabi Netanya, chanting abuse not fit for a family newspaper at the club’s president – a former owner of Portsmouth – Arcadi Gaydamak.

The height of Spencer and Geller’s influence was in the summer of 2010 when they succeeded, along with their cohorts, in making Islam part of the Conservative movement’s “culture wars,” most notably with the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.”

KABUL, March 2 (Reuters) – NATO said on Saturday its forces had accidentally shot dead two Afghan boys, in the latest of a series of reports of civilian deaths at the hands of international troops.

“It has turned out that the praying Muslims are not at all Russian citizens and they are not Moscow residents. They are labor migrants. There are only 10 percent of Moscow residents among them and building mosques for everyone who wants it – I think this will be over the top,” Sergey Sobyanin said in an interview with Moscow’s Echo radio.

In 2010, Lleida, in the northeastern region of Catalonia, became the first Spanish town to impose such a ban. It was temporarily suspended by a regional court following an appeal by a Muslim association but then later upheld.

MediaMatters points out that this is not the first time Hannity has attacked Ellison for reasons related to his religion. In 2006, when Ellison was sworn into office and took his oath on a Quran, Hannity compared it to using “Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ which is the Nazi bible.”

According to Pipes, “the Philadelphia region has witnessed 14 robberies (or attempted robberies) of financial institutions in the past six years in which the thieves relied on an Islamic full-body cover”. His solution? “Ban the niqab and burqa in public places, as the national governments in France and Belgium have recently done.”

US officials continue to feign shock at the decision to ban special forces from the Wardak Province of Afghanistan, but as details of their behavior in the province continue to emerge, the only wonder is that they managed to operate for so long without such a banning.

Istanbul — It concerns me that Islamophobia, an irrational fear of Islam and animosity toward Muslims, is becoming a dominant paradigm through which all Western-Muslim relations are now being explored.

At least 50 Muslim shop owners in Narammala in the Kurunegala District, have received death threats by mail. They have been warned to close their shops by March 31 or face death, Kurunegala district organizer of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) Abdul Sathar said.

By Lyda Longa

The U.S. Department of Justice and police are investigating the shooting of a Port Orange man driving over the Dunlawton Bridge as a hate crime.

Yesterday, we reported on how Accuracy In Media’s Cliff Kincaid and Rick Wiles of TruNews believe that President Obama is supporting a global Islamist movement and should be arrested.

None. Zero. That’s the number of fatalities or injuries from terrorist acts by American Muslims over the last two years, according to a recent report from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Look, the FBI found somebody that they didn’t have to give weapons to but was actually amassing weapons by himself, in order to kill Blacks, Jews and others.

An interfaith group is speaking out against Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) claim on Thursday that Americans need the Second Amendment’s protection in order to shield the nation from Sharia Law.

Student activists in California have exposed inflammatory remarks made by a university lecturer who is the head of an Israel lobby group that tries to pressure college administrations and state officials into investigating what the lecturer calls anti-Semitism.

Tea Party Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told a conservative radio show on Thursday that the GOP must oppose gun regulations to protect the country from the threat of “Sharia Law.”

A large chunk of Abdul Rahman’s home is gone, and so is his oldest son, Shakur. The ethnic Rohingya farmer tore down nearly half his home for scrap needed to secure his son’s passage on a boat bound for Malaysia.

The mayor of Malmö has slammed an upcoming exhibition of work by controversial Swedish artist Lars Vilks, saying he hoped no one would visit the gallery to see artwork he said was “associated with xenophobes”.

CONCRETE, Wash. — A local civil rights organization is asking the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation in to anti-Muslim comments allegedly made by a Skagit County Middle School teacher in the classroom.

An office worker who left a severed pig’s head outside a Muslim place of worship on Boxing Day has been spared jail.Liam Ferrar was sentenced to 12 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for a year, after a court heard he was disgusted by his actions and had written a letter of apology to his victims.

Khazir previously worked in PR and internet search engine optimisation when he noticed how videos of jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan received large numbers of hits. He said: “Young people especially are often recruited and indoctrinated using videos posted on different social media channels – this can be by simply following a Twitter link.”

Law enforcement sources have uncovered several articles about Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian anti-Muslim/Leftists terrorist in the bedroom of killer Adam Lanza.

When Kansas State Senator Susan Wagle voted for Senate Bill 79 that would ban Sharia law in Kansas, she said that a vote in favour of the legislation was “a vote to protect women”. “In this great country of ours, and in the state of Kansas,” Wagle said, “women have equal rights.”

A Tube worker has been caught posting vile racist and anti Muslim messages online.

Train engineer Martin Aitken used Facebook to insulted Muslim, Asians and disabled people in a series of offensive posts.

George Washington’s birthday, celebrated annually on Febr. 22nd, is an opportunity to reflect upon his exemplary character and the example he set for future generations of Americans.

ALL Muslims should renounce their religion immediately in favour of Christianity or atheism – it would be better for them and for everyone else, controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders said in Melbourne on Tuesday.

Feb 18, Colombo: BBC Sri Lanka Correspondent Charles Haviland said that he and his crew were threatened while they were filming a rally of Sinhala Buddhist extremist organization Bodu Bala Sena yesterday at Maharagama.

Far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders could learn a lot about the strengths of multiculturalism during his Australian visit, community and religious leaders say. Mr Wilders will give speeches in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth this month about what he calls the “Islamisation of Australia”.

COLOMBO — Worried that their country could plunge into a new wave of communal violence, Muslims and Buddhists are coming together to condemn attacks against the Muslim community.

Trevor Aaronson (AlterNet)

The organization responsible for more terrorist plots over the last decade than any other is the FBI.

Police are hunting two men and a woman who burst into a mosque and shouted racial abuse. The incident happened at the Nasir Mosque on Brougham Terrace, in Hartlepool, at around 7.45pm on Tuesday, February 5.

By Moni Basu, CNN

(CNN) – In the next few weeks, Fatima Shaik, an African-American, Christian woman, will travel “home” from New York to Kolkata, India.

Anti-Muslim fanatics are going to be in a fit over this interview with the OIC leader Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, as they view the OIC to be evil incarnate. A very funny interview nonetheless by John Oliver of the Daily Show as they talk about differences in culture and perception between the “Muslim world” and the “West.”

A thug spat at a woman in the street apparently because she was wearing an Islamic head scarf.

Police have appealed for help tracing the man, who targeted the woman in Humberstone Road, near Leicester city centre.

Inaugurated in December of 2010, the Thiers mosque might not be here today. The website Lamontagne.fr reported yesterday that one or more individuals tried to set fire to the boiler room of the building.

This “price tag” assault and numerous attacks like it do not represent Judaism, which calls for respect and tolerance for other religious traditions and especially the dead.

(Huffington Post)

Controversial conservative Christian Pat Robertson doubled down Tuesday on claims that Islam is not a religion.

By Jason Kennedy

Auckland Muslim Jason Kennedy penned this open letter to New Zealand First MP Richard Prosser.

By By SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma lawmakers are considering banning judges in the state from basing any rulings on foreign laws, including Islamic Sharia law.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says MP Richard Prosser made a “mistake” when he said Muslim men should be banned from flying on Western airlines, but he will not be stood down.

“In January 2011, Baroness Warsi claimed that Islamophobia had ‘passed the dinner-table test’, meaning that prejudice against Muslims was commonplace in British society. This unique intolerance of Muslims can involve stereotyping, discrimination and even harassment of the significant number of Muslims that now live in Britain.

None of the reports that I have come across mention the religion of the perpetrators of this chilling and horrific crime in Papua New Guinea.

The French government has overturned a 200-year-old ban on women wearing trousers.

The Minister of Women’s Rights, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, said that the ban was incompatible with modern French values and laws.

Six swastikas and tags were entered in red felt on the doors and walls of the place of prayer. This is the second mosque desecrated in a week in the department of Seine-et-Marne, after the desecration of the mosque Ozoir-la-Ferriere, located about sixty miles from Provins.

BY JILLIAN RAYFIELD

A former FBI agent and current anti-Islam activist believes that John Brennan, President Obama’s pick to head the CIA, is secretly a Muslim and therefore “unfit for duty” in the government.

In early November, I wrote about the infuriating story of Saadiq Long, the 43-year-old African-American Muslim who – despite having never been charged with any crime – was secretly placed on a no-fly list and thus barred from flying to the US to visit his seriously ill mother.

Have you figured out yet what “anti-jihad” blogger Pamela Geller thinks of Islam? If the “savages” ads and the World Trade Center ads didn’t make the picture clear, you’re in luck: Geller and her group are returning to the Metro, this time with a campaign modeled on a pro-Muslim campaign currently in the system.

A mentally ill man who thought he was meeting someone linked to the Taliban was arrested Friday morning after federal agents say he tried to detonate some sort of car-bomb at a Bank of America branch near Oakland’s airport.

By George Talbot | gtalbot@al.com

Alabama Democrats aren’t shedding any tears over state Rep. Richard Laird’s decision to leave the party this week.

The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that the Notre-Dame Catholic primary school at Saint-Mihiel, in the la Meuse department of Lorraine in north-eastern France, has been subjected to a campaign of Islamophobic harassment.

(Reuters) – A suspected arson attack damaged the main club house of Israeli Premier League side Beitar Jerusalem on Friday, a day after four fans were charged in court in connection with racist incitement against the team’s recruitment of Muslim players, police said.

MONTCLAIR — Montclair State University is investigating a bias incident in which someone drew a picture of planes hitting the World Trade Center on the door of a Muslim student group’s headquarters, campus officials said today.

Article by: CHAO XIONG , Star Tribune

A second photo of a St. Paul police officer dressed in a Muslim hijab surfaced late this week, packing an extra wallop: The officer appears to be wearing blackface makeup.

Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Michigan, said he received a complaint last week about the image and met Thursday with the owner of Target Sports in Royal Oak, Ray Jihad, about it.

The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that in addition to those at Ozoir-La-Ferrière and Besançon, a fourth mosque was the target of an Islamophobic act this weekend: at Meximieux in eastern France.

Dr. Ileana Johnson, the bestselling author of “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy” will be joined by Stephanie Reis, the founder of the Omaha ACT for America Chapter and property rights advocate Martha Boneta.

Muslim men if you’re ever around radio talk show host Laurie Roth, guard your private parts, she might go Lorena Bobbitt on you. Roth wants so-called “Islamic males” (whatever that means) to be castrated.

Sponsored by: Jenny Sessoms

Robert Bruce Spencer, an ordained Catholic deacon at Our Lady of the Cedars Catholic Church in Manchester, New Hampshire is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other civil rights organiations as a “hate group leader.”

“For years now,” Geller pontificates, “Leftists and assorted ‘anti-racists’ have been denying the existence of these Sharia patrols….” It is of course true that we deny their existence, but that is for the simple reason that they don’t really exist.

A planned Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) forum at Brooklyn College on February, 7th has brought together an angry assortment of Zionists and Islamophobes.

(BBC)

“Because I’m not very skilled I’m wearing what you could call a one-piece hijab – you just pull it over your head. But I’ve discovered the scope is endless. There are all sorts of options.”

(Scotsman.com)

TWO men and a woman have appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court after bacon was allegedly thrown at and stuck to the Central Mosque.

The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice.

(AFP)

Vandals have targeted a French mosque in a graffiti attack, tagging the worship centre with swastikas and anti-Islam slogans, officials said Sunday.

Members of a Muslim family whose house was shot at during a drive-by Thursday evening think they were targeted because of their faith. Tuesday, a stranger driving by Allie and Maryam Taghavi’s home in southwest Oklahoma City stopped and asked their 21-year-old son the family’s religion.

by Natalie O’Brien (The Age)

WHITE supremacists are urging Australian “patriots” to gather at public meetings by the controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders, ready for trouble and a no-holds barred fight.

Timbuktu, Mali is one of the historic and majestic cities of Islamic and Muslim cultural heritage, indeed world heritage. For years it bloomed as a center of learning in the disciplines of mathematics, astronomy, physics, philosophy, gnosticism and theology.

Fox News radio host Todd Starnes visited Fox & Friends this morning to remind everyone that his Sharia law alert level is still at full-blown code red, and you should probably clutch your pearls as hard as possible.

A Muslim family say they have been forced to move from their home after offensive graffiti and a cross wrapped in ham were left outside their house. Murad Alam, 39, said his wife and two sons, aged eight and 10, had moved out of their home in Bingham, Nottinghamshire, to a “safe” place.

by Garibaldi

For quite some time it has been known that Robert Spencer, according to his own testimony, is a Catholic of the Maronite Melkite tradition.

February 1, 2013 | The Anti-Defamation League bills itself, and is typically seen by many in the mainstream Jewish community and beyond, as the “nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency.”

An invitation for Robert Spencer, a leader in the Islamophobia Movement to speak at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester has been rescinded according to the Boston Globe. It is a good sign that many are realizing that his hate has no place at a respectable institution.

An interesting feature of the recent controversy over the so-called “Muslim patrol” in Tower Hamlets was that some of those you might have expected to seize on the case as an excuse for a bit of anti-Muslim scaremongering balked at resuming their campaign against the Islamist menace on the basis of such flimsy evidence.

by ANDREW LEVINE

Western peoples have long viewed the Muslim world through an “orientalist” filter –imagining a backward, exotic and vaguely sinister “other.” But, until recently, they were seldom preoccupied with what they imagined.

Oh no, what are those wily Mooslims up to again? Looks like they’re using the good ‘ole American entrepreneurial spirit to create stunning dresses, designed no doubt to Islamize what will soon be known as Caliphfornia.

For Euro-Western supremacists and their Islamophobic allies negative attitudes to Islam and Muslims is in no way related to xenophobia against immigrants or age old hostilities to Islam and Muslims–it’s all the Mooslims fault, don’t ya know, “the Mooslims they’re here!!”

Everyone knows his name. He was, and still is, one of the most influential figures of all time, yet most of us have little real sense of the man himself. A favorite question of those asking about my new book, “The First Muslim,” is thus what surprised me most in my research. Or rather, what might surprise them.

Eli Cohen, the manager of Israel’s notoriously racist Beitar Jerusalem football team, has tried to calm fans angered by a decision to recruit two players from the Russian Premier League side FC Terek Grozny which is based in the capital of the Muslim-majority region of Chechyna.

(Via Islamophobia-Watch.com)

Geert Wilders has launched a new website, MoskNee (MosqueNo), which aims to offer advice to non-Muslims who want to mount a legal challenge to plans for a new mosque in their area.

PAKISTAN
Name | Age | Gender
Noor Aziz | 8 | male
Abdul Wasit | 17 | male
Noor Syed | 8 | male
Wajid Noor | 9 | male

by David Barkey (Tampa Bay Online)

Over the past two legislative sessions, the Florida House and Senate wasted precious taxpayer dollars hearing harmful and unnecessary anti-Sharia legislation.

Sri Lanka has over the past few years seen a resurgence in Sinhalese and Buddhist chauvinism particularly targeting the Muslim populace of the island nation.

A candidate for Bob Katter’s fledgling political party declared his preference for buying ”guaranteed non-halal meat” so his money does not ”go to the Muslim community”.

Paris (Wall Street Journal)

The roof of the Louvre’s new Islamic art department undulates like golden fabric gently lifted by the wind—a feat, considering it is made of steel and glass and weighs almost 150 tons.

It goes without saying that Islamophobes thrive off of a twisted interpretation of the “clash of civilizations.” Ideologically, they are unwilling to accept that Islam and Muslims have offered anything positive to humanity, this is a reflection of their deep-seated hatred and resentment of everything Islam and Muslim related.

The founders of the Creative Zionist Coalition, Jessica Felber and Orit Arfa are going to award Pamela Geller, the looniest blogger ever with what they are terming the “Queen Esther Award for Jewish Heroism” and Robert Spencer with the “Shushan Award for Righteous Gentile.”

The U.S. military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers (though some put the number much higher), characterizing them as “enemy combatants,” at a military prison next to the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Also, according to the U.S. military, these children/teen detainees have not been charged with any crime.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations Florida announced Tuesday that a letter in which then-Congressman Allen West wrote “NUTS!” sold on eBay for $2,625.

In Moghul’s article, “What’s Islamophobia, and Do I Have It?”, he expounds on the myths that serve as the bases for Islamophobia. His voice is one of a growing chorus that shows that Islamophobia exists and has a persistent logic of its own, often grounded in anti-Semitic tropes.

On 6 August, after an extraordinary night in the Olympic Stadium, the Sun‘s Oliver Harvey was moved to write: “A ginger bloke from Milton Keynes, a mixed race beauty from Sheffield, an ethnic Somali given shelter on these shores from his war-ravaged homeland.

A teenager pulled a hijab from a woman’s head in a racist attack on her in a park. Paige Bain and her aunt Eileen Kennedy assaulted Umaimi Musa as she was sitting with her friend Mary Marandran in Glasgow.

President Obama addressed the big issues of war and peace in his inaugural address, and despite the vagueness of some of his pronouncements, they contain strong clues to his foreign policy agenda in the Middle East.

In the Lebanese capital of Beirut, far from the theatre of war in Iraq and his office in Birmingham, one of Britain’s leading civil rights lawyers has gathered some of the most damning allegations ever levelled against this country’s armed forces – certainly since the worst days of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.

The following article deals specifically with the claim that the Quran teaches that Jews are “apes and pigs.” There is an important fuller discussion to be had on the relationship between Islam and Judaism and Muslims and Jews, a history which has seen its fair share of antagonism and hostility but that is an article for another time.

Lupe Fiasco was asked to leave the stage during his performance at an inauguration party in Washington, D.C. on Sunday. The rapper had been repeating politically charged lyrics for an unusually long time when event officials forced him to stop, according to various attendees.

While the film has obviously found its supporters, backlash against it continues to grow. Yesterday, director Kathryn Bigelow defended her film from charges it promotes torture in an Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times .

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. day in the United States, a day when an icon of the fight against Jim Crow and for Civil Rights is remembered. For many however it’s just another holiday off, a reprieve from the regular grind of work and there is no real remembrance as such of MLK Jr.

Until Friday, Jeremy Gimpel was just a name on a list. To be precise, he was number 14 on the list of Knesset candidates for Habayit Hayehudi, the new incarnation of the National Religious Party headed by Israel’s new political rock star, Naftali Bennett.

Golden Dawn, which says it wants to rid Greece of illegal immigrants, won 7 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections last June, entering the assembly for the first time on its fiercely anti-immigrant agenda.

There’s a new campaign to fight back against a series of anti-Muslim subway ads in New York City. Akiva Freidlin has launched a project, currently raising funds on indiegogo, to buy subway ad space that will counter those of Pamela Geller.

Anti-Muslim and anti-Turkish sentiment is rife in some quarters of Bulgarian society, specifically amongst neo-Fascists and Right-wingers such as Ataka and the VMRO who have protested and attacked Mosques and Muslims in the recent past.

Last year we ran a piece on former English Defence League activist Andy Hughes, proprietor of the Islamic Far-Right in Britain blog, whose articles denouncing the Islamist threat to western civilisation are regularly crossposted at the notorious Islamophobic blog Harry’s Place.

Whyalla’s Muslim community has been praying outside in stifling temperatures above 40C after fires damaged their mosque. The fires, which started about 4am on Thursday, are being treated as suspicious. A spokesman for the community, Hasan Aziz, said he believes the attack was a “hate crime”.

Last November, the Swedish newspaper Expressen published a leaked video that showed neo-fascist members of Swedish parliament running amok through the streets of Stockholm, wielding pieces of scaffolding pipe and shouting slurs like “Paki” and “little whore” at innocent bystanders.

Several years ago the highly-acclaimed – and supposedly über-liberal – television series The West Wing aired an episode in which President Bartlet had to address a diplomatic crisis involving Turkey.

It’s like bizarro Pam Geller! A Muslim activist has taken a cue from the anti-Muslim blogger and starting posting Quranic verses around town—but this time, instead of belligerent-sounding quotes, this Metro poster has chosen more positive ones.

KOMO TV reports that parents at Medina Academy, a private Muslim elementary school, fear that vandalism at their school is a hate crime after their school was tagged twice.

Pamela Geller reaffirms what is evident and a fact we noted from the beginning, her usage of the term “savages,” despite her lying denials, is in reference to all Muslims and Arabs.

by Rachel Shabi

America’s Middle East policy has been enthusiastically endorsed. Not at the UN or Arab League, however, but by the powerbrokers of Hollywood. At the Golden Globes, there were gongs for a heroically bearded CIA spook saving hostages and American face in Iran (the film Argo)…

Civilian deaths are too high, and the president’s power is too sweeping. An unmanned U.S. aerial vehicle — or drone — reportedly killed eight people in rural Pakistan last week, bringing the estimated death toll from drone strikes in Pakistan this year to 35.

by DAVID BADASH

Ann Coulter last night on Fox News‘ “Hannity” suggested America doesn’t have a gun problem, but a problem with Blacks and Muslims.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) is speaking out against a local community college’s purchase of 25 books on Islam and Muslim culture, saying a federal grant used to acquire the titles wastes taxpayer money and is biased against the Christian faith, according to the New York Daily News.

This was the headline to the London Evening Standard’s report of the Oxford “grooming” case today. In the online version it has since been changed to “Sex gang accused of grooming ‘troubled’ underage girls”, and the opening sentence now refers to “Asian” rather than “Muslim” men.

ANTI-Islamic sentiment has flared in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, with the planned renovation of a mosque near Monash University prompting a senior member of the local Uniting Church to claim mosques may provide a training ground for religious fanatics.

What does the conflict between Israel and Palestine have to do with Islamophobia? The fact that 1.) Foundations based in the United States are major backers of the Islamophobia Movement at home while at the same time being huge supporters of Israeli Settlements.

BY SPENCER ACKERMAN

The man in charge of America’s drone wars will face Senate questioning about perhaps their most controversial aspect: when the president can target American citizens for death.

Unless you’ve been asleep for the past 10 years (or write book reviews for the Wall Street Journal), you may have noticed that anti-Muslim sentiment in the past decade has recently spilled out into some of this country’s nastiest displays of hate.

A 17-year-old Alabama high school student, Derek Shrout, who was arrested last week for allegedly plotting to kill 6 Black students by blowing them up with homemade grenades, has been released on $75,000 bond, reports the Ledger-Enquirer.

Months after a debate over controversial anti-Muslim billboards in some Metro stations erupted, the woman behind those ads appeared at an event in Annapolis. And that controversy followed Pamela Geller to the event convened by the Maryland Conservative Action Network (MDCAN).

A mosque at Val-de-Reuil in Normandy in north-western France was sprayed with far-right graffiti last Wednesday night. Slogans included “Anti-Islam”, “Long live the FN” and “France, love it or leave it”.

When a local Islamic organization hired Bernardsville architect Daniel Lincoln to design a new mosque, he set out to create a building that would serve its purpose as a house of worship and fit into the colonial and bucolic character of this township’s Liberty Corner.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an official investigation into a mosque attack at the NATO İncirlik Air Base in the southern province of Adana, following claims that the attack was carried out by U.S. soldiers, Doğan News Agency has reported.

I FIND Chuck Hagel eminently likeable. I am not quite certain why. Perhaps it’s his war record. He was decorated for valor in the Vietnam War (which I detested). He was a mere sergeant. Since I was a mere corporal in our 1948 war, I find it elating to see a non-commissioned officer become Minister of Defense.

A self-styled “mosque buster”, who boasts that he has blocked plans for 16 mosques across Britain, was once linked to the far-right English Defence League (EDL) and claims that Islam encourages paedophilia, sexual abuse and pimping.

by Rich Abdil (Wonkette)

Last summer, then-as-yet-undefeated-congressman Allen West took his whirlwind American diplomacy tour to the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Many of the recent attacks have taken place shortly after well-publicised anti-Muslim hate speeches, argues author.

There has been a sudden uptick in the number of violent hate crimes where the victims are thought to be Muslim or “Middle Eastern”.

Surveillance video captures the moment Mr Mohammed and his girlfriend were attacked at point-blank range outside a shopping centre parking lot in Florida around 3am on Thursday.

Enter the surreal and absurd world of a former technocrat of the American empire turned book reviewing ‘vice president for research’ at the Orwellian “Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.”

Robert Spencer is yet to condemn this. Does this mean that Catholicism is inherently predisposed to antisemitism? Of course we don’t think so, but those opposed to the second Vatican such as Spencer are silent on the matter.

MyJihad.org bus ad featuring two volunteers, an American-Muslim and an Israeli-Jew. (Credit: MyJihad.org)

So you want to rebrand a word. It’s hard to think of a more difficult rebranding project than “jihad.”

A Mosque was burnt down in Anuradhapura last October (2012). The perpetrators of this crime have not been identified as yet, but last week, an extremist group of Buddhist monks went to the same area and protested to remove the mosque there.

The latest installment of anti-Muslim advertisements put out by Pamela Geller have gone up in New York City subway stations. But they have quickly received a makeover, just as the last batch did.

News Hounds reports that Fox News’ latest contribution to the incitement of Islamophobia is its promotion of an Islamophobic documentary film called Jihad in America: The Grand Deception. The film is produced by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which is headed by Steve Emerson (listed in Fear Inc. as one of the “leading lights of the Islamophobia network”).

Over at Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, Richard Bartholomew examines the responses by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer to theconviction of English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon on a charge of passport fraud.

On the Coptic Christmas holiday, Imam Mazhar Shaheen of the Omar Makram Mosque visited his friend and confidante the Pastor of the Qasr Al-Dubarah Church, Samih Morees, along with a thousand Muslims to extend well-wishes and greetings to their Christian neighbors.

The mosque is also known as the Prophet Dawud Mosque and has been the subject of attempted Settler violence in the past. In fact, according to the story below the first story of the mosque was taken over and converted into a Synagogue.

Israeli settlers raided a northern West Bank village on Saturday for the second time this week, leading to clashes with local Palestinians, a PA official said. Dozens of settlers from the illegal outpost of Esh Kodesh raided the Nablus village of Qusra, firing live ammunition into the air, settlement monitoring official Ghassan Daghlas told Ma’an.

(The Local)

“It’s no longer ‘the Turks’ but ‘the Muslims’,” Wilhelm Heitmeyer, head of the institute for research of interdisciplinary conflict and violence at Bielefeld University told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung on Monday.

The leader of the English Defence League has been jailed for using someone else’s passport to get into the United States. Stephen Lennon, 30, pleaded guilty to possession of a false identity document with improper intention, contrary to the Identity Documents Act 2010, at Southwark Crown Court.

Protests following the brutal rape and murder of a young Indian woman have spread to beyond India to other countries in the region, including Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

by Richard Silverstein (Tikun Olam)

Most Jewish foundations support the equivalent of Bubbeh’s chicken soup: Israel, synagogues, youth groups, Jewish education, Jewish studies programs, etc.

Sunando Sen, a 46-year-old Indian immigrant, recently opened a small copying and printing business in New York City’s Upper West Side with his hard-earned savings. Described by friends as “very educated” and “so quiet, so gentle, so nice,” Sen’s American dream ended in tragedy last Thursday when Erika Menendez fatally pushed him in front of an oncoming subway train.

The answer to both questions is essentially the same. Hate on both sides is an outgrowth the foreign policies of Europe and America vis-à-vis the Middle East, South Asia, and beyond. That’s the perfectly obvious answer that is too often lost in a fog of sophisticated propaganda.

During the four-and-a-half decade US-Soviet standoff known as the “cold war” despite the untold amount of blood spilt in international proxy conflicts and superpower support for various forms of repression, the US used the alleged threat of Soviet penetration of the western hemisphere to justify its own meddling throughout the Americas.

Muslims are subversive jihadists. The Middle East is perpetually unstable. “Islam has bloody borders.” If you’ve already made up your mind, you’ll find a way to twist the facts to support your conclusion. And if the facts don’t do the job, you can always hire new ones.

by Aaron Sankin

For the second time in recent months, billboards on side of San Francisco’s fleet of buses have become the front lines in a fight over the place of Islam in American popular culture.

By Tim Murphy and Adam Serwer (MotherJones)

Over the last four years, a die-hard cadre of activists and their allies in Congress have dragged the Republican Party into a fever swamp of Islamophobia and barely-concealed anti-Muslim bigotry.

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has been touting a WND/Wenzel Strategies poll purporting to findthat many Muslim-Americans want the imposition of Sharia law, contradicting other studies which found extremely low support for radical views among Muslims in the U.S. Should the results of a Wenzel Strategies survey be trusted?

Pasco County deputies are investigating an attack outside a Walmart as a hate crime. It happened around 3 a.m. Wednesday at the Walmart at 1575 Land O’Lakes Blvd in Lutz.

“On January 2nd, the story of a Saudi Sheikh issuing a fatwa that condoned ‘intercourse marriage’ or gang rape in Syria exploded over the internet.”

These labels are used by laypeople and journalists alike, often using jihad as a synonym for “any violence undertaken by Muslims.” An extreme example is the ad campaign posted a few months ago on New York City buses, equating Muslims to savages and any opinion not supportive of Israel as “jihad.”

The billboards proclaiming “Same family, Same message” sprouting throughout the Orlando and Daytona Beach areas are sponsored by the Longwood-based American Muslim Community Centers, the Islamic Center of Orlando and the United Muslim Foundation in Lake Mary.

A closed mind is a terrible thing to behold. But it’s a far worse thing to have to engage. And yet we must. This Saturday, the woman who murdered a complete stranger by shoving him into the path of an arriving subway train was arrested. Her name? Erica Menendez. Her target? Hindus and Muslims. Why? Because of 2001.

When Muslim-American organizations and activists concerned with Islamophobia woke up the day after the election, on November 7, they were elated. Key members of what had been dubbed the House Republican“Islamophobia caucus”had been voted out of office.

(Via Islamophobia-Watch.com)

A woman who launched a racist attack against a Muslim and pulled her hijab from her head as she robbed her of her phone has been jailed for more than two years.

On the evening of December 27, an Indian immigrant to America named Sunando Sen was pushed by a stranger onto the subway tracks in New York City and struck and killed by an oncoming train.

Mo Farah, gold-medal winner in the men’s 5,000m and 10,000m this summer in London, hilarious celebrator, and world-famous meme, couldn’t get through customs in Oregon over the Christmas holiday because he is of Somalian descent.

But with the help of the city’s newest food pantry, Ndaw was able to observe the holiday with the traditional meal — and adhere to the strictures of Islam by ensuring the food was halal. That means it’s free from pork and alcohol and that the animal was slaughtered under specific guidelines.

I’ve always thought of New Year’s as a purely secular holiday, widely celebrated with champagne, confetti, and kisses at midnight. In the US, the most famous New Year’s celebration centers on the drop of the Times Square Ball in New York City, an event that attracts an audience of over a billion worldwide.

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup turned down a motion by the Justice Department to dismiss former Stanford student Rahinah Ibrahim’s lawsuit against various federal government agencies over her reported inclusion on the no-fly list…

Huma Yasin was 14 when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in Oklahoma City, her hometown.

As an American-born daughter of Pakistani immigrants, the horror of that attack was made worse by early reports suggesting that the perpetrators were Muslims — like her.

Faisal Kutty, 44, is among “The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims,” compiled by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Jordan. The publication is part of an annual series that highlights how Muslims impact the world.

The Jewish-Christian-Muslim interfaith clergy announcing the ads said that this was “shared concept in the three religions”, and was in response to recent national tragedies and the recent anti-Muslim AFDI ads that ran in Denver.

The makeshift facilities are illegal but this huge community faces no other option. Athens, a metropolis on the edge of the Muslim world, is one of the few EU capitals without a mosque.

A 31-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday and charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime in connection with the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of an elevated subway station in Queens and crushed by an oncoming train.

(Dutch.News.nl)

PVV leader Geert Wilders is to step up his campaign against Islam in 2013, the parliamentarian told Nos television in an interview.

This has been a big year for Islam and Islamic law in American media. As politicians vied for local and national office, anti-sharia messages — and sometimes overtly anti-Islam messages — were broadcast across the media, at times functioning to normalize anti-Islam discourse.

As the nation mourns the senseless violence in Connecticut and politicians in Washington bicker endlessly over the “fiscal cliff,” the#MyJihad public education campaign should have presented an unambiguous bit of good news to a country in sore need of it.

A police captain who sued the city over his punishment for refusing to attend a Law Enforcement Appreciation Day at a mosque filed notice Wednesday that he will appeal a ruling in the city’s favor.

Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, told Morning Joe‘s panel that he couldn’t say whether or not President Obama is a Christian. “I think you have to ask President Obama,” Reverend Franklin Graham said on February 21, 2012.

In 2007, about 50 Muslims intent on serving their community and their country, hosted a barbecue at the Veterans Affairs hospital at Jefferson Barracks, dishing out chicken and burgers to the patients and nurses.

The reaction to Moghul’s article was overwhelmingly positive as one would expect, but there were a few of the usual Muslim haters who showed up, ranting and raving about evil Islam and Muslims.

Israeli settlers run amok, attack monastery and spray paint the words “Jesus is a monkey.” (JD)

What if they were Muslim?

In a recent interview with Al Jazeera in which she expounds on the alleged threat France faces from radical Islam, Marine Le Pen – president of the far-right National Front party and member of the European Parliament – seeks international validation for her anti-immigrant views.

This was sent to us by a worshipper at the Thurnby Lodge mosque in Leicester. The site has been the centre of activity by the Far Right, including the British National Party and a pigs head was placed outside the entrance to the mosque yesterday, (26/12/12).

Standing in Denver’s main mosque on Christmas Eve, Christian, Muslim and Jewish community leaders launched an ad campaign promoting understanding and tolerance between the religious groups.

There are more Middle Eastern Christians than ever before, and they are poised between emergence as a new political force in a democratizing region and the dangers to them of fundamentalism and political repression.

December 25th was an an average day for the majority of the world’s Muslims, but for some, it signified Christmas along with its variety of associated meanings. Muslim beliefs related to Christmas and its celebration vary considerably–from a fun-loving holiday, to a dangerous heretical practice.

When Safiya Ghori-Ahmad applied for a job with the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, it rather quickly became clear that she was the most qualified of 300 applicants.

Every year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publishes a Christmas message for Christians in Israel and abroad. One of the message’s objectives is hasbara, or public diplomacy, to the Christians of the world. But this year’s greeting was especially political.

An article by Gil Ronen was just published in Arutz Sheva, Israel National News Europe Preparing Holocaust for Muslims. This article discusses the predictions of Moti Zisser an Israeli businessman. I looked up Moti Zisser, and he is a billionaire real-estate developer.

The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that on Thursday-Friday night four swastikas along with racist slogans riddled with misspellings were sprayed on the wall of the As-Salam de Tomblaine mosque in the Lorraine region of north-east France. (The slogan “Bougnoulle de mourt” would appear to mean something like “death to wogs”.)

The 28-year-old launched a racist tirade when he entered the site in the south side of Glasgow and told followers at the mosque that he had a bomb inside his backpack and they should run away. Rae, of Johnstone in Renfrewshire, also shouted that he had a gun and threatened to shoot those near him.

Spencer’s extremist allies in this cause are many, on the other side of the pond it’s the EDL, Geert Wilders, etc. and here in the USA it’s individuals like Pastor Usama Dakdok, who has said things like, “every Muslim is a demon.”

A Central Florida Muslim businessman detained by authorities at airports and border crossings more than 30 times since June has filed suit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

ORLANDO, Fla. -

A sword-wielding woman was arrested Wednesday morning after she entered a mosque located on the campus of a private Orlando school.

The local authority’s housing wing, Tower Hamlets Homes, asked families on housing estates in Bethnal Green and Wapping to help organise parties to improve interfaith understanding.

by Glenn Greenwald, (Guardian.co.uk)

DOJ officials unblinkingly insist that the banking giant is too powerful and important to subject to the rule of law.

by Mohammed Ansar, Huffington Post

An estimated one billion passengers are carried on railway journeys each year. In the UK, despite spiralling costs, it’s an important part of everyday life for many people.

Two New Jersey white supremacists who allegedly attacked several men of Egyptian descent on New Years Eve – and then boasted about the assault on a social media website – were charged this morning with the commission of hate crimes, federal prosecutors said.

BY ERICA BLAKE, BLADE STAFF WRITER

A third crime has been added to the charges filed against an Indiana man arrested for the arson fire at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.

by Sheila Musaji

There are only two groups who equate jihad and terrorism – the Muslim extremists and the Islamophobes, and both of them are now attacking the My Jihad campaign.

In an effort to be more precise, accurate and neutral, the Associated Press decided to remove several words, including “Islamophobia” and “homophobia”, from the 2013 edition of the AP Stylebook. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page calls the move “a linguistic blow for blandness.”

by Sanaz Raji (Frontline PBS)

It is not every day that an Iranian makes it into the Western mainstream media and pop culture with a positive story that leads to near-universal admiration among Iranians and non-Iranians alike.

We touched upon Moghul’s: loss and return to faith in God, the place of doubt in Islam, literature, what exactly is a “Muslim reformer,” the phenomenon of “ex-Muslims and ex-terrorists” in relation to Islamophobia, Jesus and carpet bombing, a possible shisha pow-wow with Kamal Saleem, the Arab uprisings, Saudi Arabia, etc…

Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 The Jews Against Islamophobia (JAI) Coalition condemns the latest hate-mongering ads, sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), that are scheduled to appear in New York City subway stations today.

Such is the case with a fascinating ruling released last week by the New York Court of Appeals, that state’s highest court, in the criminal case of People v. Edgar Morales. The facts of the case are quite simple, but the implications of the ruling are profound.

Social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook have been abuzz with the anti-extremism campaign MyJihad: Reclaiming Islam.