Latest Updates: discrimination against Muslims RSS

  • johnpi 11:40 pm on December 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , discrimination against Muslims, , , , , , , , , , ,

    A US appeals court has ruled that Muslims and Arab non-citizens have no right “to be free of selective enforcement of the immigration laws based on national origin, race, or religion….”

    The plaintiffs initiated the lawsuit in 2002 on behalf of Arab and Muslim aliens who were held on immigration violations following the Sept. 11 terror attacks and subjected to abuse, mistreatment and lengthy detentions.

    The abuse included beatings, strip searches and sleep deprivation. The allegations have been substantiated by two reports by the Office of the Inspector General.

    Five of the men settled with the government in November. A sixth plaintiff withdrew his claims several years ago.

    Rachel Meeropol of the Center for Constitutional Rights served as lead counsel for the plaintiffs. She called Friday’s ruling a “mixed bag.”

    “By dismissing [the equal protection] claim, the circuit has endorsed using religion and ethnicity as a proxy for suspicion of terrorist activity. That’s the part of the decision we’re disappointed in,” Meeropol said.

    Case ruling here.

    (via)

     
  • johnpi 10:35 am on December 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination against Muslims,

    Europe Muslims face rising discrimination: report.

    Nothing new here to anyone that is paying attention.

     
  • johnpi 9:42 pm on December 12, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination against Muslims, ,

    Fort Hood ups challenge to recruit Muslim, Arab troops.

    Army recruiter Sgt. Chris McGarity is on the front lines of the military’s effort to add troops who speak Arabic and understand Middle Eastern culture — a battle that grew more challenging after the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas.
    McGarity says he recently signed up an Arab-American high school student who lacked only her parents’ approval to enlist. Then came the Nov. 5 rampage at Fort Hood. The Army has charged Maj. Nidal Hasan, 39, a Muslim and Arab American, with killing 13 people and wounding 32.

    The high school student’s mother “made her withdraw her application,” McGarity says.

    Such experiences illustrate heightened fears of discrimination and harassment aimed at Arab-American and Muslim troops since the Fort Hood shooting, says Mikey Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which advocates for separation between church and state in the military.

    Muslims in the military experience “horrible” discrimination, he says.

    Before the shooting at Fort Hood, the foundation had 80 Muslim clients who had reported instances of discrimination and harassment, Weinstein says. Complaints jumped 20% to 103 in the weeks after the shooting. “We had people almost immediately … being told ‘you people’ should not be in the military,” he says.

     
  • buzz 6:09 pm on December 3, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , discrimination against Muslims

    Muslim Americans faced more anti-Muslim bias but fewer physical assaults in 2008, according to a report released Thursday (Dec.3) by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

    Full Story

     
  • johnpi 6:50 am on November 6, 2009 | 31 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , discrimination against Muslims, , , ,

    Fort Hood anti-Muslim Backlash immediate.

    Funny thing about this story is that there is no “lead,” no summary or topic sentence, just backlash examples and background information on Hasan.

    His name had barely been released, his heritage and history not immediately known, but the reaction was fast and furious.

    “Jihad at Fort Hood?” read the headline of a post on the Jihad Watch blog just moments after Nidal Malik Hasan was identified as the alleged perpetrator of a mass shooting at the Texas military base that killed 12 people and wounded 31 others.

    “The name tells us a lot, does it not, senator?” Fox News’s Shep Smith said while interviewing Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas senator.

    This is also where I become very critical of the older civil rights and anti-discrimination organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center. There is not one word today on the possible impending backlash from this attack on either their blog or their website. Yet, if you read the linked story above you’ll see progressive/liberal bloggers (ideologically, the SPLC’s fellow travelers) throughout the blogosphere are talking/cautioning/warning and imploring people to resist collective punishment/retaliation. The SPLC does note anti-Muslim attacks from time to time, but it seems to be wearing blinders the rest of the time when it comes to Muslims.

     
  • johnpi 7:23 pm on November 2, 2009 | 38 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination against Muslims,

    Texas clinic apologizes for telling Muslim doctor she can’t wear headscarf.

     
  • johnpi 7:42 pm on October 30, 2009 | 24 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , discrimination against Muslims,

    Dallas clinic to Muslim doctor: Its policy bars headscarf.

    A Muslim doctor interviewing for a job at a suburban Dallas medical clinic says officials there told her she couldn’t wear her headscarf in the workplace.

    Dr. Hena Zaki of Plano, Texas, said Friday that she was shocked when CareNow officials told her that a no-hat policy extended to her hijab.

    The 29-year-old doctor wants an apology and a change in CareNow’s policy.

    However, CareNow President Tim Miller says he sees nothing wrong with the policy and feels no need to apologize. In a statement, his company says it does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin in employment decisions.

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations calls CareNow’s policy “a blatant violation” of federal law.

     
  • johnpi 2:47 pm on October 29, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination against Muslims, , , , , , ,

    The sensational media feeding frenzy around the death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah continues as news organizations around the country begin to make desperate, absurd efforts to “localize” the story by claiming Abdullah “had ties” to the local area if he has ever happened to pass through there.

    This is from a tv station out of Atlanta:

    Federal authorities in Detroit said the leader of a radical U.S. Sunni Islam group, whom Channel 2 has confirmed had ties to Atlanta, was killed in a shootout with federal agents.

    What are the “ties”?

    Channel 2 Action News investigative reporter Mark Winne said Abdullah had many friends and associates in Atlanta. Winne said Abdullah attended the opening ceremonies for an Islamic sports competition in 2007 in Atlanta’s West End area. Prominent Islamic leaders from around the country were also there.

    The result of this kind of ‘localization’ will be to heighten fear and mistrust of local Muslims, and will likely feed into new incidents of discrimination and hate crimes.

     
  • johnpi 11:50 am on October 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination against Muslims,

    Fired Muslim instructor sues for discrimination.

    A Palestinian Muslim instructor filed a federal discrimination lawsuit Monday against Columbia College Chicago, claiming she was terminated after a student falsely reported she made an anti-Semitic comment in class.

    Suriya H. Smiley filed the suit after being fired from the college for allegedly making an anti-Semitic remark to a student.
    ….

    According to the suit, a teacher’s assistant and eight other students were present in class at the time and confirmed that Smiley never made the remark or any anti-Semitic statements.

    Despite no evidence, the college refused to conduct an investigation into the student’s allegations and swiftly fired Smiley, the suit said. No witnesses were contacted or questioned.

     
  • johnpi 7:01 pm on August 19, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Burqini, , discrimination against Muslims,

    A town in northern Italy has banned women from wearing the “burqini.”

    The anti-immigration mayor barred the burqini and said women wearing them to pools or the beach would be subjected to $700 (Eur500) fines.

    Gianluca Buonanno, mayor of Varallo Sesia said, “The sight of a ‘masked woman’ could disturb small children, not to mention problems of hygiene.”

     
  • johnpi 5:47 pm on August 16, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination against Muslims, , , ,

    ‘You’re too white to be an Indian. Your passport must be fake.’

    Photobucket

    Neil Nitin Mukesh – Too light to be trusted.

    Other Bollywood stars share horror stories of trying to travel in the US after Shah Rukh Khan incident.

    Fellow Bollywood stars sprang to Khan’s defence at the weekend and told of their experiences at the hands of U.S. immigration officials.

    Irrfan Khan, who played the police inspector in last year’s hit film Slumdog Millionaire, said that U.S. screening staff seemed “threatened by any Muslim passport.”

    “I can understand America’s need for caution after 9/11 but they also need to be a little more thoughtful about their methods,” he said, adding he had been detained three times for questioning in various parts of the world.

    Neil Nitin Mukesh said he had been detained in New York by an officer who appeared to believe he was too fair-skinned to be Indian and may have a false passport.

    Shahrukh Khan’s troubles were “yet another example of American paranoia post-9/11″, director Kabir Khan said. “It saddens me to say this but I don’t think the U.S. will ever be cured of Islamophobia.”

    Meanwhile, Obama is being burned in effigy in the city of Allahabad over the Khan flap, while the US Ambassador to India reassures that “Khan is a ‘global icon’ who was a welcome guest in the United States.”

     
  • johnpi 9:33 am on August 15, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , discrimination against Muslims, , , , , Shah Rukh Khan

    Muslim Bollywood star profiled, held in U.S. airport – fans outraged.

    Indian Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan said he felt angry and humiliated after he was detained and questioned at a U.S. airport, sparking an uproar in India among his fans.

    Khan, 43, one of India’s best known actors, was enroute to Chicago for a parade to mark the Indian independence day on Saturday when he was pulled aside at Newark airport Friday, he said.

    “I was really hassled perhaps because of my name being Khan. These guys just wouldn’t let me through,” he said in a text message to reporters in India.

    After a couple of hours’ interrogation, he was allowed to make a call, he said, and he got in touch with the Indian consulate who vouched for him and secured his release.

    “Absolutely uncalled for, I think. I felt angry and humiliated,” said Khan, who had just finished a month-long shoot in the United States for his upcoming film “My Name is Khan,” which is about a Muslim man’s experience with racial profiling.

     
  • johnpi 10:28 pm on August 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination against Muslims, , , ,

    Times of India blogger smears Muslim Bollywood actor Emraan Hashmi over housing discrimination complaint, calls for retaliation:

    Persons like Hashmi give a bad name to their community also by raising such petty issues as a cover for advance publicity for their coming movies. Hence all Muslims and Hindus alike, in a show of solidarity that upholds values of the Indian tricolour, must refuse a house for a communally hateful Hashmi in Maharashtra for at least a year.

    The blogger, Tarun Vijay, then takes after all of the Muslim Bollywood actors, nursing an inflated sense of victimhood and resentment while referring to them all with name “Khan” (there are several Muslim actors who have that last name, though none that he mentions specifically in the article):

    Every Khan in Bollywood lives on the money and popularity earned from non-discriminatory Indian people that goes beyond religious fault lines but not a single Khan has ever raised his voice in favor of justice to Hindus in any incident that involved their brutalization by jihadis or like-minded extremist elements. An unconfirmed incident of an “apartment sell refusal” becomes a national issue as the media take it up, simply because a Muslim was involved. But never, even for once, has a Muslim taken up the cause of Kashmiri Hindus ousted from their ancestral property in Kashmir and exiled to live as refugees in their own independent motherland called India. Neither a Shabana nor a Mahesh Bhatt raised his voice against the refusal of Kashmiri Muslim leaders to give “even an inch of land” to Amarnath pilgrims, for yatra camps. There are Muslims who win elections from Hindu majority constituencies, yet would not hesitate to hit at Hindu sentiments. Should that be taken as a token of their secularism? Why can’t we have the spirit of Indianism above all boundaries?

    These celebrities are taking Hindu sentiments for granted and think that their acting style would cover their communal prejudices. It comes out on occasions like the Hashmi episode.

    Meanwhile, Hashmi has beefed up his personal security. “He moves around with a lot of securitymen. It’s a precautionary measure. His house is looking like a fortress,” said a source close to the actor.

     
  • johnpi 2:06 pm on April 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 'renting while Muslim', , discrimination against Muslims, ,

    In India, the trouble with ‘renting while Muslim.’

     
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