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

    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, ,

    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, , ,

    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.

     
  • johnpi 9:19 am on December 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, , , , ,

    The chairwoman of the National Commission on Violence Against Women Kamala Chandra Kirana has urged the Indonesian government to review Islamic bylaws.

    An Indonesian organisation has urged the government to review a number of Islamic Sharia-based bylaws deemed discriminative against women as part of its first 100-days programme.

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

    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 2:47 pm on October 29, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, , , , , , , ,

    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, ,

    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 7:11 am on August 31, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , discrimination, , ,

    Recent incident of teenage hijabi bullying in Florida provides disturbing view into the mind of the bully, who is about to join the US Army and go to Iraq.

    After the incident, Lawrence was asked by a school staffer why she confronted the girl. “She began to rant that she was enlisting and was going to Iraq and that basically because the girl looks Middle Eastern, that makes her an enemy because all Iraqis are Middle Eastern,” according to the referral signed by assistant principal Stephen Crognale.

    When journalists later asked her about these comments, she denied them.

    The girl’s father doesn’t seem to be helping her sort out her confusion, instead copping a ‘we are the victims here’ attitude:

    “You have someone in the States who is able to enjoy our educational and health care systems, yet it’s okay for them to be disrespectful, and it’s not okay for my daughter to speak her mind,” said Mark Lawrence, Heather’s father. “That’s her First Amendment right. That’s her freedom of speech.”

    Funny, US conservatives were once ideologically known for their incessant whining about liberal ‘victimhood mentality,’ yet they seem to be on a hair-trigger to step into the role.

     
  • johnpi 5:19 am on August 30, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, ,

    Muslim cop sues New York City after identity theft flap had him labeled a terrorist.

    A Muslim NYPD cop is set to sue the city and the feds after he was targeted by air marshals, triggering a year-long probe in which he was stripped of his gun and badge.

    Shahin Miah, 32, was eventually cleared of wrongdoing and is back on the job – but the Bangladeshi-born officer says he’s tormented by colleagues who call him “Al Qaeda.”

    “I’m a good citizen of this country,” Miah told the Daily News in an exclusive interview.

    “All my family are hardworking. We are normal. This only happened because my color is brown and I’m Muslim.

    Miah was under suspicion for overseas money laundering, but it turned out he had been a victim of identity theft. He is upset that officers in his own department were so quick to believe the federal agent’s suspicions:

    “It was insulting,” said Miah, whose uncle died working at Windows on the World on 9/11.

     
  • johnpi 5:10 am on August 30, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination

    Teen suspended for words directed at Muslim student.

    The teen says an issue over the American flag is why she was written up and handed a five-day suspension from Springstead High School this week for criticizing a Muslim student. Heather [Lawrence], 16, says the other girl was sitting down during the Pledge of Allegiance.

    “You know, I made a not-so-kind remark, and I do sincerely apologize for referring to the thing on her head because that had nothing to do with it.”
    ….

    The Muslim student walked away from Heather’s confrontation. A school staff member then reported the incident.

    The Muslim girl’s family later said she had actually stood up. Perhaps she did not stand up quick enough to suit Ms. Lawrence. A representative of the Tampa/Hillsborough County Human Rights Council said, “Whether standing up or not, this issue’s not about the pledge of allegiance or anything else. This is about bullying and it’s about discrimination.”

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

    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, , , , ,

    ‘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, , , , , , 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 10:59 am on August 12, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination, ,

    Officials see rise in militia groups across US, this time more motivated by racial hatred.

    They’re back. Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country.
    ….

    A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate. One result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama. At the same time, ostensibly mainstream politicians and media pundits have helped to spread Patriot and related propaganda, from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps to wholly unsubstantiated claims about the president’s country of birth.

    Meanwhile, it’s been more than a month since the FBI began investigating the death of a Southern California imam wo died in a suspicious house fire while cleaning up racist and anti-Muslim graffiti. There has still been no word about whether they have determined his death to be a homicide, and if so, whether it was a hate crime…

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

    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 6:16 pm on August 1, 2009 | 31 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Canadian Muslims, discrimination, , , , , , , Sublime Quran, ,

    ISNA has banned the first-ever translation of the Quran by a woman from its bookstore, according to Tarek Fatah. Fatah seems to be pretty fast and loose with the word “Islamist,” which prompts suspicion for me as ISNA has been the target of extremist smears for awhile.

    Until 2007, only men had translated the Koran and interpreted it. That’s because the very idea of a woman translating the holy book offends Islamists. Consider, for example, the reaction to the first-ever translation by a woman — Laleh Bakhtiar’s The Sublime Quran — two years ago.

    Mohammad Ashraf of the Canadian branch of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) — the same gentleman who this week told the CBC that there was no provision for honour killings in Islam — told The Toronto Star that he would not permit The Sublime Quran to be sold in the ISNA bookstore. “Our bookstore would not allow this kind of translation,” he said. “I will consider banning it … This woman-friendly translation will be out of line and will not fly too far.”

    What had Laleh Bakhtiar done to deserve the punishment of having her translation of the Koran banned from ISNA’s Islamic bookstores? Her fault, in the eyes of Islamists, is that she believes the Koran does not condone spousal abuse, as claimed by Islamists.

    I checked the Toronto Star article, and Ashraf did indeed say what he is quoted as saying. Ashraf also said his objection was not that she was a female scholar, but that “she was not trained at an academic institution accredited in the Muslim world.” This is a catch-22 though as Bakhtiar would likely never have been admitted into programs that would allow her to be recognized as a scholar in the first place, so I conclude that Fatah’s criticism above is justified. I would still not use the word “Islamist” to describe the organization in America – but perhaps the Canadian branch is a little more “out there.”

     
  • johnpi 5:08 pm on July 8, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, , ,

    Photobucket

    At Muslimah Media Watch, analysis of this wonderful Dutch anti-discrimination ad, which targets prejudice against hijabis.

    The second reason why I love this image is because it completely reverses the looker’s expectation of hijab. Instead of the hijab hiding some aspect of the woman, it is society’s pressure for conformity that is making the woman hide an aspect of herself. The discrimination that woman is receiving, which in turn is discouraging her from wearing hijab, is damaging to her, not her hijab. In fact, the hijab is given a role of liberator in the ad. By not discriminating against the woman for wearing hijab, by letting her wear it, we are liberating her to be who she wants to be in the public sphere.

     
  • thabet 8:47 am on June 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, , , , , ,

    The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has published the second of its reports on the experiences of discrimination by immigrants and ethnic minorities across the European Union. This report concentrates on Muslim ethnic groups living within the EU. An interesting note in the summary of the findings:

    Of those Muslim respondents who experienced discrimination in the past 12 months, the majority believed that this was mainly due to their ethnic background. Only 10% stated that they thought the discrimination they experienced was based solely on their religion. In fact, wearing traditional or religious clothing (such as a headscarf) does not appear to increase the likelihood of being discriminated against.

    The full report can be downloaded from the FRA website (pdf).

     
  • thabet 5:54 am on April 23, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination, , , , , ,

    The European Union Fundamental Rights Agency has completed its first ever EU-wide survey of immigrant and ethnic minority groups’ experiences of discrimination and victimisation in everyday life.

    Based on a quick skim read of their survey methodology (pdf), only groups considered most at risk of discrimination were surveyed (see pages 11 and 12).

    The results will be published in detail throughout 2009, culminating in the Fundamental Rights Conference in December, although a summary of sorts has been made available (pdf). (The first of the detailed reports is about the Roma, who reported he highest levels of discrimination.)

    The results indicate that most people who had suffered some kind of discrimination did not report their experience because they did not believe anything would happen.

    Islam in Europe has compiled some of the results from Muslim-majority ethnic groups considered by the survey (North Africans, Somalis and Turks, plus Iraqis in Sweden and Albanians in Italy).

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

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

     
  • johnpi 5:41 pm on April 8, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , discrimination, , Nevada

    A Nevada school district agreed to pay $400,000 to a Muslim girl and her friend over allegations that other students threatened to kill her in the stairwell for wearing a religious head scarf and the staff did nothing to stop it.

     
  • thabet 12:34 pm on April 4, 2009 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, , , ,

    A school in Blackburn has banned a mother from attending her son’s parents’ evening, because she wears a niqab.

     
  • aziz 11:20 am on April 3, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, ,

    more on the Dunkin Donuts versus halal story – as it happens, kosher-only stores are permitted by the parent company, it’s only the muslim store that was singled out.

     
  • abunoor 11:28 am on December 17, 2008 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, ,

    Ga. Judge jails Muslim woman over head scarf.

    Unbelievable. Have these people never heard of the First Amendment?

    By the way, I’m a lawyer who has appeared in court here in Chicago on thousands of cases over the last ten years. On each and every occasion, I was wearing a kufi/topi, and I have never once gotten a problem about it. Many hijabis also appear in the courthouse in which I work as witnesses and attorneys.

    There’s always more to the story than what appears in the first news reports, but the right to wear headgear that is associated with one’s religion should not be controversial…this is not France, is it?

     
  • thabet 11:50 am on October 28, 2008 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, , , ,

    Good.

     
  • willow 9:53 pm on August 21, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination

    LuckyFatima has a bad experience at an airport. While pregnant and dealing with a toddler. Stuff like this makes me mad.

    As a counterpoint, Denver International Airport actually employs a muhajeba woman at the security checkpoint. She’s checked my ID on several occasions. I’m always tempted to say assalamu alaykum but I’m afraid to get her in trouble.

     
  • thabet 4:51 pm on June 23, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: discrimination, , ,

    The owner of a hair salon has been ordered to pay £4,000 compensation to a Muslim stylist who was turned down for a job because she wears a headscarf.

     
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