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  johnpi 2:47 pm on October 29, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: discrimination (27), discrimination against Muslims (14), hate crimes (23), Luqman Ameen Abdullah (29), media (408), media feeding frenzy, media frenzy (4), media manipulation (13), media sensationalism (5)

  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.

   

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  johnpi 12:45 pm on October 29, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Luqman Ameen Abdullah (29), media (408), media feeding frenzy, media frenzy (4), media manipulation (13), media sensationalism (5)

  This media report from the Detroit Free Press so sensationalizes Luqman Ameen Abdullah’s past that it literally communicates that they were trying to arrest him for running a “Sunni Muslim group with the mission of establishing a separate Islamic nation within the United States.” It’s not until the sixth paragraph into the story that we find out the charges were not religion or terrorism related.

  Here’s the first graphs:

  After a 2-year investigation, FBI agents descended on a Dearborn warehouse Wednesday hoping to capture the suspected head of an Islamic fundamentalist group.

  The scene quickly turned chaotic, however, in a shootout that caused agents to gun down Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, leader of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit. Abdullah is accused in a federal complaint of heading a Sunni Muslim group with the mission of establishing a separate Islamic nation within the United States.

  Eleven other men were criminally charged in the raids, which also occurred in Detroit.

  Abdullah, known to some as Christopher Thomas, died after firing on officers during the raid, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. An FBI dog also was fatally wounded.

  The suspects “are members of a group that is alleged to have engaged in violent activity over a period of many years and known to be armed,” a joint statement from the Detroit FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

  Does anybody know what ‘violent activity’ that “Ummah” as a group has been involved in? WIkipedia has no entry for the “group,” but there is a paragraph on it in H Rap Brown’s entry, and there is no mention of any violent incidents that the “group” has committed.