How Islamophobia is DECEIVING People about Islam

Texas Muslims on edge amid protests, contest attack

May 5, 2015
By JAMIE STENGLE
Source: AP                                              

     










                                     DALLAS (AP) — When an outspoken opponent of radical Islam sought to mock Muhammad in Texas, home to one of the nation's largest Islamic communities, local Muslims were encouraged to ignore her, and they did.

No one protested when Pamela Geller's cartoon contest attracted about 200 people to suburban Dallas Sunday, even though some Muslims in Texas were already feeling aggrieved and fearful over growing anti-Islamic sentiment in the state.

Then, two men with attack rifles drove in from Arizona and opened fire on officers guarding the conference center in Garland. Both were shot dead, an officer was shot in the leg, and from the other side of the world, the Islamic State group made an unproven claim of responsibility.

"This is the exposure that they wanted and this is the divisiveness that they wanted to bring," said Omar Suleiman, resident scholar at the Valley Ranch Islamic Center in Irving, a Dallas suburb with a sizable Islamic community.

"We condemn obviously the attack in the strongest terms, and we are glad that the police officer is OK," Suleiman added. "This is what extremists on both sides want: whether it's Geller or whether it's ISIS. They want this all-out war. That's not what we're about."

Anti-Islam sentiment has been reverberating in Texas, from the state Capitol to local governments. Tensions rose in Irving after the City Council endorsed one of several bills to forbid judges from rulings based on "foreign laws."

"I think it is redundant — no law can override the Constitution," said Malik Abdul-Rahman, an Irving barber. "I think it is more intolerance and bigotry than anything."

Islam holds that any depictions of its prophet are deeply offensive, and yet Geller's contest rules sought images that engage "in criticism of and mockery of Muhammad and the belief system and ideology that underlies global jihad terrorism." She also brought in a speaker known for his outspoken criticism of Islam, Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders.

Geller, president of the New York-based American Freedom Defense Initiative, booked Sunday's event at the same venue where she led about 1,000 protesters at a January fundraiser that the Chicago-based group Sound Vision held to combat negative perceptions of Islam.

"We are standing against the most brutal, radical and extreme ideology on the face of the Earth," Geller declared.

A man with a bullhorn repeatedly called Muhammad a pedophile. One person chanted "Go back to your own countries! We don't want you here!" Another held a sign saying "Insult those who behead others."

Texas was a natural stop for Sound Vision, with more people associated with Muslim congregations, about 422,000, or 1.7 percent of its population, than any other state, according to a 2010 census by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston each have about 155,000 Muslim adherents.

Later in January, hecklers greeted Muslims for the first time at their lobbying day at the Texas Capitol in Austin.

Republican state Rep. Molly White told her staff to ask visiting Muslims to declare allegiance to America. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott rebuked such attitudes, saying "we must have civil discourse."

But six bills addressing foreign laws, which opponents believe are anti-Muslim, are now pending in the Texas Legislature. Similar legislation banning judges from violating state and federal laws has been introduced this year in almost 20 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Nine other states have passed them.

The lawmakers have gone out of their way to avoid mentioning Sharia, or Islamic law, but their constituents have done it for them.

"The concern is they're hearing about it, they're seeing it, they're fearful," Republican state Rep. Dan Flynn said. "They don't want this foot in the door."

Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach suggested that his bill would put limits on an Islamic tribunal in Dallas.

The panel advertises voluntary, non-binding arbitration to resolve disputes among Muslims in accordance with both Sharia traditions and U.S. law, and says similar religious tribunals have helped the American Jewish and American Christian faith communities resolve disputes for decades.

"Some people will tell you: 'Is this really a problem? Is this a solution looking for a problem?'" Leach said as he promoted his bill at the Texas Faith and Family Day rally in Austin in February. "We want to codify that, to ensure that there is no judge in Texas who should even think twice about violating the Texas or United States Constitution."

Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne weighed in on Facebook, saying she would investigate rumors of a Sharia law court in her city, and that if "there are violations of basic rights occurring, I will not stand idle and will fight with every fiber of my being against this action." It turned out that an imam from Irving served on the Dallas panel.

In March, an Iraqi man was fatally shot in Dallas while photographing a snowfall, rattling nerves even though police later determined it was random and not a hate crime.

"There is a lot of fear. So if anything happens, until proven otherwise, and even then, the violence sticks with you," Alia Salem, who directs the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In April, people lined up to denounce Islam two weeks after the Irving City Council voted to endorse Leach's bill. One woman declared "Sharia law is Islam, and Islam's goal is to immigrate, assimilate and annihilate." A man sitting in the audience shouted "That is offensive!" and was escorted out.

As Texans took stock of Sunday's shooting, Muslim leaders praised police for proactively guarding the area's mosques and Islamic schools, and thanked the FBI for reaching out to their community.

"Whatever we can do to ensure that we'll keep our cities safe, we'll do everything possible," said Azhar Azeez, president of the Islamic Society of North America.

Do you fear Islam and Muslims coming to your town? Then watch this! TheD...

UK: “rising tide” of attacks on Muslim women

June 30, 2014
by Mark Townsend
Source: theguardian.com
Source: muslimvillage.com

More than half of Islamophobic attacks in Britain are committed against women, who are typically targeted because they are wearing clothing associated with Islam, new data reveals.

The figures of anti-Muslim attacks, compiled in the nine months following the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in May 2013, come days after Saudi Arabian student Nahid Almanea was stabbed to death in Essex, with detectives believing that she may have been attacked because she was wearing traditional Islamic clothing.

In a study of calls to the Tell Mama hotline, which records Islamophobic crimes, academics at Teesside University found there were on average two incidents every day over the period.
Victims reported a total of 734 incidents to the hotline between the start of May last year and 28 February 2014, broken down into 599 incidents of online abuse and 135 offline attacks – an increase of almost 20% on the same period the previous year.

One aspect of the figures indicates an apparent lack of trust in police to deal with Islamophobic incidents, with one in six victims choosing not to report the incident to authorities.

The Teesside report, published by the first research unit in Britain dedicated to the study of the far right and its opposition, says more effort is required to foster greater trust between the Muslim community and authorities.

“Supporting victims and encouraging them to come forward to report a hate crime remains the highest priority,” the report says. “Alongside addressing under-reporting, authorities should be encouraged to disaggregate hate crimes by strand, and to take seriously the increased incidence of anti-Muslim hate crime.”

The data also revealed that – unlike most incidents of hate crime, which overwhelmingly involve male perpetrators and victims – 54% of the victims of Islamophobia were female.

One theory is that Muslim women are more “visibly” Muslim because of traditional clothing such as the hijab or abaya. The figures show that four in five victims attacked in the street or elsewhere were females wearing visibly Muslim clothing; almost the same proportion of alleged perpetrators offline were young, white men.

Incidents reported to Tell Mama leapt after the murder of Rigby, with nearly four times more reports during the week following the attack than the previous week – although the number of incidents reduced in the months thereafter.

However, the report says that Islamophobia and its negative impact on community relations remains an ongoing concern. “Throughout spring 2014, there were heightened levels of both online and offline incidents reported to Tell Mama. At this time, many people in Britain felt frightened and victimised,” it says.

Overall, the data are in contrast to the trend for hate crime, with government figures showing the number of reported attacks falling.

Other findings from the report confirm that a significant number of incidents reported to the hotline involved a link to far-right groups such as the English Defence League. A far-right connection was traceable in almost half of reported Islamophobic online abuse.

An online link to the far right was readily detected through recognisable slogans such as the EDL’s “NFSE” (No fucking surrender ever), hashtags linked to far-right groups, avatars or recurring far-right phrases including neo-Nazi phrases.

In a previous report by the Teesside University centre, it was claimed that a small number of far-right activists were responsible for a significant proportion of online hate incidents targeting British Muslims.

Link:  http://muslimvillage.com/2014/06/30/55032/uk-rising-tide-of-attacks-on-muslim-women/.