KKK Was Terrorizing America Decades Before Islamic State Appeared - Julia Craven - The Huffington Post

This is not to condone violence in any form; but to expose duplicity and bigotry of Zionist controlled US media that under pathological obsession with Islamophobia, is carrying on anti-Islamic propaganda, with fake news and photo-shop pictures to build up a dubious case.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

-----

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/kkk-was-terrorizing-america-decades-before-islamic-state-appeared/ar-BBi2VTY#image=1

KKK Was Terrorizing America Decades Before Islamic State Appeared

Julia Craven 11 hrs ago

© Photo 12 via Getty Images Ku Klux Klan parade in Virginia, March 18 1922, United States, Washington. Library of Congress. (Photo by: Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

When Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) returned home from a trip to the Middle East in October, he offered a reflection on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, to the Bangor Daily News:

"My characterization of ISIS is that they have 14th century ethics and 21st century weapons," he said.

King and others who have reached into the Middle Ages for an apt Islamic State comparison may be going back further than they need to. The 19th and 20th centuries work just as well.

For David Pilgrim, the founder and director of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University, the actions of ISIS and other extremist groups are familiar -- no better, no worse than the historic stateside violence against African-Americans.

"There's nothing you're going to see today that's not going to have already occurred in the U.S.," he said. "If you think of these groups that behead now -- first of all, beheading is barbaric but it's no more or less barbaric than some of the lynchings that occurred in the U.S."

The Ku Klux Klan was a domestic terror organization from its beginning, said Pilgrim, who finds it offensive when, after 9/11, some Americans would bemoan that terrorism had finally breached U.S. borders.

"That is ignoring and trivializing -- if not just summarily dismissing -- all the people, especially the peoples of color in this country, who were lynched in this country; who had their homes bombed in this country; who were victims of race riots," he said.

Victims of lynching were often burned, castrated, shot, stabbed and, in some cases, beheaded. Bodies were then hung or dragged through towns for display.

Most of these atrocities occurred during the eras of slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow -- but not all.

It was 116 years after slavery and 40 years after Jim Crow when 19-year-old Michael Donald's body was found swinging gently from a Mobile, Alabama, camphor tree in 1981. A perfect hangman's knot containing 13 loops held the noose wrapped around his neck, and a squad of Klansmen stood on a porch across the street, looking on as the police gathered evidence.

Lynchings like Donald's exemplify the terrorist methods that have always been the "stock and trade" of the KKK, according to Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"Michael Donald was sort of a classic case," he said. "It was real terrorism in the sense that Michael Donald was a completely random victim. He was completely unknown to his Klan murderers. He was simply abducted off the street and murdered in order to frighten black people."

Donald's lynching is often referred to as "America's last." His death falls outside the terror lynchings that ran rampant during the Jim Crow era, according to a report released by Alabama's Equal Justice Initiative earlier this month.

The study found almost 3,960 African-Americans were lynched from 1877 to 1950 -- a number that supersedes previous estimates by at least 700. It looked at lynchings in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

***
An "Instant Nigger" is 50 percent tar, 45 percent ignorance and 5 percent water, according to a flier thrown on the campus of Murphy High School in Mobile by Klansmen in the early 1970s.

"I'll never forget it," said Ada Fields, a black Mobile resident who attended the school. "It was a paper with a jar and a black body -- totally black -- with big bug eyes looking out the jar."

Alabama has a peculiar history with racially motivated terrorism -- arguably more so than other states in the Deep South -- and the state's Klan history complicates things a bit more. Since each cell of the Ku Klux Klan has a different history, Potok said, it is difficult to discuss the Klan as a single, monolithic group.

There were four eras of the Klan -- and the first and third eras were, arguably, the most characteristic of a terrorist organization.

Initial incarnations of the Klan used intimidation and violence to oppose the extension of civil liberties to blacks, maintain authority over black laborers and enforce their beliefs of white supremacy during Reconstruction, the years after the Civil War when the North occupied the South and briefly attempted to introduce more equitable practices.

Third-era Klan groups arose in response to the Brown v. Board of Education verdict, with membership peaking at about 40,000 around 1965. These individual Klans were more autonomous and often used the same terrorist methods as the first incarnation in an attempt to impede the civil rights movement.

Henry Hays and James Knowles, Donald's murderers, belonged to the United Klans of America, a third-era KKK organization based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that, at its height, was considered the strongest and most violent in the nation.

"The United Klans of America absolutely gloried in violence. That was their main, and perhaps their only, political tool," Potok said. "Violence and terrorism was a way of life for the United Klans of America. The group thought that these tactics would make it possible to reinstitute white supremacy."

Not only was the UKA linked to Donald's killing, members were also held responsible for the Mother's Day attack on Freedom Riders and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing -- an attack resulting in the deaths of four young black girls. Both attacks occurred around Birmingham, Alabama, in 1961 and 1963, respectively.

"It's like they were born to have a genocide or something -- a black genocide," Fields said of the Klan. "They hated blacks. They was gonna get 'em anyway. You couldn't walk the street. If they could get you, they would hurt you."

However, Donald's lynching wasn't part of a widespread attempt to make a statement against a large civil rights movement -- it was revenge for a particular incident. He was, as Potok said, a random sacrifice -- the KKK's retribution for the death of a local white police officer whose alleged killer, an African-American, had walked free.

It was thought that the African-Americans who sat on the jury in the cop-killing case had altered the verdict, and at a post-trial meeting, Bennie Hays, the "Titan" of the UKA, reportedly said, "If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man."

A Klan leader calling for the death of a black person was a retro concept in 1981 -- one more aligned with the group's ideology during the civil rights movement.

"If you go back to the '60s, the Klan often planned murders and bombings and so on -- literally in rooms full of men," Potok said of the outdated practice. "Now, it was true in the Michael Donald case in the sense that the leader, Hays, essentially organized the killing."

Hays, the leader's son, and Knowles took the Titan's message to heart. On March 21, 1981, they hopped into their car and drove around Mobile with plans to avenge the death of the white police officer.

Eventually, Hays and Knowles spotted Donald as he walked home from buying a pack of cigarettes. After asking him for directions, Hays and Knowles forced Donald into their car at gunpoint and drove to a neighboring county.

According to The New York Times, Donald begged for his life and tried to escape. But the pair chased him down and, when they caught him, hit him with a tree limb more than 100 times. Once his body was still, a noose was slipped over his head, and Hays shoved his boot into Donald's face. The rope was pulled and Donald's throat was slit.

His body was left hanging to be discovered the next morning in a black area of Mobile, according to Fields.

"It really touched home when they come and hanged a dead body -- a black, young man's dead body -- in a black area. It just really bothered us because they hung him right in our neighborhood," Fields said. "It took a lot out of us."

In 1983, Knowles and Hays were convicted of murder and of violating Donald's civil rights.

Hays received the death penalty and was executed on June 6, 1997.

***
On June 7, 1998, three white men kidnapped African-American James Byrd, chained him to the back of a pickup truck by his ankles and dragged him almost 4 miles down a road near Jasper, Texas. Byrd died via decapitation after hitting a culvert, though the autopsy report said he was likely conscious for the majority of the ordeal.

Prosecutors, according to CNN, said the attack was "one of the most vicious hate crimes in U.S. history" and was intended to advertise a new white supremacist organization. In 2009, President Barack Obama expanded hate crime legislation due to the deaths of Byrd and Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was kidnapped and beaten to death in Wyoming in 1998.

Pilgrim of the Jim Crow Museum, however, said Byrd's death was more than a hate crime -- it was a lynching.

A lynching, per Pilgrim, involves an extrajudicial killing where the death is used to make a statement against a certain group or individual. Essentially, the killing has a purpose that transcends the actual death of the victim regardless of whether it was executed publicly -- a common misconception as to what defines a lynching.
Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said such crimes are often used as a warning.

"It's not just that you're killing this person, for one reason or another. It's that you're warning all the rest," Potok said. "It was message crime. It was supposed to send a message to black people in Alabama, and elsewhere, that if you do things like set black cop killers free, we will kill you."

While current terror organizations abroad are fighting to upset the existing conditions of their societies, the Klan aimed to maintain the status quo being threatened by a rapidly growing social movement.
The goal of first- and third-era Klan groups was to return to a time when "men were men, women were women, and black people knew their place," according to Potok.

"The radical right, in general in the United States, was -- until the end of the civil rights movement -- essentially restorationist," he said. "The Klan, and most other groups of those years ... wanted to turn back the clock."

Knowles testified in 1984 during a civil rights lawsuit filed against the Klan by Beulah Mae Donald, Michael Donald's mother, that one of the purposes of the killing was to "show Klan strength in Alabama."

Mobile's black community got the message loud and clear.

"They come out and let us know they in full bloom ... How do you think that made us feel? It was like they can do anything they wanna do," she said. "They sent a message to us saying, 'Y'all think that it's gone away. [That] we've left -- we still here.' Cause we didn't think they'd do something like that."

New York Muslims Fight Back Against Police Department's Institutionalized Paranoia About Islam - ALTERNET.ORG

http://www.alternet.org/story/153957/new_york_muslims_fight_back_against_police_department%27s_institutionalized_paranoia_about_islam?page=entire

AlterNet

New York Muslims Fight Back Against Police Department's Institutionalized Paranoia About Islam

Muslim community leaders say Islamophobia is deep-seated in the New York Police Department.

 By Alex Kane

January 31, 2012  |  

 

 

 

LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?

Join our mailing list:

Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email.

 

 

 

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg had a message to New York City's Muslim community: don't worry that the New York Police Department showed an anti-Muslim film to around 1,500 officers, because top cop Ray Kelly “probably visits more mosques” than many Muslims in New York.

Speaking at a press conference in Queens, Bloomberg continued his defense of Kelly: “He has reached out to this community as he has reached out to lots of other communities. We have things regularly at 1 Police Plaza for clergy people of each religion, including Islam. And we'll continue to do that.”  

But Muslim community leaders and activists, backed by a diverse coalition of allies, are having none of that. They want Kelly fired. And they say this latest incident shows how anti-Muslim sentiment has become institutionalized in the NYPD. 

A rejoinder to Kelly's defense was already on display at around the same time Bloomberg spoke, at a January 26 press conference on the steps of City Hall. Protesters held signs labeling Kelly a racist. 

Anger was in the air, and Muslim activists and allies repeatedly called for Kelly's resignation; for “corrective training” for the officers who viewed the film; and for independent oversight of the NYPD. As chants of “Kelly must go” rang through the air, some activists demanded state or federal oversight of New York City police. 

“This outrage is a violation of the honor of our city and those who protect it,” said Cyrus McGoldrick, the civil rights manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations' New York chapter. 
The battle is centered around an Islamophobic film titled The Third Jihad, which was shown to police officers on a continuous loop during “the sign-in, medical and administrative orientation process,” according to police documents obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice. The film, which is filled with violent imagery and posits that mainstream Muslim groups are in fact secretly plotting to take over the U.S., was financed by the Clarion Fund, a right-wing organization with links to Israeli settlers. Compounding the NYPD and Bloomberg administration's problems is the fact that Kelly willingly agreed to sit down for a 90-minute interview for the film and that NYPD spokesman Paul Browne lied about Kelly's involvement and how many officers saw the film. 

This is hardly the first time NYPD's problematic relationship with the city's Muslims has come to light. But what makes the episode significant is the media firestorm it has created over the spokesperson's lies at a time of increasing awareness of police abuse due to Occupy Wall Street-related arrests and brutality. Muslim activists are looking to capitalize on that energy as they confront the NYPD in the weeks ahead. 

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the NYPD has had a fraught relationship with the city's 800,000-member Muslim community, one of the fastest growing religious communities in the city. Billions of dollars have been spent to make NYPD one of the most powerful forces in the fight against terrorism. But the NYPD has been routinely accused of harassing and entrapping Muslims in terrorism-related cases. The final straw for many Muslims came when an Associated Press investigative series published last summer exposed an arbitrary spying program, implemented with CIA help, that targeted virtually all of New York's Muslims. A “demographics unit” established at the NYPD has “monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs” in Muslim communities, as well as mosques, the AP reported. It was also revealed that the NYPD spied on Muslim student associations on college campuses.  

Revelations of the spying program dealt blows to a Bloomberg administration whose relations with the Muslim community were at a relative high note when the mayor defended the Park 51 mosque project near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.  

“These practices paint a dangerous picture of the ways in which law enforcement engages with Muslim communities under the banner of national security,” reads an August 25, 2011 statement from the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition. “These McCarthyite spying techniques threaten the civil rights of all Americans, and deepen the long-existing rifts between communities of color and police in the United States.” 

Then came the most recent revelation about the showing of The Third Jihad. Although the Village Voice first reported on the story last January, a Jan. 23, 2012 New York Times report, based on police documents obtained by the Brennan Center, has received a lot more attention due to the AP expose on the NYPD's spying program. 

“Seeing that propaganda like this is being used in training is almost logical in light of Associated Press reports on the NYPD's comprehensive and warrantless surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers,” said CAIR-NY's McGoldrick.  

After the most recent revelations broke, Browne's lies about the NYPD film screening became a hot media topic. The AP ran a January 30, 2012 article titled “New York Police Spokesman Comes Under Fire.” The two free daily papers in New York led with the story after it broke, and some city council members have called for more oversight of the NYPD as a result of the incident. Protests calling for Kelly's resignation have kept the story in the news, and an editorial, an opinion piece and a column in the New York Times were published in recent days criticizing the NYPD. 

A burgeoning alliance between black and Latino activists working against “stop-and-frisk” police tactics, Muslim activists and Occupy Wall Street could keep the momentum going. Jumaane Williams, a black city council member and OWS supporter whose own run-in with NYPD has turned him into an outspoken advocate against police abuse, spoke at the rally and denounced the NYPD's “corrosive culture.” 

The coming together of long-time anti-police brutality activists and OWS was chronicled in The Awl in a report by Michael Tracey. 

Titled “A Fresh Movement Against the NYPD's Culture of Misconduct,” the article detailed how OWS has reinvigorated New York's anti-police brutality movement. As Tracey shows, the alliance is natural given OWS' experience with police brutality—something communities of color have had to combat for decades. And OWS' attention to police brutality has also been a boon to Muslim activists. 

On October 21, 2011, a CAIR-NY-organized day of prayer was held in Zuccotti Park. Although it attracted little attention outside the anti-Muslim blogosphere, it was a sign of an alliance to come. 

“CAIR-NY’s endorsement of Friday Prayer at Occupy Wall Street stems from a conviction that many of the issues brought into the international spotlight by Occupy Wall Street affect Muslim communities disproportionately,” read a statement announcing the action. “Especially in light of the recently exposed NYPD surveillance in Muslim Student Organizations, we need to unite in our repudiation of government corruption and our rejection of the political effort to marginalize our voice.” 

A month of organizing followed the prayer action, and a much larger rally at Foley Square against the NYPD spying program was held in November with hundreds of people, including a contingent from OWS. Muslim youth broke into chants of “We are the 99 percent” as they marched to NYPD headquarters to make their discontent known.  

“It's really critical we create this broad-based movement,” said Faiza Ali, a community activist and organizer who attended the November rally. “On the whole there's a general distaste for the police department and the way they've been operating, especially recently given the police brutality issues being raised at Occupy Wall Street...All of these issues are connected, and [we have] the support of Occupy Wall Street on this issue.”  

Muslim activists like Imam Talib 'Abdur-Rashid, the spiritual leader of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, say the public pressure on Kelly and the NYPD won't stop until corrective action is taken. Speaking at the January 26 press conference, Abdur-Rashid promised more public protests on these issues in the coming weeks and laid out the stakes.  

“We are facing the specter of a 21st-century COINTELPRO,” he told reporters. And activists say the fight is just beginning.   

“This is part of a long-term strategy,” Linda Sarsour, a prominent Palestinian-American activist in the NYC Muslim community, recently wrote. “We are not just reacting anymore.” 

 

Alex Kane is a staff reporter for Mondoweiss and a freelance journalist based in New York. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.

Shariah at the Kumback Café By ROGER COHEN - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/opinion/07iht-edcohen.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

Op-Ed Columnist

Shariah at the Kumback Café

By ROGER COHEN

Published: December 6, 2010

• comments (247)

PERRY, OKLAHOMA — They call Oklahoma the buckle of the Bible Belt. It’s the state where all 77 counties voted Republican when Barack Obama was elected and where 70.8 percent of the electorate last month approved a “Save Our State Amendment” banning Islamic, or Shariah, law.

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Roger Cohen

Go to Columnist Page »

Readers' Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

• Read All Comments (247) »

So I decided to check the pulse of a resurgent conservative America at the Kumback Café. The Kumback, established 1926, is a cozy, memorabilia-filled joint that sits opposite the courthouse in downtown Perry, population 5,230.


Things work like this at the Kumback: The guys, average age about 80, arrive around 8 a.m. and get talking on “the whole gamut of life”; the girls, average age too indelicate to print, gather later at a horse-shoe shaped table toward the back. Ken Sherman, 86 and spry, explained: “We’ve got to come here every day to find out what’s going on. And by the time we leave we forget.”

I asked Paul Morrow, a whippersnapper at 71, how things were going. “There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law,” he said. “We’re conservative here, old and cantankerous.”

You might not expect Shariah, a broad term encompassing Islamic religious precepts, to be a priority topic at the Kumback given that there’s not a Muslim in Perry and perhaps 30,000, or less than one percent of the population, in all Oklahoma. And you’d be wrong.
Shariah is the new hot-button wedge issue, as radicalizing as abortion or gay marriage, seized on by Republicans to mobilize conservative Americans against the supposed “stealth jihad” of Muslims in the United States and against a Democratic president portrayed as oblivious to — or complicit with — the threat. Not since 9/11 has Islamophobia been at such a pitch in the United States.

The neoconservative Center for Security Policy in Washington recently described Shariah as “the pre-eminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Many Republicans, with Newt Gingrich leading, have signed up. Their strategy is clear: Conflate Obama with creeping Shariah and achieve the political double-whammy of feeding rampant rumors that he’s a closet Muslim and fanning the fears that propel a conservative lurch.

It’s not pretty, in fact it’s pretty odious, but to judge by the Republican surge last month, it’s effective in an anxiety-filled America.

Galvanized by State Question 755, barring “courts from considering or using Shariah Law,” Republicans swept to the Oklahoma governorship and veto-proof majorities in the Legislature for the first time.

Question 755 was “a pre-emptive strike,” in the words of its most active proponent, Republican State Representative Rex Duncan, whose portrait hangs in the Kumback. The question arises, given the quiet on the prairies, against whom? A prominent Oklahoma pastor, Paul Blair, told me it was aimed at those “whose plan is not to coexist but bring the whole world under Islam.”

A preliminary federal injunction, granted after a prominent local Muslim, Muneer Awad, challenged the constitutionality of the amendment in the nation where “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” has blocked its certification for now. The very curious case of Shariah and Oklahoma may be headed to the Supreme Court.

Marilee Macias, the bubbly owner of the Kumback, swung by. “Duncan’s ahead of the game,” she said. “He’s a military guy, been around the world. I don’t know what these Muslims are preparing but I know that stoning women, we don’t want that here.”

Bud Johnson, 84, who worked in Washington and is gently mocked at the Kumback for his East Coast liberalism, shook his head. “It’s going to cost the state a lot of money to try to defend a stupid law,” he said. “There should be a reason for a law, not just hatred and emotions. But my view went down here like the Titanic. The fear element has got us.”

To understand U.S. politics today, try “It’s the fear element, stupid.”

I asked Frank Lawson, 83, about Obama. “I think the young man’s a Muslim,” he said. Case closed. He continued: “I got on the computer, punched in Koran, and there it is in black and white: They are out to rule the world and if you don’t convert, they kill you.” Cherry-picked inflammatory phrases, attributed to the Koran but more often lifted from interpretations of it, course through Oklahoman churches and spread via Internet chatter.
Sherman asked me what “that huge Muslim movement that took over Europe,” was called. I couldn’t help. “Begins with ‘O”’ he said. “The Ottoman Empire?” I ventured. Yep. Case closed again.

Things were quiet on Perry’s main square. So quiet the “Muslim threat” was hard to imagine. It was even harder to imagine that, right here, Timothy McVeigh, the homegrown terrorist who killed 168 people in a 1995 Oklahoma attack, was held after being stopped by a state trooper outside Perry for having no license plate.

Nobody initially suspected McVeigh. Suspicion fell on men “of Middle Eastern.

Anti-Muslim crusaders make millions spreading fear - By Bob Smietana • THE TENNESSEAN •

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20101024/NEWS01/10240374/Anti-Muslim-crusaders-make-millions-spreading-fear

Anti-Muslim crusaders make millions spreading fear

By Bob Smietana • THE TENNESSEAN • October 24, 2010

First of Two Parts

Steven Emerson has 3,390,000 reasons to fear Muslims.

That's how many dollars Emerson's for-profit company — Washington-based SAE Productions — collected in 2008 for researching alleged ties between American Muslims and overseas terrorism. The payment came from the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, a nonprofit charity Emerson also founded, which solicits money by telling donors they're in imminent danger from Muslims.

Emerson is a leading member of a multimillion-dollar industry of self-proclaimed experts who spread hate toward Muslims in books and movies, on websites and through speaking appearances.
Leaders of the so-called "anti-jihad" movement portray themselves as patriots, defending America against radical Islam. And they've found an eager audience in ultra-conservative Christians and mosque opponents in Middle Tennessee. One national consultant testified in an ongoing lawsuit aimed at stopping a new Murfreesboro mosque.

But beyond the rhetoric, Emerson's organization's tax-exempt status is facing questions at the same time he's accusing Muslim groups of tax improprieties.

"Basically, you have a nonprofit acting as a front organization, and all that money going to a for-profit," said Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group. "It's wrong. This is off the charts."

But a spokesman for Emerson's company said the actions were legal and designed to protect workers there from death threats.

"It's all done for security reasons," said Ray Locker, a spokesman for SAE Productions.
Emerson made his name in the mid-1990s with his documentary film Jihad in America, which aired on PBS. Produced after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the film uncovered terrorists raising money in the United States.

He followed up with the books Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S. and American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us.

He claims that extremists control 80 percent of mosques in the United States. In August, he claimed to have uncovered 13 hours of audiotapes proving that Feisal Rauf, the imam behind the proposed mosque near ground zero, is a radical extremist.

"I don't think he'll survive the disclosure of these tapes," he told talk show host Bill Bennett.
Rauf is still in place as a project leader, even though tape excerpts have been online for weeks.
Emerson formed a Middle Tennessee connection last summer, when his organization uncovered pictures on a Murfreesboro mosque board member's MySpace page. His company said the pictures proved connections to Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization, but mosque leaders said they checked with the Department of Homeland Security and found the concerns were groundless.
Special Agent Keith Moses, who heads the FBI's Nashville office, told The Tennessean last month that the bureau doesn't discuss specific allegations.

"In a post-9/11 era, the FBI is taking every step to prevent further terrorist attacks," he said. "We also want to protect civil rights and the freedom of religion."

Others cash in

While large organizations like Emerson's aren't the norm, other local and national entrepreneurs cash in on spreading hate and fear about Islam.

Former Tennessee State University physics professor Bill French runs the Nashville-based, for-profit Center for the Study of Political Islam. He spoke recently to a group of opponents of the Murfreesboro mosque gathered at a house in Murfreesboro.

With an American flag as a backdrop, French paced back and forth like the Church of Christ ministers he heard growing up. His message: how creeping Shariah law is undermining the very fabric of American life.

"This offends Allah," said French, pointing to the flag on the wall. "You offend Allah."

French, who has no formal education in religion, believes Islam is not a religion. Instead, he sees Islam and its doctrine and rules — known as Shariah law — as a totalitarian ideology.
In his 45-minute speech, he outlined a kind of 10 commandments of evil — no music, no art, no rights for women — taken from his book Sharia Law for Non-Muslims. The speech was free, but his books, penned under the name "Bill Warner," were for sale in the back and ranged from about $9 to $20.

When he was done, the 80 or so mosque opponents gave him a standing ovation and then began buying French's books to hand out to their friends.

Frank Gaffney, head of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Security Policy, earned a $288,300 salary from his charity in 2008. Gaffney was a key witness in recent hearings in the Rutherford County lawsuit filed by mosque opponents. He said he paid his own way.

On the stand, the Reagan-era deputy assistant defense secretary accused local mosque leaders of having ties to terrorism, using ties to Middle Eastern universities and politics as evidence. His main source of information was his own report on Shariah law as a threat to America, one he wrote with other self-proclaimed experts.

But, under oath, he admitted he is not an expert in Shariah law.

The list of people on the anti-Islam circuit goes on. IRS filings from 2008 show that Robert Spencer, who runs the Jihadwatch.org blog, earned $132,537 from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative nonprofit.

Brigitte Tudor, who runs the anti-Islam groups ACT! For America and the American Congress for Truth, earned $152,810, while her colleague Guy Rogers collected $154,900.

Unusual arrangement

Emerson's older, most established organization collects several times that in an average year.

Emerson incorporated his for-profit company, SAE Productions, in Delaware in 1995. He launched the nonprofit Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation in Washington, D.C., in 2006.

But he doesn't make that distinction on his website, www.investigativeproject. org, which describes the Investigative Project on Terrorism as "a non-profit research group founded by Steven Emerson in 1995." And today, the two groups share the same Washington street address, which is published on Emerson's personal website.

In 2002 and 2003, despite lacking nonprofit status, Emerson received a total of $600,000 in grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation, a conservative public-policy shaper based in Connecticut. The foundation declined to comment on the grants but said it gives money only to tax-exempt charitable groups.

Giving money to a for-profit is extremely rare for foundations, said Peter Bird, president of the Nashville-based Frist Foundation. It can happen only when the foundation keeps meticulous records on how the money was spent by the group that received it.

"It almost never happens," he said.

Locker, a former USA TODAY national security editor now working for SAE Productions, said his organization does not discuss funding.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation's 1023 application for tax-exempt status stated that all of the money raised by the Washington, D.C.-based charity would go to a nonprofit subcontractor with no ties to Emerson or any board members. The application also said the charity would buy no services from board members. Emerson ended up being the only board member.
In a letter dated Dec. 8, 2006, the IRS asked if there would be any ties between the subcontractor and the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation. On Dec. 29, 2006, Emerson wrote back: "There are and will be no financial/business transactions between officers, board members or relatives of the aforementioned and applicant organization."

In 2008, however, the charity paid $3,390,000 to SAE Productions for "management services." Emerson is SAE's sole officer.

Because of its unusual arrangement with Emerson's company, the Investigative Project's tax returns show no details, such as salaries of staff.

Locker said the approach was vetted by the group's lawyers and is legal. He said that Emerson takes no profits from SAE Productions and therefore the Investigative Project is a nonprofit.
That doesn't fly, said Charity Navigator's Berger. Berger said tax-exempt nonprofits must be transparent and disclose how they spend money and how much they pay their staff. Emerson's group appears to be trying to skirt these rules, he said.

"It really undermines the trust in nonprofits," he said. "This is really off the grid."

The Frist Foundation's Bird said the discrepancy between the Investigative Project's application to the IRS and its practices is troubling.

"It looks like they told the government one thing and did another," he said.

But Rebecca Bynum, editor of the New English Review, a Nashville-based online magazine that's critical of Islam, said she has no problem with Emerson's big take. Her nonprofit took in $30,000 in 2008 and has no paid employees.

"I know that (Emerson) does great work," Bynum said. "They investigate very thoroughly. You can always count on what they say."

Inaccurate information

The message anti-Islam authors and groups disseminate isn't always accurate.

Brannon Wheeler, history professor and director of the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the United States Naval Academy, said critics of Islam mistakenly assume that Shariah law is a set of fixed principles that apply to every Muslim, everywhere.

That's not the case, he said, making clear that he speaks as an expert and not for the Navy or the Naval Academy.

While French, for example, has put together his Sharia Law for Non-Muslims, no similar book exists for Muslims.

"There's no text that is entitled The Shariah," Wheeler said. "It's not a code of law. It's not like you could go to the library and get the 12 volumes of Shariah law."

Instead, Shariah is flexible, and applies differently in different contexts. It comes from clerics' and scholars' interpretations of the Quran and other holy books.

Wheeler also had harsh words for Gaffney's report, which claims Shariah is an imminent threat to America.

"He makes the Shariah look absurd and insidious by trolling through and finding outrageous rulings and then making them universal for all time," Wheeler said. "It's ridiculous."

Wheeler also responded to another criticism of Islam — that it allows Muslims to lie to non-Muslims. Critics of the local mosque often say that's why Muslims can't be trusted when they say they're peaceful.

Wheeler said the term applies only to Shia Muslims, the smaller of the two majors sects of Islam, during times of persecution.

"It's an escape clause," he said. "You are not required to tell the truth about your religion if someone is going to kill you. It's not to be understood as lying."

Middle Tennessee's Muslims are Sunnis, the larger sect. They find the constant barrage of mistruths about their faith baffling.

"What does Shariah law have to do with America? Why are they talking about it?" asked Abdiaziz Barre, who immigrated to Nashville from Somalia 17 years ago. He said he has heard claims that Muslims endorse slavery and terrorism.


That's nonsense, said Barre, who rejects both. But he's not going to lose sleep over the misinformation of critics.

"If people don't want to be a good neighbor or friend, so what," he said. "I have plenty of neighbors and friends."

Message gains traction

Despite what critics call inaccuracies, the anti-Islam message has found traction in Middle Tennessee, with some casually citing it.

Sally Snow hosted French's speech along with her husband, former Rutherford County Republican Party Chairman Howard Wall. She has been a regular at hearings in a lawsuit aimed at stopping a new Murfreesboro mosque.

One day this month, Snow arrived wearing sunglasses and joked that she was trying to cover up marks on her face.

"Howard's turned into a Muslim," she said. "He's started beating me."

French's crowd contained politicians and preachers, businesspeople and others — brought together by their fear of Shariah and their belief that Islam is incompatible with American life. Some oppose Islam on theological grounds, seeing it as a threat to their Bible Belt culture or, for Christian Zionists, to the state of Israel.

According to that belief, American Christians have a religious duty to protect the state of Israel. When Israel expands, they believe, Muslims in Iran and Iraq will be forced out of their homes to make way. Then the second coming of Jesus can begin.

"The reason America exists is to partner with Israel, to protect Israel," said the Rev. Darrel Whaley, pastor of Kingdom Ministries Worship Center and head of a Protestant ministers group opposed to the mosque in Murfreesboro.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore, who led opposition to a failed mosque in Brentwood, also is Christian Zionist. Her nonprofit, the Franklin-based Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, exists to drum up support of Israel among Christians.

With those stances out there, it's unlikely broad-based, interfaith cooperation is possible, said Rabbi Rami Shapiro, an adjunct religion professor at Middle Tennessee State University.

At an interfaith event at the university this month, he downplayed fears that Muslims would try to impose their religious laws on the United States.

"Muslims are not going to 'Shariah-ize' America," Shapiro said. "What's going to happen is that America is going to Americanize Muslims."

Still, he said, building trust between Muslims and some right-wing Christians will be difficult.
"According to their beliefs, Muslims are in the way of God's plan," he said. "You can't argue with that."

Contact Bob Smietana
at 615-259-8228 or bsmietana@tennessean.com.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Comments posted on Daniel Pipes website over his Book Review of Jeffery Herb’s “Nazi propaganda for the Arab World”.

“More has been done by the Zionist occupation after 1948 to hurt and antagonize not only the Palestinians but the entire Arab and Muslim world than any propaganda by the Nazis. Writers and propagandists have to earn their bread and butter to whip up fresh line of Islamic phobias merely to detract the world attention from the atrocities and war crimes committed by IDF in occupied lands. The world is not blind to the virulent nature of Israeli policies to wipe out Palestinians from the lands that they rightly or wrongly claim as their own. Those middle age brutalities are no longer tenable in modern times of globalization and free democracies. While time has come to focus on the peace moves to solve the problem, it is sad to find that propagandists are hard at work to prolong the enmity between Israeland the Muslim world at large. Nobody knows how the events unfold in the near future. If peace arrives, all such bogus propaganda will be thrown in the dust bins.”

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

http://www.danielpipes.org/8257/nazi-propaganda-for-the-arab-world

Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World

by Jeffrey Herf
Yale University Press, 2009, 352 pages
Reviewed by Daniel Pipes
Commentary

April 2010

[Differs slightly from the published version]

The impact of National Socialism in the Middle East used to appear brief and superficial. Unlike with Communism, whose local parties and outside influence through the Soviet bloc lasted over many decades, the Nazis' moment lasted about six years, 1939-45, and they had little regional presence beyond Rommel's armies in North Africa and a fleeting pro-Nazi regime in Iraq.


But two powerful, important books have set the record straight. Djihad und Judenhass (2002) by Matthias Küntzel, translated into English in 2007 as Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, shows the continuing influence of Nazi ideas on Islamists. Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf focuses on an earlier time, the 1930s-40s, and the major effort by Hitler and his minions to transmit their ideas to the Middle East. After reading Küntzel and Herf, I realize that my education about the modern Middle East was lacking a vital ingredient, the Nazi one.


A specialist in modern German history at the University of Maryland, Herf brings a new corpus of information to light: summary accounts of Nazi shortwave radio broadcasts in the Arabic language that were generated over three years by the U.S. embassy in Cairo. This cache reveals fully, for the first time, what Berlin told the Arabs (and to a lesser extent, the Iranians). As page after page of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World establishes in mind-numbing but necessary detail, the Germans above all pursued two themes: stopping Zionism and promoting Islamism. Each deserves close consideration.


Nazi propaganda in Arabic portrayed World War II, history's largest and most destructive war, as focused primarily on the sliver of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. This interpretation both flattered Arabs and extended Hitler's grand theory that Jews wanted to take over the Arab countries and eventually the whole world, that the Allied powers were but pawns in this Zionist conspiracy, and that Germany was leading the resistance to them.
Palestine was the key, according to these broadcasts. If Zionists took it over, they would "control the three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Thus they will be able to rule the whole world and spread Jewish capitalism." Such an eventuality would lead to Arabs oppressed and Islam defunct. "Should Bolshevism and Democracy be victorious," announced Nazi radio, "the Arabs will be dominated forever and all traces of Islam will be wiped out." To avoid this fate, Arabs had to join with the Axis.


As the war progressed, Berlin's incitement became ever more furious. "You must kill the Jews before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews" went a July 1942 broadcast. Herf notes the bitter irony: "At this moment of complete Jewish powerlessness, the Arabic broadcasts from Berlin skillfully adapted the general Nazi propaganda line about Jewish domination of the anti-Hitler coalition to a radical Arab and Islamic view."


At the same time, the Nazi regime developed an approach to Muslims that largely ignored the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, and other European sources in favor of selected passages from the Koran.


Hitler's propagandists assured Muslims, first, that Axis countries "respect the Koran, sanctify the mosques, and glorify the prophet of Islam." It cited the respectful work of German Orientalists as an important sign of goodwill. Second, it argued for what Heinrich Himmler called the "shared goals and shared ideals" of Islam and National Socialism. These included monotheism, piety, obedience, discipline, self-sacrifice, courage, honor, generosity, community, unity, anti-capitalism, and a celebration of labor and warfare.


In addition, Muslims were told that they and the Nazis were purportedly both fighting a "great struggle for freedom" against the British, the most important colonial power in the Middle East. The regime drew a parallel between Muhammad and Hitler and presented the umma as roughly analogous to its own notion of a totalitarian Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").


Nazis portrayed Islam as an ally and, accordingly, called for its revival while urging Muslims to act piously and emulate Muhammad. Radio Berlin in Arabic went so far as to declare "Allahu akbar! Glory to the Arabs, Glory to Islam." The Germans held that Muslims who were not righteous enough (i.e., not following the Nazi ideological model) were causing the umma to languish: "Muslims, you are now backward because you have not shown God the proper piety and do not fear him." And not just backward, but also "invaded by merciless tyrants." Specifically for Shi'ites, the Nazis hinted at Hitler being the awaited Twelfth Imam or the Muslim eschatological figure of Jesus, who will fight the anti-Christ (namely, the Jews) and bring on the end of days.


The Nazis noted the parallel between sayings from the Koran (Sura 5:82, "You will meet no greater enemy of the believers than the Jews") and the words of Hitler ("By resisting the Jews everywhere, I am fighting for the Lord's work") and turned the Koran into an anti-Semitic tract whose primary purpose was to call for eternal hatred of Jews. They even falsely claimed that Muhammad ordered Muslims to fight the Jews "until they are extinct."


In the Nazi telling, Jewish-Muslim enmity dated back to the 7^th century. "Since the days of Mohamed, the Jews have been hostile to Islam" went one broadcast. "Every Moslem knows that Jewish animosity to the Arabs dates back to the dawn of Islam" declared another. "Enmity has always existed between Arab and Jew since ancient times" insisted a third. The Nazis built on this premise to establish the basis for a Final Solution in the Middle East, instructing Arabs to "make every effort possible so that not a single Jew … remains in Arab countries."


Herf emphasizes the remarkable symbiosis of German and Middle Eastern elements: "As a result of their shared passions and interests, they produced texts and broadcasts that each group could not have produced on its own." Specifically, Arabs learned "the finer points of anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking," while Nazis learned the value of focusing on Palestine. He describes the coming together of Nazi and Islamic themes in Berlin as "one of the most important cultural exchanges of the twentieth century."


Having detailed Nazi propaganda in Arabic, Herf then traces its impact. He begins by documenting the great energy and expense devoted to these messages—the quality of the personnel devoted to it, their high-level Nazi patronage, the thousands of hours of radio transmissions, and the millions of pamphlets.
He then rounds up assessments of the Axis impact, all pointing to its success. Allied estimates from 1942, for example, found that "the people were saturated with Axis talk," that "upwards of three-fourths of the Moslem world are in favor of the Axis" and that "90% of the Egyptians, including their government, believe that the Jews are mainly responsible for shortages and high prices of essentials." A report from 1944 found that "practically all Arabs who have radios … listen to Berlin."
Allied reluctance to contradict Nazi propaganda also points to Axis success.


Fearful of alienating Middle Easterners, the Allies stayed humiliatingly silent about the genocide taking place against the Jews; failed to refute allegations about Jews dominating London, Washington, and Moscow; did not dispute the distorted Koranic interpretations; and shied away from endorsing Zionism. Merely to dispute Nazi accusations, the Allies worried, would only confirm Nazi claims about Britain, America, and Russia being stooges of Jewish power. An internal U.S. directive in late 1942 acknowledged that "the subject of Zionist aspirations cannot be mentioned, inasmuch as … [this] would jeopardize our strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean."


Thus, when two leading U.S. senators, Robert Taft of Ohio and Robert Wagner of New York, proposed a resolution in 1944 endorsing a Jewish national home in Palestine, Berlin radio in Arabic called this an attempt "to erase Islamic civilization" and "to eradicate the Koran." Panicked, the entire weight of the Executive Branch came down on the senators, who felt compelled to withdraw their resolution. Clearly, Nazi offerings resonated deeply in the Middle East.


They continued to do well after the Nazi collapse and the war's conclusion. The defeat of Nazi General Erwin Rommel's aggressive push into North Africa meant that Nazi ambitions in the Middle East, in particular the Final Solution to annihilate its million or so Jews, were never implemented. But years of hate from radio and pamphlets and the repetitive, grotesque, ambitious, anti-Semitic, and Islam-based message detailed by Herf had taken root. Not only did the Middle East's Nazis emerge nearly invulnerable to prosecution, but they also prospered and were feted. An example: in 1946, Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brethren, lavished praise on Hitler's favorite Arab, Haj Amin el-Husseini, calling him "a hero … a miracle of a man." Banna added for good measure: "Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin el-Husseini will continue the struggle." Acknowledging el-Husseini's exalted status, a British officer in 1948 described him as "the one hero in the Arab world."


Ideas the Nazis spread in the Middle East have had an enduring twofold legacy. First, as in Europe, they built on existing prejudices against Jews to transform that prejudice into something far more paranoid, aggressive, and murderous. One U.S. intelligence report from 1944 estimated that anti-Jewish materials constituted fully half of German propaganda directed to the Middle East. The Nazis saw virtually all developments in the region through the Jewish prism and exported this obsession.
The fruits of this effort are seen not only in decades of furious Muslim anti-Zionism, personified by Arafat and Ahmadinejad, but also in the persecution of ancient Jewish communities in countries like Egypt and Iraq, which have now shriveled to near-extinction, plus the employment of Nazis such as Johann van Leers and Aloïs Brunner in important government positions. Thus did the Nazi legacy oppress Jewry in the Middle East post-1945.


Second, Islamism took on a Nazi quality. As someone who has criticized the term Islamofascism on the grounds that it gratuitously conflates two distinct phenomena, I have to report that Herf's evidence now leads me to acknowledge deep fascist influences on Islamism. This includes the Islamist hatred of democracy and liberalism and its contempt for multiple political parties, preference for unity over division, cult of youth and militarism, authoritarian moralism, cultural repression, and illiberal economics.


Beyond specifics, that influence extends to what Herf calls an "ability to introduce a radical message in ways that resonated with, yet deepened and radicalized, already existing sentiments." Although a scholar of Europe by training, Herf's detective work in the U.S. archives has opened a new vista on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Islamism, as well as made a landmark contribution more broadly to an understanding of the modern Middle East.

American Muslims eight years after 9/11

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Abdus-Sattar Ghazali <asghazali@gmail.com>

Date: Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 11:10 PM

Subject: American Muslims eight years after 9/11

To: ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

September 11, 2009

American Muslims eight years after 9/11

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

"Change" was President Barak Obama's campaign slogan. The seven-million strong American Muslim community, firmly believing in his "change" slogan, voted overwhelmingly for him in the 2008 presidential elections with the hope that his administration would bring an end to their humiliation and sufferings they faced in the Bush era in the name of "war on terror."

American Muslims were both pleased and surprised by President Obama's inclusive words in his inaugural address, on January 20th, when he said America is "a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers." Such words signaled Obama's recognition that Muslims are an important part of the American fabric.

In his historic June 4 speech in Cairo, President Obama hinted to the problems facing the American Muslims by saying that the United States "rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat."

His Cairo statement coincided with a statement by Attorney General Eric Holder: "The President's pledge for a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim community takes root here in the Justice Department where we are committed to using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans. A top priority of this Justice Department is a return to robust civil rights enforcement and outreach in defending religious freedoms and other fundamental rights of all of our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the housing market, in our schools and in the voting booth."

Similarly, in his September 2nd speech at the White House Iftar dinner, President Obama emphasized that "the contributions of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalogue because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country." While noting the contributions of American Muslims, president also alluded to their problems when he shared the story of the Muslim sixth-grader Nashala Hearn from Oklahoma, who was suspended twice last fall because the school officials claimed her hijab violated their dress code policy. The President said: "When her school district told her that she couldn't wear the hijab, she protested that it was a part of her religion. The Department of Justice stood behind her, and she won her right to practice her faith."

Not surprisingly, Valerie Jarrett, a Senior Advisor and Assistant to President Obama for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, was the keynote speaker at the inaugural session of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Convention 2009. She paid a tribute to the diligent work of Muslim Americans on behalf of the country. Citing President Obama's April 2009 Cairo Speech, Ms. Jarrett acknowledged the contribution of American Muslims to the overall development of American society and the strengthening of American institutions. Ms Jarrett pointed out: "Your work here is crucial in confronting the challenges that all Americans are facing. And you help advance the new beginning between the United State and Muslim communities around the world that the President called for in Cairo."

These courteous and good gestures by President Obama are accompanied by the appointment of a number of American Muslims to some minor positions in his administration. Rashad Hussain, an American Muslim lawyer, has been appointed as Deputy Associate Counsel to the President. Dalia Mogahed was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) National Executive Director Kareem Shora has been appointed a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).

However all these good gestures and public policy measures have little positive impact on the restoration of civil rights of American Muslims curtailed since 9/11. Profiling has been institutionalized in the post-9/11 America. State and federal agencies, under the guise of fighting terrorism, have expanded the use of this degrading, discriminatory and dangerous practice. The damage to civil liberties has been extensive, and a lot of work remains to be done.

American Muslims and civil libertarians are particularly concerned about Justice Department guidelines implemented in the last days of the Bush administration, which allow race and ethnicity to be factors in opening an investigation. Other civil rights concerns include FBI agent provocateurs sent into American mosques, citizenship delays, politicized "terror" trials, and misuse by the Department of Justice of the "unindicted co-conspirator" label.

Today, eight years after 9/11, incidents of racial and religious profiling in the United States have increased dramatically. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, racial profiling became the norm at American airports where anyone belonging to the Arab or Muslim communities was systematically called out for questioning and sometimes even detained. Eight years hence, August 14, 2009 detention of Indian Muslim superstar Shah Rukh Khan's detention at Newark Airport in New Jersey is only one of the scores that take place every day.

COINTELPRO operation against the Muslims

Last October — in the waning days of the Bush administration — FBI director Robert Mueller signed new guidelines allowing broader FBI authority in pursuing potential threats to national security. The new guidelines allow agents to consider race or ethnicity in determining whether someone is a suspect. These guidelines – which became effective Dec. 1, 2008 — allow the FBI to launch a criminal investigation against someone without any factual predicate and without approval from FBI headquarters.

The guidelines are similar to COINTELPRO, an FBI program used in the 50s and 60s to spy on civil rights, environmental and labor groups, with the goal of unearthing Communist ties those organizations may have had. At Congressional hearings last May, FBI Director Mueller — who continues to serve as FBI director in the Obama administration — said the guidelines simply formalized processes the FBI had begun to use, post-9/11. President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have not indicated whether they intend to scrap the new guidelines.

Tellingly, the Obama administration has also formalized laptop seizure rules. On August 27, 2009, the Obama administration disclosed that it will carry on Bush administration policies that allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seize and search international travelers' laptop computers, cellular phones, cameras, and other electronic devices, even in the absence of suspicion of criminal activity. The DHS made public two directives that formalized operational practices established by the Bush administration to carry out searches of the personal digital instruments of travelers, US citizens or not, passing across US borders. According to the directives, border police "may detain electronic devices, or copies of information contained therein, for a brief, reasonable period of time to perform a thorough border search. If DHS turns up nothing incriminating, to regain the confiscated item the traveler must return to the border crossing where the item was seized, or else pay for its shipment.

Although the electronic media search regulations apply to all passengers but Muslims are perhaps the main target at present because they are the target of extra scrutiny at the airports and other points of entry.

In April 2009, Muslim Advocates released a report - Unreasonable Intrusions: Investigating the Politics, Faith & Finances of Americans Returning Home - documenting the systematic and widespread practice of federal agents interrogating Muslim, Arab, and South-Asian Americans returning home after international travel — violating their rights to privacy and nondiscrimination, among others. The report pointed out: "Currently, no DHS policy limits the scope of interrogations, even those that probe the religious beliefs, political views and other First Amendment-protected activities of law-abiding Americans.

"For many hard-working, law-abiding Muslim Americans, questions about their political beliefs, religious practices, and charitable causes they support, as well as surrendering their business cards, credit card numbers and laptop and cell phone data, have become the price of admission to return home to the U.S.," says Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates.

On June 30, 2009 the ACLU issued a report titled: The Persistence of Racial and ethnic Profiling in the United States. The report said: "The Obama administration has inherited a shameful legacy of racial profiling codified in official FBI guidelines and a notorious registration program that treats Arabs and Muslims as suspects and denies them the presumption of innocence and equal protection under the law.……….As a result, in 2009, with a new administration in office, the practice of racial profiling by members of law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels remains a widespread and pervasive problem throughout the United States, impacting the lives of millions of people in African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, and Arab communities." Tellingly, as a candidate, President Barack Obama's campaign released a "Blueprint for Change," which stated that, if elected, "Obama and Biden will ban racial profiling . . . " In 2005 and in 2007, then-Senator Obama cosponsored End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA) which has continued to languish in Congress since its introduction in 1997. ERPA is the key piece of federal legislation as it would compel all law enforcement agencies to ban racial profiling; create and apply profiling procedures; document data on stop/search/arrest activities by race and gender; and create a private right of action for victims of profiling.

Islamophobia

Eight years after 9/11, there is a rising tide of Islamaphobia, intensified by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. government measures at home. Americans' attitudes about Islam and Muslims are fuelled mainly by political statements and media reports that focus almost solely on the negative image of Islam and Muslims. Politicians, authors and media commentators are busy in demonizing Islam, Muslims and the Muslim world. Eight years after 9/11 attacking Islam and Muslims remains the fashionable sport for the radio, television and print media. Few recent incidents of Islamophobia:

In February 2009, Republican Senator Jon Kyl hosted screening of an anti-Islam film 'Fitna' at the Capitol building and invited anti-Islam far-right Dutch lawmaker, Geert Wilders, as his guest. Tellingly, Wilders was denied entry to London earlier that month because British authorities believed that showing his controversial film posed a threat to public order. Islamophobe Wilders, who built his political career on fear-mongering, compares Islam's holy book Qur'an to Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and calls for its ban.

Islamophobes are also teaching hatred towards Islam and Muslims to the school children. On August 24, Faith Sapp, a 10-year-old daughter of Wayne Sapp, pastor of the controversial church, the Dove World Outreach Center, in Gainesville Florida, was sent home for wearing a T-shirt with the words 'Islam Is Of The Devil' printed on it. Next day three more students were sent home for wearing the anti-Islam T-shirts. On their front, the T-shirts had a verse from the Gospel of John: "Jesus answered I am the way and the truth and the life; no one goes to the Father except through me." The message "Islam is of the Devil" is on the back of the shirt. The Dove World Outreach Center's anti-Islam T-shirts episode came a month after the church displayed a series of hand-painted anti-Islam signs.

In the latest incident of Islamophobia, Clarksville, Tennessee, Mayor Johnny Piper, on Sept. 4, sent an e-mail to every City Council member, every department head, and numerous other city employees, friends and family members, to protest a U.S. Postal Service stamp commemorating two Islamic holidays of Eid. The e-mail falsely claims that the stamp is new, and its creation was ordered by President Barack Obama. In fact, the stamp was first issued in 2001, and was reissued in 2002, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Not surprisingly, Islamophobia has created an atmosphere of suspicion among the fellow Americans towards the Muslims. In this Islamophobic charged atmosphere, it is not surprising that 48 percent Americans have an unfavorable view of Islam according to a 2009 poll by Washington Post-ABC News. Nearly three in ten (29 percent) said they see mainstream Islam as advocating violence against non-Muslims. Unfortunately, what most Americans continue to see on television and read in newspapers since 9/11 are examples of Muslims and Arabs responsible for terror attacks, the repression of women, and riots.

Islamophobia incited incidents targeting American Muslim individuals and institutions. Eight years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, American Muslims and Arabs continue to suffer a severe wave of backlash violence. The hate crimes included murder, beatings, arson, attacks on mosques, shootings, vehicular assaults and verbal threats. Recent hate crimes include a bias-motivated attack on a Muslim woman and child in Seattle by a self-proclaimed white supremacist, vandalism of mosques in California, Florida and North Carolina, an anti-Islam sign outside a Florida church, racist fireworks sold in Wisconsin, the beating of a Muslim student in New York, and the death of a California Muslim leader in a "suspicious" fire.

Last month, an Islandia, New York, man threatened to kill a Muslim woman and her 20-year-old daughter as he tried to run them down with his car at a gas station. The victim, 49, and her daughter were dressed in an abaya, a traditional Muslim garment that completely covered their bodies and face, except for their eyes.

FBI infiltrated spies into South California mosques

In February 2009, the American Muslim community was shocked at the revelation, that the FBI has been infiltrating spies into a number of mosques in Southern California. The Orange County Register reported that the FBI sent a convicted criminal, Craig Monteilh, to pose as an agent provocateur in several of California's mosques. In April, Monteilh told The Los Angeles Times that he posed as a Muslim convert at the request of the FBI to gather intelligence that might aid anti-terrorism investigators. Monteilh said he was instructed to lure mosque members to work out with him at local gyms. FBI agents later would obtain security camera footage from the gyms and ask him to identify the people on the tapes and to provide additional information about them. He was told that the agents then conducted background checks on the men, looking for anything that could be used to pressure them to become informants.

The Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan (CIOM), in April 2009, asked Attorney General Eric Holder to launch an investigation into complaints that Michigan Muslims are being approached to spy on activities of Muslim congregations by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). Through coercion of certain members of congregations, the FBI is reportedly promoting entrapment of innocent, law-abiding citizens in otherwise peaceful houses of worship, said a CIOM statement. CIOM is an umbrella organization of mosques and Islamic organizations within the state of Michigan. The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI), which is a CIOM member, had received complaints that the FBI has approached Michigan Muslims, asking them to spy on unsuspecting worshippers including monitoring their legitimate charitable donations.

Muslim charities

Eight years after 9/11, Muslim charity organizations remain under pressure. In June 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union released an extensive report about how the U.S. terrorism finance laws and policies were unfairly preventing the seven-million-strong American Muslim community from practicing their religion through charitable giving. The 164 page report, "Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity," is the first comprehensive report that documents the serious effects of Bush administration terrorism finance laws on Muslim communities across the nation. The core of the report is about how Muslims are being scared away from making zakat (a religious obligation) donations to Muslim charities. "U.S. terrorism finance laws and policies unfairly prevent Muslim Americans from practicing their religion through charitable giving, create a climate of fear and distrust in law enforcement and undermine America's diplomatic efforts in Muslim countries," the report said.

Since December 2001, the ACLU reports that the government has seized the assets of three Muslim charities, closed seven others and conducted raids of more. The stated purpose was to cut off the money that supposedly was heading from Muslim charities to groups that support or carry out terrorism. "Without notice and through the use of secret evidence and opaque procedures, the Treasury Department has effectively closed down seven U.S.-based Muslim charities, including several of the nation's largest Muslim charities," said Jennifer Turner, a researcher with the ACLU Human Rights Program and author of the report. "While terrorism financing laws are meant to make us safer, policies that give the appearance of a war on Islam only serve to undermine America's diplomatic efforts just as President Obama reaches out to the Muslim world. These counter-productive practices alienate American Muslims who are key allies and chill legitimate humanitarian aid in parts of the world where charities' good works could be most effective in winning hearts and minds," Turner added.

In May 2009, after a series of legal twists, secret evidence and questionable witness of Israeli intelligence agents, five former officials of the Holy Land Foundation, once a leading American Muslim charitable organization, were sentenced upto 65 years imprisonment on charges related to humanitarian aid given to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. The defendants said they were engaged in legitimate relief work, while the government claimed that work benefited terrorists. During the trial, defense attorneys accused the government of bending to Israeli pressure to prosecute the charity, and of relying on old evidence. The five were never accused of supporting violence and were convicted for funding charities that aided needy Palestinians.

To borrow the OBM Watch, the Holy Land Foundation trial sends a chilling message to the US charities. It is virtually impossible for charities to determine what foreign organizations they can legally partner with. At the trial, Robert McBrien from Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control testified that it can be illegal to deal with groups that have not been designated as supporters of terrorism and placed on government watch lists. He said that keeping up with front groups "is a task beyond the wise use of resources." As a result, charities now have to guess about whether or not any local charity or community leader may be considered a supporter of terrorism, said the OBM.

"Ramadan, Giving Wisely and With No Fear" is the title of an article about zakat which reflects the dilemma of Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation of zakat which is usually given during the month of Ramadan. Government crackdown of Muslim charities has caused tremendous fear and anxiety among Muslims, with many still fearful that a simple act of charity could lead to federal agents knocking at their door. Unfortunately Obama's pledge to work with American Muslims to resolve the problem has so far helped little to assure the Muslims. In July, Muslim organizations joined other nonprofit organizations in signing a letter urging President Obama to follow up on his Cairo commitment to revise charitable giving rules.

On August 26, the Treasury Department issued a statement about charity giving in Ramadan. "As Ramadan begins, the U.S. Department of the Treasury recognizes the particular importance of charitable giving throughout the holy month of Ramadan for Muslims in America and around the world. Charitable giving is a fundamental characteristic of many faiths, and zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, is a sacred obligation for Muslims." However, the Treasury Department has failed to provide a safe list of charity organizations so that Muslims can donate without fear.

In short, eight years after 9/11, Muslims in America remained at the receiving end with assault on their civil rights and their faith. Muslims are the prime targets of the post 9/11 reconfiguration of American laws, policies, and priorities which have not been changed under the Obama administration. Defending civil rights remains the single most important challenge before the seven million-strong American Muslim community.

It will not be a harsh judgment to say that eight years after 9/11, American Muslims remain under siege. Despite healing words from President Obama about bridging the divide between the Muslim world and the West, America's Muslim community is subject to pervasive and persistent attacks by the federal government, many spearheaded by the Joint Terrorism Task Forces. As President Barack Obama made his public appearance with Turkish President Abdullah Gul on April 6, 2009 as part of his first trip to a Muslim country, U.S. federal agents were preparing to arrest Youssef Megahed, a student from Egypt, in Tampa, Fla. Just three days earlier, a jury in a U.S. federal district court had acquitted him of charges of illegally transporting explosives and possession of an explosive device. Megahed was being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for a deportation proceeding. The charges were the same ones from which he was completely acquitted. Surprisingly, in August he was released when an immigration judge refused to deport him, ruling the Department of Homeland Security had failed to prove terrorism charges.

Many people believed that after Bush had left the White House, rampant arrogance combined with stunning hypocrisy had also gone. Events have so far proved otherwise. Although Obama is able to give a more compassionate and intelligent speech than was possible with Bush, the essence of their policies is identical. To borrow Ted Rall: "Obama doesn't talk like Bush; he just acts like him?"

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com Email: asghazali@gmail.com