http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/us/15oklahoma.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a23&pagewanted=all#

Oklahoma Surprise: Islam as an Election Issue

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

Published: November 14, 2010

OKLAHOMA CITY — Cory Williams, a Democratic state representative from Stillwater, expected his opponent in the recent election to label him a free-spending liberal allied with President Obama.

A lawsuit has stalled the ballot initiative.

He did not foresee that he would be accused of trying to subject Oklahomans to Islamic law.


Mr. Williams was one of 10 Democrats who voted against putting a state constitutional amendment on the ballot that would forbid state judges from considering international or Islamic law in deciding cases. He considered the idea unnecessary, since the First Amendment already bans state-imposed religion.

His Republican challenger sent out mailers showing him next to a shadowy figure in an Arab headdress. On the other side, the flier said Mr. Williams wanted to allow “Islamic ‘Shariah’ law to be used by Oklahoma courts” and suggested that he was part of “an international movement, supported by militant Muslims and liberals,” to establish Islamic law throughout the world.

“At the end of the day, it was just fearmongering,” Mr. Williams said.

He won by 280 votes, but many of his fellow Democrats failed to hold their seats. The amendment passed with 70 percent of the vote and helped drive record turnout in Republican strongholds. For the first time in the state, Republicans will now control the governor’s office and have veto-proof majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Other states where Republicans seized control of all reins of government in this election are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

In Oklahoma, many conservative Democrats from rural areas lost, sounding a death knell for the state’s famous Blue Dogs, who have wielded power since the 1930s, pollsters and some Democrats say.

Politicians on all sides here predict that a raft of conservative bills that had been vetoed by Gov. Brad Henry, a moderate Democrat, will sail through next year, along with a few new ones.

The Republican governor-elect, Mary Fallin, a former member of Congress, is not only the first woman to be elected to the office, but also an archconservative allied with right-wing Republican lawmakers who call themselves the Liberty Caucus.

Voters also passed ballot initiatives on hot conservative issues, measures that had had little chance of becoming law under Mr. Henry.

Those initiatives show the extent of the conservative triumph here and how the anxiety among some voters about illegal immigrants and Muslims has become a potent political weapon.

For instance, voters overwhelmingly approved measures making English the state’s official language and requiring picture identification at the polls. Democrats maintain that both measures make it harder for Hispanic immigrants to vote or go to school, and they had succeeded in stopping them in the past.

But nowhere was the culture clash more stark than on the amendment regarding Shariah law, which put Democrats of a secular bent at odds with the conservative Christians who make up the backbone of the Republican Party.

Supporters of the amendment acknowledge that there is no evidence Islamic law had ever been brought up as a defense in the state courts. But they point to a recent case in New Jersey in which a judge had considered Shariah law in denying a restraining order to a Moroccan woman who said her former husband had raped her while they were married. The decision was overturned.

They also note that Shariah courts have been set up in England, where they have the power under a 1996 law to act as arbitration tribunals in Muslim civil disputes, provided all parties agree to abide by the ruling.
“This is a pre-emptive strike,” said the bill’s main author, State Representative Rex Duncan, a Republican from Sand Springs.

Before the vote, Mr. Duncan described the Shariah tribunals in England as “a cancer” and predicted that Muslims would come to America to take away “liberties and freedom from our children.” In an interview on MSNBC, he said: “This is a war for the survival of America. It’s a cultural war.” (In 2007, Mr. Duncan rejected a gift of a Koran from a council Mr. Henry created, saying, “Most Oklahomans do not endorse the idea of killing innocent women and children in the name of ideology.”)

Mr. Duncan, who had to step down because of term limits, won a close race for district attorney in Osage and Pawnee Counties. His sponsorship of the amendment helped him win there, local pollsters and politicians say. Across the state, the ballot initiative pulled conservatives to the polls.

“It was inflammatory, and it got people to turn out,” said State Representative Wallace Collins, a Democrat from Norman who lost a close race. “It worked for them.”

The day after the election, Muneer Awad, executive director of the local Council on American-Islamic Relations, filed a lawsuit. Mr. Awad argued that the amendment violated the freedom of religion clause of the United States Constitution, because it singled out Shariah law and Islam for special treatment rather than banning consideration of all religious codes. That amounts to state disapproval of Islam, he argued.

Last Monday, Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange of Federal District Court agreed that Mr. Awad’s complaint had merit, finding that the amendment’s “primary purpose inhibits religion.” She temporarily halted the certification of the election results and scheduled a hearing for next week.

Outside the courthouse, Mr. Duncan said the restraining order “thwarts the will of the people.” He said the amendment was never intended as an attack on Muslims, but as an effort to prevent what he called “activist judges” from using Islamic law in deciding cases.

Law professors have begun to raise questions about the unintended consequences of the amendment. Because it also “forbids courts from using or considering international law,” it could complicate contractual arrangements between Oklahoma companies and those with headquarters abroad. The amendment might also prevent judges from referring to the Ten Commandments or exploring English common law in their decisions.
“You throw a series of ambiguous ill-conceived words into the State Constitution and you don’t know what will happen,” said Harry F. Tepker Jr., a law professor at the University of Oklahoma. “It’s a mess.”

Ms. Fallin, who has strong support from business, has begun to back away from the amendment, even though she supported it. “It’s something that she will have to meet with the attorney general on and look at the legal specifics,” said Alex Weintz, a spokesman.

Muslim leaders in Oklahoma said the amendment felt like a slap in the face. They worry that marriages, wills, divorces and contracts — often drawn up between parties under Islamic principles then submitted to a court for approval — will no longer be valid. Jews and Roman Catholics often follow the same procedure in civil matters.

But many Muslims said they were more worried about the anti-Muslim mood that fueled the amendment’s passage. The vote here follows the controversy over a Christian pastor’s aborted plan to burn Korans in Florida and the opposition to an Islamic community center near ground zero in Manhattan.

Large mosques in Oklahoma City and Tulsa have been flooded with hateful e-mail since the suit was filed, including a video of a man destroying a mosque, Muslim leaders said.

“Islamophobia is really popular,” said Mr. Awad, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “With fear and hate, you really rally up a lot of supporters.”

The politicians backing the amendment, however, deny the accusations of fearmongering.
 
“America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles — that’s the basis of our laws, and people try to deny it,” said State Representative Mike Reynolds, a Republican who was an author of the bill. “I believe there is an awakening of people concerned about Christian values in our nation, and they are starting to express themselves.”

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.

Times of India Does it Again – VIII

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&GZ=T

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Times of India Does it Again – VIII

The Times of India is on the rampage again. Tired of presenting its Front Page as the prime repository of news all the evils of the corruption and deep fissures in Indian politics and society, it has decided to bring in the Muslims in the focus to divert the attention of its harried readership to savour the rich store of inanities that its so-called progressives, including S. Balakrishnan and M. Wajihuddin, can dish out as quickly as any fast food in the now news-hungry land that has develop the acquired taste, nay the addiction to now feed on the sleaze and filth.

The distortion, disinformation and misinformation is deliberate and verging on criminal when Times of India owners allow its staff to sow seeds of dissension, division and strife in the community. While on the one side, it is burning midnight oil to feed the flames of ‘Asha ke deep’, making up friends with Pakistan, it has gone on to attack Sharia laws with its typical treatment of news in headlines, that has no bearing to the truth. This double dealing newsmaking can only earn deep resentment in 200 million Muslims of India, for deliberate provocation of India’s prime newspaper to take on the supposed might of the Mullahs, by distorted representation of Islam to open it to public derision and scorn.

It would have been fitness of objective reporting, if Times of India, had published the full scan of the Deoband fatwa, which according to TOI report headline has declared --- Women’s earnings Haram. Apparently TOI headline is being used by its editors without full knowledge of what the word ‘Haram’ connotes in Sharia. It merely exposes the open ignorance of the TOI staff, who have been allowed to frame headlines to inflame emotions and outrage among Muslims of India. The whole fatwa needs lots of context to be available for such mischievous and provocative headline. TOI’s S. Balakrishnan himself uses the same word ‘Haram’ in the next report on inside pages as describing proximity between males and females in a confined space, that can lead to unwanted consequences. Islamic Sharia from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia being Muslim dominated states; promote the same norms of Sharia that Deoband is plainly expounding. Deoband is not coming out with anything new or of its own exclusive authorship and copyright. The motive behind such attacks on Deoband, Sharia and Muslim society is to stop their commanding role in the newly emerging political clout of the Muslim voters that practically all political parties at all level are fully apprehensive of and have set the commercially handicapped mainstream media to start a campaign of distortion, disinformation and division among the Muslims. Muslims are neither uninformed of such Machiavellian shenanigans, nor are prepared to let barking dogs keep on barking. The quotes of harebrained women scholars who may be academically informed but woefully ignorant of the conspiracies hatched against Indian Muslims and therefore can only earn widespread derision and scorn for their almost automatic and programmed intervention in the national debate without any overall societal mandate.

India of today is not free of foreign domination and investor money rules the roost. The western capitalist and socialist model that promote consumerism have not gone full circle to fully grasp the difference between Sharia model of preferring distinct roles of men and women and family life in overall economic system. Those who are of open mind, can easily make out how the West is suffering from so many ills of the New Society, geared to ‘women’s liberation’ while throwing them to wolves who would rather feed on their earnings and have comfortable lives. The kind of traumas that single women suffer in the western countries have yet to get any sympathy from these progressive brigades. Western movies unabashedly show how women are desperate for a ‘nightcap’ with any man, just not to go to an empty apartment at night, once they have put in their days work. The trafficking of women, the lonely lives of women, the childless misery of whole generations forced to go for adoption and artificial insemination and the most horrible and immoral route of surrogate pregnancies, are yet to get the attention of social reformers in right earnest. Is it not strange an India that should be rightly proud of its traditions, should be so brain-washed that nothing seems to be odd when gay Israelis are descending on our poor women and rent their bodies for pittances, so that they can live their immoral lives with the help of our impoverished womanhood. The national and nationalist media is silent. It has more urgent business to tackle Mullahs first. That’s where the moolah is.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com