Our Announcements
Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.
Posted by Brave_Heart in Donald Trump Islamophobe on January 31st, 2017
The Huffington Post tracked Islamophobia in the U.S. throughout 2016.
After the 2015 terror attack in Paris, when Donald Trump and other GOP presidential candidates were ratcheting up their anti-Muslim political speech, we started a running list of Islamophobic acts. Sadly, in less than two months, the list became so long the webpage often wouldn’t load.
This made us recognize the very real surge in anti-Muslim incidents sweeping the nation — a surge many wanted to deny was happening at all. (Think Fox News host Eric Bolling saying he “hadn’t heard of any” anti-Muslim hate crimes.)
So we developed The Islamophobia Project, and committed to tracking anti-Muslim violence, vandalism, discrimination, public policy and political speechjam throughout 2016.
CAIR-St Louis
America, 2016. A man with a gun screams at a Muslim family near St. Louis. “You Muslim?” he allegedly said. “All of you should die.”
The timing of the incidents we collected helped reveal patterns. We discovered that Trump supporters attacked, harassed, or plotted to kill Muslims at least 13 times during the election cycle, proving a potential link between Trump’s rhetoric and the actions of supporters. We documented apparent surges in anti-Muslim incidents during Muslim holidays.
It’s now been a year, and our project is a sad and seemingly endless scroll through nearly 400 stories of Muslims in America being attacked, threatened, scapegoated, and profiled, seeing their places of worship vandalized and their faith denigrated.
An email address we set up as a source for tips — islamophobia@huffingtonpost. com — generated hundreds of responses. Many people expressed gratitude for the project. One email led to a story about a Muslim Army veteran who found the word “terrorist” written on his locker. Mostly, we received anti-Muslim hate mail.
Our reporters and editors were attacked on anti-Muslim hate group sites and trolled relentlessly on Twitter ― signs that the project was making waves.
And, if you scroll through the tracker to March 10, 2016, you’ll read about the then-frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary saying: “I think Islam hates us.”
So much cynicism and misinformation was packed into those five words. That Trump could say them and go on to get elected president of the United States underscores just how successfully Muslims have been designated the “other” in this country.
When a group is an “other,” it’s easier to attack them, or to strip them of their civil rights. Our tracker documented this time and again.
But in another sense, Islamophobia isn’t something that can ever be tracked comprehensively. There’s too much of it, and not every instance becomes a headline.
It’s ubiquitous in the daily lives of Muslim Americans. It’s when a Muslim mom tells her daughter to maybe not wear the hijab today. It’s a Muslim father having to explain to his children that no, they’re citizens, they can’t be deported. It’s how almost every Muslim in a movie is depicted as a terrorist, and it’s why cable news channels only ask Muslims if they condemn terrorism.
With the rise of Trump, the silver lining is that now, more people seem to be paying attention to anti-Muslim hate. Media organizations are covering the subject more robustly. The nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica has launched its own project, called “Documenting Hate,” and The New York Times has started a weekly column on the subject called, “This Week in Hate.”
This year, we won’t be updating the Islamophobia Tracker. The story is so much bigger than a dataset now. But we will continue telling stories of hate and extremism. And we will pay close attention to the new presidential administration that seems hell-bent on vilifying Muslims and persecuting them.
Having tracked hate for a year, we’re able to see that people who disparaged Muslim Americans are mostly reading from the same old script. It’s possible even to look at our project as a kind of how-to guide for anti-Muslim bigotry ― a list of six “rules” of Islamophobia in America.
And if we’re going to help protect our Muslim neighbors, coworkers, friends and family, these are six “rules” that desperately need to be dismantled and destroyed.
Rule 1: Muslims are not American.
Mark Wilson via Getty Images
“Go back to your country,” a man screamed at worshipers leaving a Connecticut mosque. “C**t, you don’t belong in this country. Go back to your f****** country,” another man shouted at a Muslim woman and her family in Ohio.
“Get the hell out of the country you bitch-ass Muslims,” a woman screamed at a Muslim mother and daughter in Maryland. “You’re not even from here, motherf*****! F*** you and your family, you terrorist!” a man yelled at a Moroccan Uber driver in Queens, New York.
“Get out of America, bitches,” a woman in Brooklyn, New York, screamed at two Muslim women pushing their babies in strollers. “This is America — you shouldn’t be different from us.”
And when pundits and politicians decried San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem, they were quick to baselessly blame this alleged act of unAmerican-ness on the influence of Kaepernick’s Muslim girlfriend.
Muslims just can’t be from here, the thinking goes ― even though Muslims fight in our military and die in our wars, and even though a United States without Muslims has never existed.
Rule 2: All Muslims are terrorists.
A hate-filled voicemail left at the San Francisco chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“You’re a terrorist,” a woman yelled at a Muslim woman inside a New Mexico grocery store.
“We don’t want niggers and terrorists here. #Trump,” read a note taped to the door of a Muslim family’s home in Iowa.
Mohamed Abbas, a 32-year-old Iraq War veteran and American citizen with PTSD who happens to be Muslim, found “terrorist” written on his locker inside a California Marine Corps base.
“When you say the word ‘Islam’ to Mike Goodman, it means ‘terrorist,’” Goodman, a member of a Massachusetts town commission, said of himself. “When you say ‘Muslim,’ it means a person. Islam is nothing but full of terrorists.”
That’s just not true, Mike.
A Texas anti-Muslim militia group dips bullets in pig’s blood. Why? To send Muslims “straight to hell.”
In Florida, a man allegedly trashed a mosque with a machete before leaving bacon on the front doorstep. At mosques in Nebraska and Las Vegas, men wrapped bacon around mosque door handles. In Raeford, North Carolina, a man carrying a handgun left packages of bacon at the mosque and threatened to kill worshippers.
In Philadelphia, someone left a severed pig’s head outside a mosque. And outside a mosque in Lawton, Oklahoma, someone dumped a whole pig carcass.
And then there’s Trump, who in 2016 was fond of telling an apocryphal story of how a U.S. general killed Muslim insurgents with bullets dipped in pig’s blood.
Like Judaism, Islam generally prohibits its followers from eating pork. While these pork-based acts of hate are undoubtedly meant as insults, the perpetrators also seem to ascribe mythical or inhuman qualities to Muslims, as if pork could magically fend them off, or send them straight to hell. As one anti-Muslim activist told comedian Samantha Bee on her show this year: “A pig head to Muslims is like a crucifix to a vampire.”
Muslims, of course, don’t believe this. Most don’t eat pork ― and that’s about the extent of it. As one Muslim HuffPost employee put it recently after reading about the pig carcass in Oklahoma: “I swear I need to spread a rumor that Muslims don’t eat cupcakes.”
Rule 4: All brown people are potentially Muslim, and are therefore potentially terrorists.
Courtesy of the Jabara family
Khalid Jabara, an Arab-American Christian, was fatally shot by a neighbor who often called the Jabaras “dirty Arabs,” “Aye-rabs” and “Mooslems.”
Simran Jeet Singh was running in the New York City Marathon when he said someone called him a “dirty Muslim.” Harmann Singh said a man called him a “f****** Muslim” inside a Cambridge, Massachusetts, store. “You’re trying to blow up this country, I should (expletive) kill you right now, you know,” Balmeet Singh said a man told him outside a California burger restaurant.
All three Singhs, who are not related, wear turbans and are Sikh, not Muslim. Sikhs are commonly perceived as Muslims in the U.S., and are targeted in anti-Muslim hate crimes, even though Sikhism and Islam are completely different religions ― not that it should matter.
In Oklahoma in August, a 61-year-old ex-convict named Stanley Majors allegedly shot and killed a 37-year-old man named Khalid Jabara outside his home. Majors reportedly had harassed the Jabara family for years. He called the Jabaras “dirty Arabs,” “Aye-rabs” and “Mooslems.” The Jabaras are Christian immigrants from Lebanon.
This phenomenon is sometimes called the “racialization of Islam,” and it helps explain why nearly 30 percent of Americans, including possibly Trump, still think the country’s first black president is secretly a Muslim.
Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser and an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist, saying that Islam isn’t a religion.
Islam “is an ideology posing as a religion. Islam is intolerant and deceitful, and its adherents are ordered to overthrow our way of life and to replace it with ‘Sharia’ law,” Republican New Hampshire state Rep. Ken Weyler wrote in testimony submitted to the state House.
In Pennsylvania, a school board member said that Islam is “not a religion” and is “not only godless, but pagan.” In Virginia, a member of the Republican State Central Committee tweeted that Islam is a “death cult organized by Satan” and “is not a religion of peace but an ideolgy (sic).”
And in Utah, the state’s third-largest political party called for outlawing Islam altogether, arguing that because it’s not a religion, it’s not protected under the First Amendment.
Merriam-Webster defines Islam as “the religious faith of Muslims including belief in Allah as the sole deity and in Muhammad as his prophet.” It is practiced by 1.6 billion people and is the world’s second-largest religion, after Christianity. It is no more inherently violent or peaceful than any other religion.
Rule 6: There’s a secret Muslim plot to take over and/or destroy the United States and/or Western civilization from within.
Richard Ellis/Getty Images
Frank Gaffney, an advisor to Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, has long pushed the “civilization jihad” conspiracy theory. In a press release for a bill that could destroy American Muslim groups, Cruz cited “civilization jihad.”
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson warned of a “civilizational jihad” against the U.S., wherein “jihadists” who “disguise themselves as moderate Muslims” would “infiltrate, multiply and take positions of power” in order to “replace our Judeo-Christian values with Islam.”
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann described the influx of Muslim migrants and refugees into Europe and the U.S. as a “planned invasion” meant to destroy “western Christendom.” It’s part of a “civilization jihad,” the tea party Minnesota congresswoman explained, aimed at “Islamizing” the West.
The news site The Hill published an article by Frank Gaffney, an adviser to presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in which Gaffney wrote that Muslims in the U.S. have a “civilization jihad” aimed at “destroying Western civilization.” This Muslim conspiracy, he explained, uses “stealthy, subversive means like influence operations to penetrate and subvert our government and civil society institutions.”
The idea of a “civilization jihad” is a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory. But it’s also a popular one that has contributed to this country’s dim view of Muslims. A recent survey revealed that Americans think there are 54 million Muslims in America. There are only about 3 million.
“If you’re promoting anti-Muslim bigotry and your theory is that a small percentage of the population is going to take over, it doesn’t work very well,” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told HuffPost recently. “You have to create the impression that there’s a flood of Muslims taking over America.”
Reference
Preview YouTube video Armed and Vigilant: In Fear of a Muslim Uprising in Texas
Armed and Vigilant: In Fear of a Muslim Uprising in Texas
Posted by admin in ISRAEL'S MASSIVE NUCLEAR-Dangerous to Global Peace, Neocons-Axis of Evil, Zionist Enemy on January 31st, 2017
Non-resolution of Palestinian and Kashmir dispute gave rise to Islamic radicalism. After the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the ten-year Iran-Iraq war ended inconclusively in 1988 but militarized and radicalized the two countries. Iraq under Saddam Hussain was supported by the two super powers, the west and the Arab world. While Iran completed its revolutionary cycle under Imam Khomeini and started to assert its authority in the region, Saddam claimed the leadership of Arab world. Israeli aggression in Lebanon and persecution of Palestinians gave birth to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza Strip and heightened radicalism.
The war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 in which Pakistan played a key role, radicalized the region. CIA assisted by Saudi Arabia was instrumental in collecting Jihadis from Muslim countries, converting religious seminaries into training venues and providing funds and weapons to organize proxy war and converting FATA into a base of operation. The collective effort succeeded in pushing out occupying Soviet forces from Afghanistan in February 1989, but the whole muck of ten-year war fell upon Pakistan. Harsh US sanctions from 1989 till 2001 impeded Pakistan’s development and economic growth. It also curtailed efforts to reduce poverty and to counter the fallout effects of the Afghan war in the form of Kalashnikov and drug cultures and sectarianism. Marriage between USA and India enabled India to intensify its human rights violations against the Kashmiris in Indian occupied Kashmir (IOK), which further intensified radicalism in Pakistan and gave birth to several Jihadi groups.
On November 9, 1989, Berlin wall fell, reuniting East and West Germany after 40 years of division. In retaliation to capture of Kuwait by Iraqi forces in August 1991, the US under George H. W. Bush militarily intervened in Iraq with the blessing of Gorbachev. Soviet Union collapsed on December 26, 1991 and Yeltsin replaced Gorbachev. These earth shaking events paved the way for the US to become the unchallenged sole super power and none could compete its political, diplomatic, economic and military strength. Bush senior drafted the neocons inspired New World Order (NWO), which gave out broad outlines of making America great. The threat of communism was replaced with Islam.
After fragmentation of Yugoslavia, dissolution of Warsaw Pact and integration of East Europe into Western Europe, membership of NATO was gradually increased to 28 members and made into a formidable military machine. Bill Clinton who took over from Bush senior, being highly pro-India, treated Pakistan unfairly. His 5-hour officious visit to Pakistan in March 2000 during which he behaved like a Viceroy visiting a colony cannot be forgotten by Pakistanis. It was during his tenure that a Jerusalem based Israeli think tank ‘Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies’ (IASPS) came out with a paper in 1996, titled “Clean Break”, which envisaged rebuilding Zionism, atomization of Iraq and breaking it into three states based on ethnic-sectarian lines.
IASPS wrote another paper in 2000, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ for a New American Century. The two documents openly spoke of the need to destabilize the Middle East so as to reshape Israel’s strategic environment. The plan focused on destruction of oil rich Iraq and removal of Saddam Hussain and installation of Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, followed by systematic destruction of oil rich Libya, and then Syria and Egypt. It suggested increasing the number of forward US military bases.
Although the apparent objective of Zionists is to crush all dissent and make USA all powerful so that it could rule the world unopposed, in reality the Zionists consider themselves to be the chosen people to rule the world. They want to achieve their goal by placing their gun on the shoulder of USA.
Overall recommended strategy hinged on fomenting open-ended chaos to achieve overlapping strategic objectives in Middle East. The brains behind these rabid thoughts were a gang of eight Israeli-American neocons. They were Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks Jr, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, Meyrav Wurmser and Paul Wolfowitz. This group had got influenced from Israeli journalist Adid Yenon’s book ‘Breakup of Syria’ published in 1982. He had suggested that Israel should breakdown all Arab states into small quasi states. Israeli leaders have all along advocated regime changes in Arab world to install puppets but their preferred choice is Balkanization.
Lt Col Ralph Peter wrote an article ‘Blood Borders’ in 2006 suggesting change of boundaries in Middle East. His write up and the map are in use in training of NATO Defense College for senior officers.
When the US became the sole super power, it was infused with the ambition of gaining complete hegemony over the world for next 100 years. Its aim has been to disempower and neo-colonize 1.5 billion Muslims, and rob their oil, gas and wealth. The US succeeded in establishing bases in almost all Gulf States after encouraging Saddam to capture Kuwait in August 1991 and then destroying Iraqi infrastructure in November 1991 and imposing harsh sanctions on Iraq. Capture of Iraq in May 2003, Arab Spring, regime change in Libya and civil war in Syria were in accordance with the pre-conceived plan to foment chaos in whole of Middle East, let Muslims kill Muslims on ethnic and sectarian basis and to divide the targeted states one after the other. Splitting of Yugoslavia into seven states engineered by Richard Holbrooke was in their mind.
Former Supreme Allied Commander NATO Gen. Wesley Clark had revealed in 2004 that Pentagon had made a plan to target seven countries in five years. The countries in order of priority were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. He also disclosed that initial target after 9/11 till as late as 20 September 2001 was Iraq and not Afghanistan.
Once George W. Bush junior assumed power with the support of Israel and Neocons in January 2001, he unfolded his Muslims specific offensive doctrine based on pre-emption, preventive action against rogue states, shock and awe, opening of torture chambers and unilateralism. Global war on terror was launched to achieve geostrategic and geo-economic interests. He boasted that terrorism will be eliminated from the face of the globe to make the world peaceful. He crowed, ‘We will launch a crusade against terrorism’; ‘we will smoke them out of their holes’. Drunk with power, he had arrogantly stated that, ‘21st century will be New-American Century’. He defined Iran-Iraq-North Korea as axis of evil.
Man from Texas was thunderously applauded by the home audience and European allies. Tomahawk cruise missiles, cluster bombs, daisy cutters, B-52 bombers, drones and laser guided munitions were used extensively to destroy Afghanistan and enable Northern Alliance forces to capture power. He used a huge hammer to kill a fly. The country was destroyed but the fly flew away.
His next target was heavily sanctioned Iraq which was invaded in March 2003 under fake charges and after raining tons of bombs, it was captured in May with the help of Iraqi Shias and Iraqi Kurds. Even after destroying Afghanistan and Iraq and installing puppet regimes in the two occupied countries to launch reign of terror against opponents, radicalism rather than getting curbed touched new heights since he was never sincere in eliminating it.
Once Obama took over power in January 2009, he introduced Pakistan specific Af-Pak policy with ulterior motives. He reinforced US combat force in Afghanistan with two troop surges, accelerated drone war in Waziristan, twice changed the top ISAF commanders abruptly, and chanted the slogan of disrupting, defeating and destroying Al-Qaeda in Af-Pak region by making full use of drones and availing the services of so-called ally Pakistan that had been silently bled from within under a pre-planned scheme to steal its nukes. Emphasizing on counter terrorism and drones while disregarding root causes of terrorism heightened radicalism in Pakistan.
Behaving like a ‘good boy’, Pakistan fought the US imposed war on terror on its soil as a frontline state and helped the US in netting about 600 Al-Qaeda operatives, thereby forcing Al-Qaeda to shift its base to Arabian Peninsula. Soon Al-Qaeda under the leadership of Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri with its main base in Yemen morphed into an international organization. Killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 brought no change in the fighting capability and grit of Al-Qaeda since it gave birth to more dangerous terror groups like ISIS, Al-Nusra Front, Khurasan group and Boko Haram. ISIS is now the most dangerous terror group which has made inroads into Afghanistan as well. Likewise, the Afghan Taliban couldn’t be defeated despite using full force and torture and divisive tactics.
The US-NATO troops pulled out of Iraq in 2011 and from Afghanistan in December 2014 without achieving any of the stated objectives of eliminating Al-Qaeda, defeating Taliban, eradicating terrorism, imposing its brand of democracy and improving the lives of the common people of the occupied countries. The US property/security contractors, arms merchants, drug mafias and oil tycoons made billions under the garb of rebuilding the devastated cities and infrastructure of the two countries.
Not satisfied with the ruination of the two sovereign states Afghanistan and Iraq that were stable and well governed, and are now in a mess and rived in deep turmoil, the US then destroyed prosperous Libya in 2011 and initiated civil war in Syria the same year, which was also a stable country. The US has now got badly stuck in Syria.
Fate of Iraq has been sealed and has no future as a unitary state. Likewise Libya and Syria have been sufficiently debilitated. Sudan has been divided and oil-rich South Sudan that had been independent is mired in turmoil. Yemen and Lebanon are also unstable and considerably enervated. Iran has been forced to roll back its nuclear program, but several sanctions have not been lifted. Somalia has been turned into a failed state. CIA has been using drone extensively as a choice weapon.
The 21st century crusaders have succeeded in altering the geography and demography of the Arab world. 250 million Arabs are today defenceless, destitute and despondent and tens of thousands have sought refuge in Europe.
Pakistan has rendered maximum sacrifices in war on terror and has suffered 60,000 human casualties and financial loss of $118 billion but is in bad books of USA despite the fact that it is the only country which has defeated and ousted the foreign backed terrorists from FATA.
As a result of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim policies and injustices, the US is rated as the most unjust and hateful country of the world. Both Bush and Obama along with their western allies are solely responsible for wreaking havoc upon the targeted countries in the Muslim world through senseless war on terror and for making the world much more insecure and dangerous than it was prior to 9/11. Over 4 million people, mostly innocent men, women and children have lost their lives in this insane war and 12 million have become refugees. Countless numbers have been crippled, orphaned, widowed, rendered homeless, or have lost sense of living.
Israel and India, the strategic partners of USA, have taken full advantage of war on terror, and have been brutally massacring and torturing the hapless Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank, and in IOK respectively. The US has been fully supporting India and Afghanistan in their massive covert war against Pakistan since 2003 using Afghan soil. USA, Israel and India are hand in glove stirring up radicalism and terrorism in pursuit of their imperialist agenda.
With this dismal background, Donald Trump has come on the centre stage and is chanting the old slogan of eradicating Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth. He has already begun to flex his muscles against the peeved Muslims. Like his predecessors, he is pleasing Israel and India at the cost of severely bruised Muslim world. His target countries are no different to the ones disclosed by Gen. Wesley Clark. His predecessors have used all kinds of most deadly weapons against the militants for the last 15 years but to no avail. He is also pro-use of force, but it is to be seen what new weapon or strategy he has up his sleeve? The only weapon that has so far not been used is the nuclear weapon! The other course open to him is to trample few more Muslim countries.
Pakistan must remain cautious and vigilant of this most dangerous nexus, and without annoying USA, play its cards dexterously to fit into the emerging axis of Russia-China-Iran, which will surely act as a safety valve against isolation and military adventurism. At the same time, it should keep its armed forces in readiness and nuclear deterrence serviceable. Last but not the least, the snakes in the grass towing foreign agenda must be dealt with an iron hand. Opportunist political leaders must desist from pursuing politics of agitation and animosity and should keep national interests uppermost in these critical times.
The writer is retired Brig, war veteran, defence analyst, columnist, author of five books, Vice Chairman Thinkers Forum Pakistan, Director General Measac Research Centre, Member Executive Council Ex Servicemen Society and Tehreek Jawanan Pakistan. [email protected]
Posted by naila in British Muslims, GLOBAL MUSLIMS on January 31st, 2017
“We’re as British as fish ‘n’ chips,” UK Muslims tell PM – Al Arabiya English
British people should think of integration as a “two-way street” and learn other languages such as Polish and Urdu, a Cambridge academic has said. Wendy Ayres-Bennett, professor of French philology and linguistics, said learning other languages is considered “something difficult and only for the intellectual elite” by many in Britain. She backed calls for immigrants to learn English once they arrive, as she warned migrant communities could develop “exclusive social networks and alternative labour markets” without learning the native language.
Prof Ayres-Bennett, who also leads the MEITS (Multilingualism: Empowering individuals, transforming societies) project promoting multilingualism, spoke out after two major reports into integration in British society, published by Dame Louise Casey and the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Social Integration. Many more English speakers should think of immigration as a ‘two-way street’ and be able to communicate in another language to aid integration and social cohesion, said academic Wendy Ayres-Bennett. The call flies in the face of two major reports into integration in British society which called on immigrants to learn English if they want to live in the UK.
“I would like to see more opportunities for British people to learn some of the community languages of the UK, such as Polish, Punjabi and Urdu, particularly in areas where there are high numbers of those speakers, so that there is some mutual effort in understanding the others’ language and culture.
The Casey review and the APPG’s report highlighted the need for more English language classes to reach communities that predominantly speak other languages. Prof Ayres-Bennett said the reports reinforced the importance of languages in social cohesion as she supported their recommendations for immigrants to learn English. “Without English, immigrants are likely to develop exclusive social networks and alternative labour markets,” she said.
“For most people, language is at the very heart of their identity. “We need to respect and celebrate this and to see English as adding to their multilingual and multicultural identities, rather than trying to force immigrants to suppress or even lose their home language and culture.” “Even a basic knowledge would be beneficial, which might be acquired formally or through engaging in joint community projects.