Muslim Woman Sues Religious-Freedom Commission For Discrimination

Muslim Woman Sues Religious-Freedom Commission For Discrimination

Jun 25, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

The Daily Beast

Safiya Ghori-Ahmad is one of those overqualified types that Washington, DC, seems to attract. At 31, she is fluent in Urdu and Hindi, and holds both a law degree and a master’s in international development. She was born and raised in Arkansas to a family who had emigrated from India. You probably wouldn’t have heard of her, except that earlier this month she filed suit in federal court, claiming that a job she was offered at a government agency was taken away from her because she’s Muslim. The kicker? The agency that rescinded the offer was created to fight religious discrimination around the world.

Back in 2009, Ghori-Ahmad was offered a position as a South Asia staff analyst for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. But, her complaint says, commissioners there rescinded the offer when they learned of her heritage. Among other things, she claims, she was asked to minimize her work in the Muslim world, because several commissioners were uncomfortable with Muslims. In the suit, Ghori-Ahmad also claims one staffer recommended she “call in sick” to avoid a few of the commissioners on days they’d be in the office.

The suit is the most high-profile attack to date on USCIRF (Yoo-serf inside the beltway), which was created in 1998 under the International Religious Freedom Act, and consists of a slate of unpaid commissioners who travel on fact-finding missions abroad, issue recommendations to the State Department, the President, and Congress, and flag countries where religious persecution is particularly bad, or has recently ticked upward.

The commission is, by mandate, bipartisan, and by DC standards it is tiny: its original operating budget of $4 million was reduced by 30 percent earlier this year. But that hasn’t insulated it from consistent criticism over the years, primarily for using its mandate to promote the religious freedom of Christians before all others, and for what some have called an anti-Muslim bias.

Ghori-Ahmad alleges in her suit that she was first told that she was not being hired due to a hiring freeze, but that other people were hired during the same period. The original job offered to her was eventually divided up, she says, and the bulk of the work was shouldered between two white Christian men, neither of whom had a law degree or proficiency in South Asian languages, even though the job advertisement had requested that applicants have both.

One of the more explosive claims in the suit comes from an internal email that said hiring a Muslim to investigate religious freedom in Pakistan was akin to “hiring an IRA activist to research the UK twenty years ago.”

Ghori-Ahmad contends that this email was sent by USCIRF’s then-Commissioner Nina Shea. In a letter sent to several blogs as well as The Washington Post, Shea claimed she never wrote those words, and has protested the release of the email. In her letter, Shea also said her rejection of Ghori-Ahmad was connected to her work at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, where she was working when she got the offer from USCIRF. (Ghori-Ahmad had already given notice to the Council when USCIRF rescinded its offer.)

After the job fell through, Ghori-Ahmad filed a complaint with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. In response, USCIRF commissioners claimed they were within their rights to base their decision on her religion, arguing that the anti-discrimination clause of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not apply to the commission.

Strangely, the commissioners weren’t entirely wrong. Indeed, it’s possible that Ghori-Ahmad’s suit would not have had as much traction before this past January, when Sen. Richard Durbin succeeded in passing legislation reforming USCIRF. Included in the reforms was new wording that holds the commission accountable for religious discrimination—now and retroactively.

“It is simply unacceptable for a Federal agency charged with promoting human rights to argue that it has the legal right to discriminate against its employees,” Durbin said on the floor of the Senate when presenting his reforms.

Representatives for USCIRF declined to comment for this article.

While Ghori-Ahmad’s case is in the news now, some of the commission’s former staffers told The Daily Beast that from its inception, the commission was viewed warily by the Clinton Administration for being comprised of amateur diplomats playing at—and potentially screwing up—international diplomacy.

In part that was because those who joined the commission from the Republican side were largely, if not wholly, drawn from the ranks of a group of savvy foreign-policy wonks focused on the international persecution of Christians. Prominent among these were Leonard Leo and Nina Shea.

Shea, who served as a USCIRF commissioner for ten years until this past March, is currently a fellow at the Hudson Institute. She was profiled in a 1997 New York Times Magazine article as a founding member of a new and “potent political coalition” in the battle for protecting Christians.

Leo, a commissioner from 2007 until this year, is a conservative Catholic activist, currently the Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, and one of the so-called “Four Horsemen” who helped steer the Bush White House in its selection of federal judges, particularly Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

In early 2010, after Ghori-Ahmad’s original complaint was filed, staff and former commissioners told the Washington Post the organization was “rife, behind-the-scenes, with ideology and tribalism, with commissioners focusing on pet projects that are often based on their own religious background.” In particular, staffers said, “an anti-Muslim bias runs through the commission’s work,” charges Leo denied.

More criticism would come later that year during the controversy over the Cordoba House/Park51 project, also known as the “Ground Zero Mosque” in lower Manhattan. In an op-ed for the National Review, Shea questioned how we could ever be sure radicalism wasn’t the goal of the project. Leo helmed “Liberty Central”, alongside Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife Virginia, which actively protested the building of the mosque. At the time, an article in Mother Jones magazine asked why commissioners at a federally-funded agency fighting religious discrimination were arguing against a mosque in the United States.

Former staffers still say the organization, especially under the chairmanship of Leo, was bent on a particularly Christian mission.

Tom Carter, who was let go in January after three years as USCIRF’s communications director, said the commission put out about 80 press releases and statements each year. Of those, he said, “only 10 or 11 percent focused, as the primary concern, on abuses against non-Christians.

“Christians being persecuted is a legitimate concern, and worthy of US government interest, but Christians aren’t the only religious minorities under the gun,” Carter said.

But Michael Cromartie, a Bush appointee who served as a commissioner from 2004 through 2010, said, “It happens that Pentecostal Christianity is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and a lot of these totalitarian governments see these booming mega churches as a threat to the state, and [practitioners] get locked up.”

Cromartie added that he was concerned the Ghori-Ahmad controversy would overshadow the good he says USCIRF has done around the world. Sen. Durbin’s reforms diminished USCIRF’s budget by 30 percent, capped the term limits of commissioners, and ensured greater transparency by increasing the number of commissioners from five to nine. As of May, all of the former commissioners had been replaced.

But some of their replacements have triggered dissent as well. When M. Zuhdi Jasser, a cardiologist who founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, was tapped by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to join the Commission in April, 64 Muslim groups protested his appointment, lamenting “his consistent support for measures that threaten and diminish religious freedoms within the United States” and arguing that he would undermine “the USCIRF’s express purpose.”

The critics also pointed out that AIFD has received funding from the Clarion Fund, which produces films that stir up anti-Muslim anxiety. Jasser has also said that mosques in America are hotbeds of extremism, and has testified before U.S. Rep. Peter King’s tribunals on Muslim extremism in America.

The nomination of Princeton’s Robert George also raised eyebrows in progressive circles. George is a founding member of the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay marriage group, and is on the board of directors of the Bradley Foundation, which has been cited by the Center for American Progress for supporting Islamophobia. “Safiya’s lawsuit turned a spotlight on bad commissioner behavior and forced the Hill to take notice,” said Carter, the former communications director. “What they did to this woman was wrong, and thanks to the Durbin reforms, she will get her day in court. But the larger significance is that those reforms would not have happened, could not have happened, if Safiya had not taken a stand. The Durbin reforms give USCIRF a do-over. Hopefully, the new commissioners will take the opportunity to get it right this time.”

Sarah Wildman writes on the intersection of culture and politics, history and memory in the U.S. and Europe. She's a columnist for the International Herald Tribune, a contributing editor at The Forward, and a frequent contributor to The New York Times. Her work has frequently appeared in Slate, The New Republic, The Guardian, and New York magazine. She was the 2010 Peter R. Weitz Award winner from the German Marshall Fund for excellence in reporting on European affairs. Safiya Ghori-Ahmad claims the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom rescinded a job offer because she is Muslim. As Sarah Wildman reports, this isn’t the first time the commission has come under fire.

The U.S. and the Saudis

Friday, Jun 22, 2012 07:05 AM EDT

The U.S. and the Saudis

The alliance with Saudi Arabia makes the Muslim world, but not Americans, skeptical of U.S. rhetoric on freedom

By Glenn Greenwald

“I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family” – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, March 2, 2009.

* * * * *

For all the righteous talk about human rights oppression and violent assaults on democratic protesters in the Muslim world, any honest ranking would place Saudi Arabia near or at the top of that list. This week, the long-time head of the deeply repressive Saudi Interior Ministry, Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, died. Prince Nayef — in addition to having been one of the hardest-line religious conservatives opposed to internal reforms, having been accused by Sen. Chuck Schumer in 2003 of having a “well-documented history of suborning terrorist financing,” and having blamed “Zionists” for plotting the 9/11 attack — was one of America’s closest and most loyal allies in the region.

Befitting the importance of the Crown Prince to the U.S., the Obama administration sent a high-level delegation to Saudi Arabia yesterday that included Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Obama counter-terrorism chief adviser John Brennan, former CIA Director George Tenet, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and former Bush Homeland Security Adviser (and current CNN contributor) Fran Townsend (who, like the Crown Prince, is also known for supporting Terrorists):

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta offered his condolences and “best wishes” to the newly selected Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on the death of the Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, while leading a delegation to Saudi Arabia this week.

“The president wanted me to express his personal regrets at not being able to be here, but wanted all of us in this delegation to convey to you not only our sorrow for your loss, but also our best wishes to you in your new position and to reaffirm the great relationship and partnership that the United States has with the great nation of Saudi Arabia,” Panetta said Wednesday. . . .

“I was deeply saddened to learn of the crown prince’s passing over the weekend. During his nearly four decades as Minister of Interior, Crown Prince Nayif worked tirelessly for the protection of the Kingdom and the Saudi people. His visionary leadership and courage were instrumental to the gains we have made together against terrorism and extremism, and helped save Saudi and American lives,” said Panetta in a statement released Tuesday.

The Defense secretary also praised Nayef for his role in strengthening the relationship between the United States and Saudia Arabia.

Panetta there is lavishly praising one of the region’s hardest-line autocrats in its most oppressive tyranny. President Obama spoke yesterday with Saudi King Abdullah and similarly “expressed his appreciation for Crown Prince Nayif’s many contributions over decades of service” and hailed “the enduring partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia.” It is often the case that “the President and the King reaffirm[] the strong partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia.” This close partnership is consistent with the ongoing U.S. arms shipments to the regime in Bahrain even as they continue to repress their nation’s democratic movement with all sorts of shockingly abusive measures (and even as Hillary Clinton angrily denounces Russia, inaccurately as it turns out, for shipping arms to Syria).

Of all the self-flattering delusions permeating American political discourse, I think the most obviously false one is that the U.S. is sternly opposed to repressive regimes and seeks to defend the human rights and democratic freedoms of citizens of that region and the world. If one wants to defend the close U.S.-Saudi alliance on grounds of material self-interest — they have lots of oil and the alternative to the current heinous regime would be sympathetic to Al Qaeda (even more so than the current one) — one can rationally do so.

But it never ceases to amaze that every time there is some new American Enemy to rail against or attack — in Iraq, in Iran, in Syria, in Libya — and defenders of American militarism claim to be motivated by opposition to human rights abuses and repression of freedom, there are hordes of people willing to believe that these noble, magnanimous considerations actually drive U.S. policy. What else would the U.S. have to do to prove this is false? The people in the region — whom the American media loves to patronizingly scorn as propagandized — have no trouble watching the close U.S-Saudi alliance or Hillary Clinton’s close family friendship with the Mubaraks and seeing the emptiness of American rhetoric about freedom and democracy. Perhaps it isn’t they who are the ones drowning in propaganda.

* * * * *

The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings said yesterday that “the US policy of using aerial drones to carry out targeted killings presents a major challenge to the system of international law that has endured since the second world war.” The official also:

ridiculed the US suggestion that targeted UAV strikes on al-Qaida or allied groups were a legitimate response to the 9/11 attacks. “It’s difficult to see how any killings carried out in 2012 can be justified as in response to [events] in 2001,” he said. “Some states seem to want to invent new laws to justify new practices.”

He also specifically addressed the Obama policy of targeting rescuers and funerals with drone strikes, denouncing that policy as a “war crime” (“there is no doubt about the law: those strikes are a war crime”). But as we saw with a prior investigative finding by the U.N. rapporteur on torture that the detention conditions of Bradley Manning constituted “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, pronouncements of the U.N. ceased being relevant in roughly 2009 (around, say, January 20 or so). Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Obama administration filed a midnight brief insisting that national security forbids any judicial disclosure or transparency concerning the President’s “kill list”: the same program that three dozen of his current and former aides recently boasted about in The New York Times.

Finally, remember when progressive mockery of George Bush for kissing and holding hands with Saudi King Abdullah was common and wildly popular?

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/2012/06/22/the_u_s_and_the_saudis/

The Muslim Rumor That Just Won't Die

The Muslim Rumor That Just Won't Die

By Matt Taylor

Posted Friday, June 22, 2012, at 5:25 PM ET

SLATE.com

Ever since he began running for president in 2007, Barack Obama has been dogged by rumors that he's secretly a Muslim. Whether it's his exotic name and background, the color of his skin, or (most likely) some combination of the two, the Muslim lie just doesn't seem to go away.

Each time it has begun to fade from public discussion, the Muslim rumor has cropped up again, like it did last year when real estate tycoon Donald Trump, who was publicly weighing a presidential bid at the time, insisted he had evidence showing Obama wasn't born in the United States (and that his birth certificate might show that he's Muslim).

In response, the president eventually took the extraordinary step of releasing his long form birth ceritificate, which showed he was born in Hawaii as claimed. But a new Gallup poll finds that even now, a healthy chunk of Americans believe the rumor:

Just 34% of Americans correctly say U.S. President Barack Obama is a Christian, while 44% say they don't know Obama's religion and 11% say he is a Muslim.

Obama is a Christian and has labeled himself as such as in his writings and interviews, and while living in Chicago he attended the Trinity United Church of Christ. Since moving into the White House, Obama has attended several different Christian churches.

Americans are indeed more likely to say Obama is a Christian -- mostly a generic "Christian" or "Protestant" -- than to say he identifies with any other religion. In addition to those who name a specific religion or don't offer a guess, 8% say he does not have a religious affiliation.

Americans are more likely to know Mitt Romney's religion than Obama's religion, with most Americans correctly saying Romney is a Mormon and a smaller 33% saying they don't know.

At this point, one has to suspect that some of the poll respondents claiming Obama is a Muslim are just doing so to be provocative and express their anger with the president. The Muslim rumor has been so thoroughly debunked -- even in conservative outlets -- that anyone out there still clinging to it probably knows better, and just wants to hurl rhetorical grenades at a White House that has polarized this country like no other.

SOURCE: http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/06/22/the_muslim_rumor_that_just_won_t_die.html

King: Time to investigate Muslims, again

Tuesday, Jun 19, 2012 12:25 PM EDT

King: Time to investigate Muslims, again

Congress's biggest Islamophobe, Rep. Pete King, is opening his fifth set of hearings tomorrow into American Muslims

By Nathan Lean

Everywhere Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., looks, he sees Muslims. You know, the gun-wielding, burqa-wearing, America-hating, “stealth-jihadi,” “creeping Shariah,” terrorist type. They enthrall him. So much so, in fact, that not only has he built his entire political career on championing the fight against them, but he’s also fantasized about their destruction in the pages of a mediocre techno-thriller he wrote in 2003, sensationally titled “Vale of Tears.” “This is something I am absolutely fixated on,” he once admitted.

It came as little surprise, then, when the jowly Long Island sexagenarian announced that he would hold his fifth (count ‘em) congressional hearing on the supposed “radicalization” of the American Muslim community.

The spectacle is set to kick off tomorrow in room 311 of the Cannon House Office Building — a stately chamber that in 1967 hosted the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ investigation into links between race riots and Communist infiltration. It is an appropriate place for King’s witch hunt, one might say.

This time, the panel plans to examine the American Muslim community’s “response” to the four previous hearings. Translated into Peter King language, this means that they will likely consider every single instance of objection or protestation to the inquiries as further evidence that Muslims are a hostile group or religious believers.

It is that kind of logic — stereotyping an entire religious faith as “radical” before a national audience and then pointing to their complaints about being prejudiced as proof that they are indeed fanatics — that has typified King’s hearings thus far.

King has repeatedly suggested that he meets with law enforcement officials and they tell him “how little cooperation they get from Muslim leaders.” It would seem, then, that the objective way to convince the American public of that claim would be to call on law enforcement officials who could confirm that such a thing was true.

Objectivity, though, has been absent from this hyper-partisan heyday for a reason: It would disprove King’s accusations. Better, then, for him to avoid the evidence that would make him look bad — evidence that suggests that Muslims do cooperate with law enforcement officials and that claims of increased “radicalization” within the Muslim American community are simply unfounded.

Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that cooperation from the Muslim and Arab-American communities has been “absolutely essential” in identifying and preventing potential terrorist threats. FBI Director Robert Mueller noted that, “Many of our cases are a result of the cooperation from the Muslim community in the United States.” Former National Counterterrorism Center director Michael Leiter argued that “Many of the tips to uncover terrorist plots in the U.S. come from the Muslim community,” and Los Angeles County Sherriff Lee Baca lauded the praise that his office receives from Muslims living in California. Moreover, the Triangle Center for Terrorism and Homeland Security reports that the Muslim-American community has been one of the largest sources for information on potential attacks in the U.S., and the Muslim Public Affairs Council shows that Muslim cooperation has been key to foiling some 40 percent of al-Qaida-related attacks in the U.S. since 2001.

Given that the NYPD, the FBI, the CIA and several other law enforcement agencies have spied on the American-Muslim community and trained their agents using material that is unquestionably Islamophobic, it’s a wonder that they feel compelled to cooperate at all. Still, they have, but that’s not good enough for King.

“I’m aware of a number of cases in New York where the community has not been cooperative,” he said. He has never explicitly stated just how many cases he is aware of and when pressed, he grimaces, clears his throat and huffs about his close friends, the police, who share secret information with him that must remain “off the record.”

And so, in place of evidence and objectivity, King’s hearing will feature the testimony of one of his friends who will tell him exactly what he wants to hear. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim-American physician who moonlights as a self-described “expert” on Islam will appear before the panel a second time (he testified during the first hearing) to enumerate the ways in which members of his faith group have supposedly gone astray.

Jasser is a rising star in the Islamophobia industry. His wavy black hair, voguish eyeglasses, colorful neckties, and eagerness to toe the Republican line suggest that he is a “good Muslim,” one who is fully assimilated in the American culture. He is much like a trophy — someone whom various agitators of the political right hold up as shining proof for their talking points. “[You are] the one Muslim that we were all searching for after 9/11,″ Glenn Beck once gushed.

Muslim activist groups have protested Jasser’s influence in the political sphere, including his recent appointment to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. They point to his involvement with anti-Muslim groups and his litany of stereotypical statements. Jasser has been featured in several anti-Muslim films, including “Islam vs. Islamists” and Newt Gingrich’s 2012 documentary “America At Risk: The War With No Name,” and was the narrator of “The Third Jihad,” a propaganda flick produced by Aish HaTorah, a radical Israeli settler group in the West Bank that refracts anti-Muslim animosity through the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. The group was behind the 2008 film “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”

Most recently, Jasser’s foundation, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy received a $10,000 donation from Nina Rosenwald, a right-wing Zionist who has spent her Sears Roebuck-inherited fortune fanning flames of Islamophobia.

If King’s stated intention is to shed light on the American Muslim community’s response to the previous hearings, Jasser’s presence is certainly not the way to do that. He is hardly a representative of the faith group and is despised by many mainstream American Muslims.

But King must surely know that.

He also must know that this is not an impartial hearing that seriously examines issues of radicalization and extremism, but rather, a political performance in which a carefully selected cast appears before an audience and delivers a rehearsed script under the guise of fairness and neutrality.

SOURCE:http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/congresss_worst_islamophobe/

National Review publishes racist nut

Tuesday, Jun 19, 2012 04:18 PM EDT

Oh, look at that: National Review publishes racist nut

David Yerushalmi, anti-Shariah crusader, also once had some interesting thoughts on slavery

By Alex Pareene

Remember how we were all so proud of the National Review for eventually firing or cutting ties with most of the outright white supremacists who occasionally or regularly wrote for that fine publication? Well, there is maybe still some work to be done, as it seems that there’s still room at the Corner for David Yerushalmi.

It seems like a simple rule of thumb, that if someone has once defended American slavery, that you should probably not publish things they write, because people will think you believe that sort of thing to be a perfectly acceptable point of view. So, in case the editors of the National Review Online were simply unaware, let’s point out that Yerushalmi has written that one cannot, these days, describe “blacks as the most murderous of peoples” without someone for some reason calling you a “racist.” And then he wrote: “There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote.”

Of course, Yerushalmi is not writing about black people for the Corner. He is, instead, writing about Muslims, because he is a professional Islamophobe. A few NR contributors have lately begun writing sensible things pushing back against the hysterical claims of the “creeping Shariah” lunatics, who claim that the tiny and largely politically powerless American Muslim Community is attempting, with terrifying success, to supplant the Constitution with conservative Koranic Law. The people who make this argument and believe it are generally insane. Most of the rest are simply scumbags who make a living scare-mongering and exploiting distrust of Muslims.

Yerushalmi, an Arizona (of course) attorney, might be both. He is so virulently bigoted against Muslims that the ADL has a file on his statements and activities. He is the head of a group whose charter calls for the deportation of all non-citizen Muslims in the U.S., and the criminalization of “adherence to Islam.” He’s a complete, raving nut, and so the NRO decided to give him space to rebut claims made by a non-nut contributor. It’s Yerushalmi’s fourth bylined contribution to the NR, though all the rest happened in 2009. Apparently this came about because last Friday, torture enthusiast and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy invited Yerushalmi to respond to a National Review essay attacking his anti-Shariah crusade. McCarthy wrote:

“I asked my friend David Yerushalmi, who is the principle author of the model legislation, and whom I know to be a careful lawyer who has navigated the competing concerns with characteristic diligence, to weigh in. “

Again, this is a guy who wants to criminalize the practice of a religion and openly “declare war” on a billion of its adherents, and he also thinks liberal Jews are “parasites” and blacks are genetically inferior to whites, and he is Andrew McCarthy’s “friend” and a National Review contributor. Yes.

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/oh_look_at_that_national_review_publishes_racist_nut/

Peter King Schedules Fifth Muslim Radicalization Hearing

Peter King Schedules Fifth Muslim Radicalization Hearing

By Andrea Stone

andrea.stone@huffingtonpost.com

Posted: 06/13/2012 5:04 pm Updated: 06/13/2012 5:08 pm

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security has scheduled a fifth hearing on radicalization within the Muslim-American community, this time calling American Muslims who are friendly to his cause to testify about their reaction to the first four hearings.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) announced Wednesday he would convene the hearing, titled "The American Muslim Response to Hearings on Radicalization within their Community," on June 20. The session is the latest of a controversial series that began in March 2011 and drew condemnation from Muslims and civil liberties groups, who likened the hearings to "McCarthyism 2.0."

“When I began this series of investigative hearings in March of last year to examine radicalization within the Muslim-American community, I was vilified by the politically correct media, pandering politicians and radical groups such as CAIR – even though this issue was non-partisan and of serious concern to national security and counterterrorism officials in the Obama administration," King said in a statement.

"To date, we have examined radicalization of Muslim-Americans generally, focused on the problem of radicalization in U.S. prisons, investigated al-Shabaab’s recruitment of more than 40 young American Muslims, and examined the threat to military communities inside the U.S following attacks at Fort Hood and in Little Rock," the statement continued. "Our witnesses included a number of Muslims, including a Muslim leader who testified at the al-Shabaab hearing that these hearings have empowered the Muslim Community to confront this serious problem."

King will call three Muslim witnesses at the hearing, which he said will examine the impact the previous hearings have had on "the Muslim Community’s ability to address this issue and on U.S. efforts to counter al-Qaeda and affiliated groups' radicalizing of Muslims in this country." The following people are scheduled to testify:

M. Zudi Jasser, president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a Phoenix-based group founded after the 9/11 attacks "to provide an American Muslim voice advocating for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, and the separation of mosque and state." Jasser testified at the first radicalization hearing last year on March 10, 2011. He also narrated "The Third Jihad," an incendiary anti-Islam film shown to New York Police Department officers during training exercises, and has criticized a controversial project to build a mosque near Ground Zero.

Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who teaches journalism at Georgetown University. She is the author of "Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam" and "Milestones for a Spiritual Jihad: Toward an Islam of Grace." She is the co-director of the Pearl Project, an investigation into the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The Indian-American journalist will likely speak about her experiences in her home of Morgantown, W.Va.; her battle against men she saw as extremists at her family's mosque there was the subject of a 2009 film. Nomani has also argued in favor of racial and religious profiling at airports.

Qanta Ahmed, a Long Island, N.Y.-based doctor and author of "In the Land of Invisible Women," a personal memoir of living and working as a western Muslim woman in Saudi Arabia. A blogger for The Huffington Post, she recently wrote that female Muslim athletes should remove their hijabs, or head coverings, in order to compete in the Olympics and other competitions.

Also on the witness list is John Cohen, principal coordinator for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. Last fall, he said in an interview that he did not favor the word "radicalization."

"Our focus is not to police thought but to prevent violence," he said.

SOURCE:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/peter-king-muslim-radicalization-hearing_n_1594564.html

Muslims Say They Can't Guarantee Obama Their 2012 Election Vote

By Sabrina Siddiqui

Huffinton Post

Posted: 06/11/2012 10:10 am Updated: 06/11/2012 12:02 pm

WASHINGTON -- As President Barack Obama travels across the country to raise funds and court voters, one group that was drawn to his candidacy four years ago has expressed a feeling of being further and further marginalized.

Muslim Americans could play a critical role in several battleground states come November. But while they supported Obama overwhelmingly in 2008, their votes are hardly guaranteed this go around.

Early in the Obama administration there was little reason for complaint. The president openly criticized the Bush administration's policies of torture, signing of the Patriot Act and excessive surveillance of Muslims, and vowed to shut down Guantanamo Bay within a year. In a 2009 address in Cairo, Obama marked "a new beginning" for the United States, one in which the war on terror would no longer be synonymous with its marginalizing approach to Muslims.

But many of the promises have been left unmet. Nearly four years later, Guantanamo remains open, and just last year the president signed into law a four-year renewal of some of the Patriot Act's most controversial provisions. And in some instances, administration policy has alienated the Muslim-American community. The continued drone strikes in Pakistan and revelations about Obama's secret "kill list" of terrorist targets are among the list of policies that have caused some Muslims to re-think whether they will vote for Obama again this fall.

"This year there are many issues that are of great concern, looking at the last four years of President Obama, especially concerning civil rights," said Naeem Baig, chairman of the American Muslim Taskforce, a coalition representing 13 of the country's largest Muslim organizations.

"A good number of people are asking, why should we support the president when he did not deliver on many of the promises he made?"

The AMT endorsed Obama in 2008 but has not yet made an endorsement this cycle. Baig says it would be premature to leave any options off the table. "There's a very strong voice asking about a possible third-party candidate," he said.

A significant number of the nation's 2.75 million Muslims live in key swing states, such as Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Virginia. And while younger Muslims rallied around Obama in 2008 and mostly identify themselves as Democratic, the older generation represents a socially and fiscally conservative group that can be swayed in either direction. In 1992, they voted two to one for George H. W. Bush and, although they gave Bill Clinton the same margin in 1996, they were drawn back to the Republican party by George W. Bush in 2000.

One of the last polling of Muslims, conducted almost a year ago by Pew, showed a 76 percent approval of Obama's job performance. But many of the Muslim community's grievances have emerged since then, including the issues of drone strikes in Pakistan, the president's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act -- despite its funding of programs that the community considers anti-Muslim -- and surveillance of Islamic centers and students by the FBI and NYPD.

The Obama campaign was not available for comment.

Groups such as the Arlington Young Democrats Muslim Caucus in Virginia, who are mobilizing a grassroots effort to encourage Muslims to turn out and vote this cycle, are finding it harder to make the case for Obama.

"In terms of pushback, we've talked to a lot of people who said they wouldn't necessarily vote for Mitt Romney, but when it comes to pledging their support for Obama they are still undecided," said Ahmad Ishaq, one of the group's founders and co-chairs.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim to serve in Congress, argues that Muslims shouldn't be on the fence. "The Muslim community doesn't have a real choice in this election, because Romney is awful and completely stands in opposition to the interests of the Muslim American community," Ellison said. "If there's anything about Obama you don't like, triple it when it comes to Romney."

Muslims can find some solace in the end of the war in Iraq and the administration's openness to dialogue with their community leaders. According to a New York Times report, top White House aides have had policy discussions with Muslim and Arab-American advocates on topics such as foreign policy, the economy, immigration and national security. Many Muslims also held a favorable view of the president's swift action on Libya and welcomed his initial support for the building of a community center near Ground Zero in 2010.

Still, Ellison acknowledged that Obama has disappointed Muslims, pointing to "legitimate issues" worth raising about the drone program and the inaction over NYPD surveillance.

"We have every right as Americans to get answers to these questions," he said. "We can raise a range of things and we will, of course. But let's raise these issues with an administration we have some chance of persuading -- not an administration who just doesn't want to hear it."

Haris Tarin, director of the Washington office for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a public service agency, said Muslim Americans, like many other communities, projected a lot of expectations on Obama in 2008, calling some of them "unfair."

"I think the Muslim American community is willing to give the president another chance," Tarin said. "They understand that it's been a very polarizing four years."

To combat apathy among its contingency, MPAC is pushing a national campaign to ensure that Muslims are civilly and electorally engaged this cycle.

However, Baig, the American Muslim Taskforce chairman, is not so quick to dismiss the presumptive Republican presidential candidate. Baig highlighted the contrast between Romney and his former opponents, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Herman Cain, with regard to rhetoric around the Muslim community during the GOP primaries.

"He took on a much lighter tone in the debates and made it clear that people of all faiths are welcome in this country," Baig said. "Coming from a religious minority himself, Romney could open up and meet with Muslims to try and undo some of his party's damage in isolating, even shunning, the community."

Erin Mershon contributed to this report.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/11/muslims-obama-2012-election_n_1584108.html

Obama defender Rep. Peter King

Sunday, Jun 10, 2012 04:02 PM EDT

Obama defender Rep. Peter King

Why does one of the House's most radical right-wing extremists so often find common cause with the President?

by Glenn Greenwald

Salon.com

Many Democrats love to scorn GOP Rep. Peter King as the embodiment of right-wing extremism and Islamophobia, and with good reason: among other things, King, the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security and an outspoken supporter of the IRA, last year held McCarthyite hearings to investigate the threat of radical American Muslims on U.S. soil.

But Rep. King has another role: he’s one of President Obama’s most outspoken defenders and supporters when it comes to civil liberties and Terrorism. On CNN this morning, King offered his latest vigorous defense of a signature Obama policy:

House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R-NY) on Sunday refused to confirm the existence of U.S. drone strikes in other countries, but later insisted that the unmanned flying machines were being used to “carry out the policies of righteousness and goodness” . . . .

“There’s evil people in the world. Drones aren’t evil, people are evil. We are a force of good and we are using those drones to carry out the policy of righteousness and goodness.”

Rep. King apparently sees the U.S. as the Justice League — a heroic “force of good” slaying the Evil Villains in pursuit of “righteousness and goodness” — so it’s unsurprising that he’s an enthusiastic supporter of Obama’s drone program, given that this is the Saturday morning cartoon mentality that drives it (yet again, here we find that the critic of Obama’s foreign policy conduct in a media debate is a progressive Democrat (Rep. Lynn Woolsey) while Obama’s stalwart defender is found on the far right).

This is anything but unusual. Previously, Rep. King lavished Obama with praise for the due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki (“The killing of al-Awlaki is a tremendous tribute to President Obama”). He gushed with admiration when President Obama issued an Executive Order codifying a system of indefinite detention for accused Terrorists (“I commend the Obama Administration for issuing this Executive Order . . . This is clearly another step in the right direction”).

He swooned when the Obama White House overturned the decision of Attorney General Eric Holder to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a real civilian court and instead consigned him to a military commission (“a long-awaited step in the right direction . . . welcome news to the families of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, who will finally see long-awaited justice”).

He cheered when the Obama DOJ announced it was truncating long-standing Miranda protections (once a crown jewel of American liberalism) for accused Terrorists, a change King long demanded. He heralded Obama as a great leader when the head of Osama bin Laden was pummeled with bullets and his corpse then dumped in the ocean (“There are going to be political benefits to the president from this. He deserves it”).

Democrats are certainly right when they depict King as the embodiment of right-wing, neoconservative, Islamophobic radicalism. They should spend time wondering why he so often finds common cause with President Obama on the areas on which he most focuses. There are many things to say about bipartisanship in Washington: that it is tragically rare or that the GOP refuses to give Obama credit are most definitely not among them.

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/2012/06/10/obama_defender_rep_peter_king/singleton/.

SDSU Student Back Home After Detour Over ‘No-Fly’ List Status

June 8, 2012 2:36 PM

SAN DIEGO (CBS) — A Southern California-born Muslim man was back home on Friday after he discovered he was on the U.S. government’s “no-fly” list and had to walk back over the border on foot.

KNX 1070′s Tom Reopelle reports Kevin Iraniha had just received his masters’ degree from a college in Costa Rica.

San Diego State University graduate Iraniha, 27, was preparing to return to his home in Point Loma when TSA officials informed him of his “no-fly” status.

His brother Johan said the family was not provided any details on Kevin’s flight status.

“Basically, he was told he could not fly,” he said. “They didn’t give him any information, they said to go to the U.S. Embassy.”

Officials from the U.S. Embassy then told Iraniha that in order to get back home, he would have to fly into Tijuana and then walk across the border on foot.

Iraniha’s brother Johan was furious that his brother was subjected to such treatment.

“I definitely am angry, I’m very upset about it and I want to do as much as I can but I also wanna make sure that he’s here so we can definitely tackle the situation together, so I could see how he feels, how he was treated,” said Johan.

An FBI spokesperson has confirmed with KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO that a “no-fly” status cannot prevent any U.S. citizen from reentering the country on foot.

A family member did confirm to a San Diego-area station that Iraniha had traveled to Egypt during the uprising that led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year, but denied he was “the revolutionary type”.

SOURCE: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/06/08/sdsu-student-back-home-after-detour-over-no-fly-list-status/.

All-American: 45 American Men on Being Muslim

By Rep. Keith Ellison

Co-chair, Congressional Progressive Caucus; U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 5th District

All-American: 45 American Men on Being Muslim

Posted: 06/02/2012 8:06 am

"It's not what you call me, but what I answer to." --African proverb

Although a decade has passed since Sept. 11, 2001, and the world has been abuzz about Islam and what it means since then, it is clear Muslim-Americans must tell their own stories.

Many have attempted to define Islam and the people who adhere to the faith. Islam in America is not something new. Islam has been practiced in America for 14 generations, but our beliefs, our practices and even our daily lives remain woefully misunderstood.

As a Member of the United States Congress I can assure you that I have been well treated, well received and well respected by my colleagues. But because I get to discuss policy matters and be part of the public conversation every day, I can admit that misconceptions still exist.

What is regrettable is that in the past decade American Muslims have been associated with individuals who claim to practice the faith but actually use it as a means to establish their identity. These individuals have been willing to kill others and to die because of the identity they've associated with the religion -- not because of the faith inherent in the religion. I must repeat something I've said before: If you use your religion as an identity as opposed to a path to divine inspirations and guidance, then you are no different than street gangs such as the Crips and the Bloods.

Those who seek the divine want to make this world a better place, which first requires that we communicate. And I must say that each writer in All-American is communicating -- connecting with readers in an honest, intimate and effective way.

It's my hope that each of us will emulate these writers. If you can make a movie, make one. If you can sing a song, sing it. If you can write a play, write it. If you want to run for office, run. But do something to make this world a better place. For if each of us follows this example we won't have to worry about which religion we follow because we will all be united in what we believe, which is service to humanity.

Keith M. Ellison

Member, Congress of the United States

Excerpt from Congressman Keith Ellison's Foreword to 'All-American: 45 American Men on Being Muslim' (White Cloud Press, $16.95).

Follow Rep. Keith Ellison on Twitter: www.twitter.com/keithellison

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-keith-ellison/all-american-45-american-men-on-being-muslim_b_1543585.html