news

RELIGIOUS-BIAS FILINGS UP - TOPPHRED DVORAK, Wall Street Journal, 10/16/08
Mass firings at meatpacking plants in Colorado and Nebraska last month highlight growing conflicts over how to accommodate religion in the workplace.The plants, owned by the U.S. unit of Brazil's JBS SA, collectively fired about 200 Muslim Somali workers who walked off the job over prayer disputes.View Full Image
The workers had asked management to adjust their evening break times so they could pray at sunset. Managers at both plants initially agreed but then reversed their decisions after protests by non-Muslim workers.
The tension in the JBS plants comes amid a surge in workplace disputes over religion. Claims of religious discrimination filed with federal, state and local agencies have doubled over the past 15 years and rose 15% during 2007 to 4,515, a record.
That's fewer than 5% of workplace-discrimination claims, but the number is growing faster than claims based on race or gender, says Reed Russell, a counsel for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The increase reflects greater religious diversity and openness about faith in the workplace, Mr. Russell says…
Employers are supposed to try to accommodate workers' religious requests that don't pose an "undue hardship" on operations. But employers and lawyers say getting that balance right is tricky…
Some of the fired workers filed discrimination claims with the EEOC, says Rima Kapitan, a lawyer with the Council on American-Islamic Relations representing the workers. Ms. Kapitan says the EEOC began investigating one of those claims in the past month. The EEOC and Mr. Schult decline to comment. (MORE)
SEE ALSO:
PRAYER LEADS TO WORK DISPUTES - TOPEmily Bazar, USA Today, 10/16/08
Requests by Muslims to pray at work have led to clashes with employers who say they cannot accommodate the strictly scheduled prayers.
The conflicts raise questions about religious rights on the job. Muslims say they are being discriminated against and are taking their complaints to the courts and the federal government. Employers say the time out for prayer can burden other workers and disrupt operations. (MORE)
-----
CAIR VIDEO: ISRAEL-BASED GROUP BEHIND DISTRIBUTION OF ANTI-MUSLIM DVD - TOPCNN American Morning, 10/15/08
On CNN's "American Morning," CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad discusses the alleged foreign funding behind a massive campaign to spread fear and influence voters by distributing 28 million copies of the anti-Muslim film “Obsession” in election swing states.
Click here to watch the video.
SEE ALSO:
VIDEO: RABBI STEVEN JACOBS CONFRONTS CLARION FUND'S GREGORY ROSS - TOPClick here to view the video.
After a press conference against the "Obsession" movie held by the Coalition for Renewing American Democracy, the Communications Director of the Clarion Fund confronted the coalition members. Here, Rabbi Steven Jacobs is shown talking to the Communications Director.
---
CAIR-MI: INTERFAITH LEADERS CALL 'OBSESSION' DVD HATEFUL - TOPCritics say film instills fear of Muslims with misleading claims; distributor says it's meant to focus on terror issue.Gregg Krupa, Detroit Free Press, 10/15/08
A documentary film mailed to tens of thousands of households in Macomb and Oakland counties and distributed as advertising in local newspapers is being decried as bigotry by some Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders, who say it portrays radical Islam as a demonic force bent on world domination.
The film "Obsession" contains a disclaimer, asserting that it is not about most Muslims. But critics of the film say the remainder of the production, with rare exceptions, distorts Islam, compares radical Muslims to Nazis and says that it is not possible to determine how many Muslims are predisposed to terrorism, a claim the film makes. The sacred Islamic principle of jihad -- a personal or community struggle against evil -- is misidentified as a commandment to Muslims to make war against the United States and Europe, they say.
"After the film starts off with a very weak disclaimer that Muslims are a peaceful people, and the problem is so-called radical Islam, it goes through a barrage of images about Muslims and Islam that would scare the average viewer and make the average viewer suspicious of anyone who has any resemblance to figures shown in the movie," said Dawud Walid of the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group. (MORE)
---
FAIR: WHO'S BEHIND ‘ISLAMOFASCISM AWARENESS WEEK’? - TOPFAIR
Organized by David Horowitz, who has a documented record of spreading hysteria and bigotry against Muslims, and featuring other noted anti-Muslim bigots, “Islamofascism Awareness Week” would seem to have more to do with promoting anti-Muslim smears than “awareness.”
The first IFAW, held on campuses across the U.S. in October 2007, trumpeted the theme of the “oppression of women under Islam.” How did IFAW support women’s rights? By hosting guest speakers such as Ann Coulter, who has argued that the U.S. “would be a much better country if women did not vote,” and by calling on students to picket and hold sit-ins at women’s studies departments. Some people were so confused by Horowitz’s message that at Michigan State University a sympathetic student group invited an actual fascist, Nick Griffin, to speak during IFAW. (MORE)
---
MARGIN OF TERROR - TOPSteven Wells, Philadelphia Weekly, 10/15/08
Hanging with the Islamophogies.
I’m off to hang with American rightwingers obsessed with the threat of Islamic terrorism. I’m walking up the long, leafy driveway to the New Covenant Church in Mt. Airy where I’ll sit in a huge and horribly overheated theater, under a looming cross, surrounded by 400 or so folks who think Bush is a great president and who’ve forked over $9.90 each to be bombarded with terrifying images of ranting, gunwaving, explosivevestwearing, madeyed, Nazisaluting, Americahating, Jewloathing, Christiandespising Muslim terrorists who, if they got the chance, would kill everybody in this room with their bare teeth and then laugh about it while playing soccer with a dead baby on a gruesome Internet video.
There’s a beepbeepbeep. I look around. A black woman wearing a Muslim headscarf leans out the window of a beatup Cadillac with a determined look on her face. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.
”Excuse me,” she says. ”Do you know how we can get to Chestnut Hill Children’s Hospital? Only the road’s blocked.”…
That’s why talk radio and Fox News hammer the Islamofascist line so ferociously. It’s all they’ve got left to distract their dwindling audience from the appalling and evermoreobvious truth that George W. Bush threw away the world’s post9/11 goodwill toward America on a bloody and wasteful war of choice that’s driven thousands into the arms of radical Islam.
The good news is the blowhards and their dittoheads are a rump, a dwindling band of blinkered Islamophogies, circlejerking each other into a frenzy with horror stories and lurid shockumentaries. Because they need an enemy. They need a new communism. A new Nazism. A new existential global boogieman. They need someone or something to fear and hate.
Obsession about sums it up.
-----
ANTI-ARAB SENTIMENT - TOPBoth campaigns must stop stereotypesEdward Ayoob, Washington Times, 10/16/08
When I learned that Sen. Barack Obama's middle name was Hussein, as an Arab-American, I feared that this presidential campaign was going to result in more anti-Arab bigotry than any election I have ever seen.
Republicans, I thought, would use fear and ignorance to exploit the senator's middle name for political advancement. Democrats, on the other hand, would do everything possible to distance themselves and the party's standard bearer from any Arab affiliation or cause.
Unfortunately, I was right. Recent rallies for Mr. McCain have invoked the phrase "Barack Hussein Obama" and have seen a sweet-sounding elderly woman from Minnesota tell the audience and Mr. McCain that she doesn't trust Mr. Obama because "he is an Arab." And we have all heard about those e-mails that declare Mr. Obama is Muslim even though it is well-established that he is Christian.
As for Mr. Obama and his campaign, women wearing Arab or Muslim dress have been moved out of camera shots. Arab Americans working for the campaign were summarily dismissed without cause or any proof of wrong-doing when challenged by Arab-haters.
These developments made me and many other Arab-Americans angry, but, sad to say, we were not surprised. (MORE)
-----
CAIR: YOUNG U.S. MUSLIMS SHIFT TO DEMOCRATS THIS ELECTION - TOPKyla Cullinane, Huffington Post, 10/13/08
Medhi and Keisha Islam, Muslim-Americans from Fullerton, California, are looking for political change. They want to be represented by someone who is culturally diverse, as they are. Medhi is Southeast Asian-American and his wife Keisha comes from a bi-racial family of German American and African American descent. The Islams see their diversity mirrored in Barack Obama.
"Our country is a melting pot. There are lots of different kinds of people here, so why shouldn't our leadership represent that?"
The Islams, like many middle class Muslim Americans, feel that Senator John McCain has lumped them with terrorists while Senator Obama has kept the door open for dialogue. Medhi says Obama won him over with his decision about the war in Iraq. "Obama knew it wasn't the right war. He wanted to go after Bin Laden, in Afghanistan."
Edina Lekovic works for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a non-profit Muslim American political advocacy group. She says typically, Muslims are socially conservative which is why they voted overwhelmingly for George W Bush in 2000. However after 9/11, Lekovic says many Muslims regretted that vote. President Bush pushed for the passage of the Patriot Act and the curtailing of civil liberties. Lekovic says many Muslims, especially women who cover with the Muslim headscarf, the hijab, felt targeted. "Many Muslims are looking for a president who can balance national security with civil rights. They are particularly offended and outraged by domestic surveillance."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations reports that thousands of Muslim Americans reported harassment and discrimination in the year after 9/11. While those reports have subsided, the feeling among some young Muslim Americans, particularly women who cover with the hijab, is that they are still being targeted. (MORE)
SEE ALSO:
'MUSLIM' SHOULDN'T BE A SLUR - TOPBoth McCain and Obama should condemn implicit attacks on Muslims and Arabs.Constance L. Rice, Los Angeles Times, 10/15/08
Excuse me, but when did the words "Muslim" and "Arab" become acceptable epithets?
I'm not a Muslim, and perhaps I was slow to see this coming. Four months ago, I blithely advised a group at a local mosque not to obsess over the anti-Muslim undertones of the presidential campaign. At that point, Barack Obama was defending his Christian bona fides against "accusations" of "being a Muslim" (as if it had suddenly become a Class-D felony), but was doing so without condemning the implicit slurs against Islam, Muslims and Arabs. (MORE)
---
MUSLIM FICTION PUTS OBAMA IN NO-WIN FIGHT - TOPProtesting this lie too much could make him look like bigot Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times, 10/14/08They say a lie can't live forever. What they don't say is how much damage a lie can do before it is put to rest.
"The Muslim community across America has long been saying that the Bush government has made the war on terror a war against Islam and Muslim," said Aminah McCloud, professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University and director of the Islamic World Studies program.
"Though denying that, they have supported the rhetoric that makes being Muslim the worst thing one can be," she said.
"Because the country has made a 15th century old religion and civilization taboo, Barack Obama supporters can't even come to the Muslim citizens to get support," McCloud noted.
"And the Muslim citizens cannot go out and campaign for him like they would campaign for anybody else. I am just a little bit embarrassed that a country that was really a beacon of religious power has now gone back to the dark ages of the Crusades." (MORE)
---
SO WHAT IF OBAMA WERE A MUSLIM OR AN ARAB? - TOPCampbell Brown says McCain right to set the record straight about ObamaCampbell Brown, CNN, 1013/08
NEW YORK (CNN) -- You may find it hard to believe that this remains an issue in this campaign, but it does.
The candidates, both candidates, are still getting questions about Barack Obama's ethnicity and religion. If you are even semi-informed, then by now you already know that of course, Barack Obama is an American.
Of course, Barack Obama is a Christian. Yet just a few days ago, there was a woman at a rally for John McCain incorrectly calling Obama an Arab:
Woman at rally: I don't trust Obama. I have read about him and he's an Arab.
Sen. John McCain: No ma'am, no ma'am. He's a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That's what this campaign is all about. He's not, thank you.
Now, I commend Sen. McCain for correcting that woman, for setting the record straight. But I do have one question -- so what if he was?
So what if Obama was Arab or Muslim? So what if John McCain was Arab or Muslim? Would it matter? (MORE)
-----
CAIR: DOES TALKING DOLL HAVE SECRET ISLAMIC MESSAGE? - TOPPaul Woolverton, Fayetteville Observer, 10/14/08Army wife Johanna Kula of Fort Bragg thinks toy-maker Mattel should recall or re-label a doll which she thinks promotes Islam.
The baby-doll turns its head, wiggles its arms and makes baby talk. A part of one of the three baby talk recordings sometimes sounds like a real sentence: “Islam is the light.”
“It was just kind of upsetting to hear that,” said Kula. “I don’t think it was intentional, but somebody had to have passed it” at the factory. Kula said her husband, Jeff, has been in the Army 25 years and served overseas. It bothered her to hear the phrase at Fayetteville’s Target store because “we have lost many good friends out there, fighting.”
She said she contacted Target and Mattel to complain, and the companies told her they have no plans to recall the doll.
The doll is Mattel’s Fisher-Price brand Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Cuddle & Coo doll. It sells for $20 at Target and is also listed on the Amazon.com and at Toys ‘R’ Us Web sites.
It doesn’t talk about Islam, Mattel said in a written statement.
“The Little Mommy Cuddle ’n Coo dolls feature realistic baby sounds including cooing, giggling, and baby babble with no real sentence structure,” the statement says. “The only scripted word the doll says is ‘mama.’ There is a sound that may resemble something close to the word ‘night, right, or light.’
“Because the original sound track is compressed into a file that can be played through an inexpensive toy speaker, actual sounds may be imprecise or distorted.”
Kula said she bought the Little Mommy Real doll Sunday night after her stepson in Arizona told her about it. She wanted to hear it for herself. Dolls promoting religion should be labeled as such, she said; otherwise, she wants them to be religiously neutral.
The doll has been under scrutiny for at least a week because of similar complaints around the country. According to news accounts, some people claim that its three recordings contain an additional phrase: “Satan is king.” Kula said she never heard that phrase and neither did several people who listened to the doll when she brought it by The Fayetteville Observer office Monday morning.
But the “Islam is the light” seems to be at the end of one of the recordings.
Is it really there?
An editor at the Tech Talk for Families Web site, which reviewed the doll in February, wrote last week that he hears, “Ichabod is the light.” A reader of that Web site complained in July that the doll spooked her — she thought it said, “the guardian of the light.”
Psychologist Daniel Montoya at Fayetteville State University said people’s culture and language condition them to hear things that may not be there. “It’s something that the brain does as part of our perception,” Montoya said.
Also, if a listener is told ahead of time what to expect, “you’ll probably be more likely to hear that than if you’re unaware of the story going in.”
Several people at The Fayetteville Observer office Monday, with no prior knowledge of the doll’s controversy, listened to it. They said they heard gibberish ending in a sound that could be the word “light” or “night.”
A spokesman for the national Council on American-Islamic Relations said he bought the doll to hear what it says. “It sure sounds like ‘Islam is the light,’” said the spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper.
It’s an uncommon phrase in Islam, Hooper said, not something someone would typically say to promote the faith.
“I think this would just be a curiosity if it didn’t feed into the rising level of anti-Muslim sentiment in our society,” he said. He speculated that someone inserted the phrase as a joke. (MORE)
-----
VA: MIXERS HELP MARRIAGE-MINDED MUSLIMS FIND A MATCH - TOPJamie Tarabay, NPR, 10/15/08
Morning Edition, October 15, 2008 · Here's something you don't see every day: Muslim men and women, all unmarried, mingling with one another. That's taboo in a lot of their cultures. What's more, the singles attending this Muslim mixer in Sterling, Va., on a recent Saturday morning are not here for idle chitchat.
"I'm definitely not interested in dating. That's not the reason I'm doing this," says Saliha, a 25-year old nursing student. "The purpose is for marriage." (MORE)
Click here to listen to the story.
SEE ALSO:
IL: CTA BUSES CARRY ADS FROM ISLAMIC GROUP - TOPNoreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Chicago Tribune, 10/15/08
So you've heard about finding love on the 151 bus. How about finding religion?
That's exactly what a few Chicagoans have discovered after seeing Chicago Transit Authority buses rolling past them with giant advertisements for Islam.
A Chicago-area Muslim group called Gain Peace has spent $29,900 to place signs on 25 CTA buses serving the North Side in a monthlong campaign organizers hope will help dispel misconceptions about Islam.
The sign caught Moses Robinson's eye. A 38-year-old Gary resident who works for a software company, he saw one of the buses on Canal Street when he left his office on a break. "Everything clicked into place," he said. After calling the number on the side of the bus and meeting with Gain Peace, he converted to Islam the next day. (MORE)