U.S. MUSLIM MEDICAL GROUP SETS UP CLINIC IN HAITI - TOP
(Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 24, 2010) - The Islamic Medical Association of North America(IMANA) said today that it has helped convert the “Bojeux Parc” amusement park in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to a health care facility. The facility is being operated through a partnership between IMANA, Comprehensive Disaster Response Services (CDRS) and AIMER Haiti volunteers.
With existing hospitals in Port-Au-Prince overwhelmed with patients, IMANA said physicians at the facility are hoping to increase their capacity as quake victims continue to present with fractures, infected wounds and dehydration.
“On day one, an air hockey table doubled as a procedure table. Now, with our partners, we are providing services from pediatricians, obstetricians, emergency doctors, and surgeons to at least 100 patients a day. We are hoping to arrange equipment that would allow our surgeons to go from performing simple procedures to running a full mobile operating room,” said Dr. Sameer Gafoor, a volunteer physician in Port-au-Prince. Gafoor is a cardiologist at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C.
IMANA is planning to send additional teams of physicians and surgeons every week with shipments of supplies to support existing operations.
About IMANA
Formed in 1968, the Islamic Medical Association of North America provides a forum and resource for Muslim physicians and other health care professionals to promote a greater awareness ofIslamic medical ethics and values among Muslims and the community-at-large, to provide humanitarian and medical relief, and to be an advocate in health care policy.
CONTACT: Dr. Ismail Mehr, Phone: 607-765-0553
ALTERNATIVE CONTACT: Dr. Nabile Safdar, Phone: 443-474-4457
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ANTI-MUSLIM IMAGES BRING A FINE - TOP
Man who posted them in St. Cloud will fight the decision.
BOB VON STERNBERG, Star Tribune, 1/23/10
Setting the stage for a showdown over free speech rights, a resident of Waite Park, Minn., plans to fight St. Cloud officials' decision to fine him for posting offensive anti-Muslim cartoons last month…
The cartoons, discovered Dec. 8, depicted images such as the Prophet Mohammed engaged in bestiality and sodomy, as well as an Islamic crescent with a swastika inside it. They were posted in front of a mosque and a Somali-owned store.
The city's complaint states that the cartoons "were placed in high-pedestrian traffic areas and were placed to target local Muslim citizens. The posters were designed to harass, and they had that effect." (More)
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ST. CLOUD TO SERVE CHARGES AGAINST WAITE PARK MAN FOR CARTOONS - TOP
David Unze, St. Cloud times, 1/23/10
A Waite Park man who posted anti-Muslim cartoons in several St. Cloud locations has been cited with violating a city ordinance that prohibits posting materials on fixtures. Each of the two civil charges carry a maximum fine of $250. (More)
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INFORMANT FILES $10 MILLION SUIT AGAINST FBI - TOP
SALVADOR HERNANDEZ, Orange County Register, 1/22/10
A man who once worked with the FBI, allegedly feeding the agency information on local mosques and Muslim communities throughout the county, has today filed a $10 million civil libertieslawsuit against the federal agency…
The lawsuit goes into detail about the operation Monteilh said he participated in, details which have not been reported before.
Named "Operation Flex," Monteilh was told to take on the name Farouk-al-Aziz, but was given a code name, "Oracle," according to the suit.
"Assistant United States Attorney Dierdra Eliot gave Mr. Monteilh special permission, by and through a signed Federal document, to engage in jihadist rhetoric, including but not limited to conducting terrorist operations, possessing weapons and initiating conversations to further terrorist acts against the United States," the lawsuit states.
Eliot did not immediately return calls for comment, but Eimiller said the agency does not encourage informants, verbally or in writing, to engage in terrorist rhetoric or operations.
But such claims echo those that have been made by Muslim organizations across the country, whose leaders have said that informants planted within their communities have not weeded out violent extremists, but instead have been the very ones to push violent agendas and conversations in their communities.
Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Los Angeles Chapter, said it's not the use of informants that worries him, but allegations and consistent reports that informants incite violent rhetoric inside the Muslim community, and reports that agents use immigration, financial, and legal tactics to strong-arm people into becoming informants.
"We should all be informants," Ayloush said, stating that everyone in the country should report suspicious activities to law enforcement. "But they are acting like agent provocateurs."
Ayloush said it was concerning how many resources the FBI was spending on "fishing" instead of focusing efforts on legitimate leads. (More)
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CAIR-OK: INHOFE'S REMARKS PROMPT MUSLIMS TO SEEK MEETING - TOP
JIM MYERS, Tulsa world, 1/23/10
WASHINGTON — Oklahoma members of a Muslim civil liberties group on Friday sought a meeting with U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe to discuss the Oklahoma Republican's comments they believe describe all terrorists as Muslims or Middle Easterners.
Inhofe also expressed support for ethnic and racial profiling.
"It is disturbing to hear a member of the United States Senate suggest that entire religious and ethnic groups should automatically be considered terror suspects,'' said Razi Hashmi, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Our nation's leaders have a duty not to exacerbate the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in American society.” (More)
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CAIR-OK: FAITH INSPIRES LOCALS TO HELP HAITIANS - TOP
Mark Schlachtenhaufen, The Edmond Sun, 1/22/10
EDMOND — Members of Edmond’s faith community are praying for the victims of the Haitiearthquake, and donating financial gifts toward the relief effort…
Adherents of different faiths are contributing to the worldwide relief effort.
Razi Hashmi, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said metro mosques are conducting fundraising drives in conjunction with Islamic Relief, which as of Monday had raised about $19.6 million. (More)
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CAIR-CAN: MUSLIM FATWA ON TERROR NOT NEW - TOP
National Post, 1/22/10
Re: Thanks For The Fatwa, editorial, Jan. 20
Major Canadian news outlets, including the National Post, have brought the recent fatwa by 20 imams condemning terrorism to the nation's attention. The imams have been deservedly congratulated. However, the follow-up questions and patronizing advice that accompanied these media accounts have suggested that this type of condemnation from the Muslim community is unheard of.
In 2005, the Canadian Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIRCAN) co-ordinated a historic national statement by 120 imams across Canada that unequivocally condemned terrorism and denounced religious extremism as a perversion of our faith. Such declarations abound, as Muslims leaders and scholars from a diversity of backgrounds have all roundly condemned terrorism as contrary to the principles of Islam and antithetical to our common values as human beings.
Given the fact that there is no central clergy in Islam, this is something of a triumph. But if Muslim scholars and community leaders stand up and condemn terrorism and violent religious extremism and no one remembers it or reports it, does it count? The answer: Apparently not.
The problem is not whether or not Muslims condemn terrorism. The problem is the collective memory, or lack thereof, on the part of the media.
Julia Williams, human rights and civil liberties officer, CAIR-CAN, Ottawa.
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CAIR-LA: MUSEUM, TO BE BUILT ON MUSLIM CEMETERY, NO LONGER HAS ARCHITECT -TOP
By Nuran Alteir, IFN, January 2010
Jerusalem — Frank Ghery pulled out of a $250 million project to build a museum, according to Tablet Magazine.
The museum, which is to be built upon what was once used as an ancient Muslim cemetery, is a Jerusalem counterpart to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance.
Craig Webb, the design partner in charge of the project for the firm of Gehry said, “We are no longer involved in it.”
Simon Wiesenthal Center, which opened its original Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles in 1993, no longer has the right to use Gehry’s design and was considering alternatives, Webb said, according to Tablet.
Currently, the center’s Web site reads, “Please check back soon” under a page devoted to the Jerusalem site.
This is just the latest of obstacles the project has had to deal with since its inception; Muslims and Jews have since joined together to oppose the building of the museum in Mamilla Cemetery.
Specifically, Sheikh Raed Salah, a leader of Israel’s Islamic Movement, has claimed that the construction would violate an Islamic holy site.
He and Jerusalem Arab families whose ancestors are buried in the cemetery petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to block it, but the court ruled that the construction would go ahead as planned since there were no objections in 1960 when a parking lot was placed over a small part of the cemetery.
One Rabbi, who opposes the museum being built upon the Muslim cemetery, called the idea “disturbing.”
“There is something profoundly disturbing about the idea of putting a Jewish Museum of Tolerance on a plot of land where Muslims have been burying their dead for most of the last 800 years,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.
Hussam Ayloush, CAIR-LA executive director, urged that burial sites of all faiths be respected.
"Does Jerusalem not belong to all faiths?" he asked. "We all have a responsibility to promote tolerance through our actions and not just with empty slogans or names on buildings." (More)
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