NEW YORKISTAN? DON’T RULE IT OUT! - TOP
By Shavana Abruzzo, New York Post, 6/22/10

There’s no denying the elephant in the room. Neither is there any rejoicing over the mosques proposed for Sheepshead Bay, Staten Island and Ground Zero because where there are mosques, there are Muslims, and where there are Muslims, there are problems. (More)

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VIDEO: S.C. ANTI-ISLAM BILLBOARD INCITES HATE - TOP
WIS, 6/21/10

View the video.

A billboard along Interstate 26 is catching a lot of eyes, and viewers are calling our newsroom about it. Some think it's offensive, and others just want to know what it means.

On a stretch of highway from Orangeburg to Columbia, one sees advertisement on billboards scattered along the side of the road. But this billboard stands out, reading "Islam Rising Be Warned."

"I think it is [inciting] hate and fear," said Jennifer Bynum. "You know there are terrorists out there, but they are not all out there amongst us." (More)

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ANTI-ISLAM AD BELONGS ON BUSES, COURT IS TOLD - TOP
Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press, 6/22/10

An Ann Arbor group announced Monday it has filed a request with a federal court seeking to require a metro Detroit bus agency to run ads aimed at Muslims who want to leave Islam.

The Thomas More Law Center, a conservative legal group, filed a motion for a temporary restraining order on Thursday that asks a federal judge to side with a New Hampshire-based group that often criticizes Islam.

The Thomas More center had filed a lawsuit against SMART last month on behalf of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, Pamela Geller of New York and Robert Spencer of New Hampshire. The plaintiffs are critics of Islamic extremism.

Local Muslim leaders support SMART's decision.

"They surely have the prerogative to deny carrying anti-Muslim ads in a locality which has one of the largest Muslim populations in North America," said Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

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PLANNED MOSQUE NEAR NY'S GROUND ZERO SPARKS DEBATE - TOP
Karina Ioffee, Reuters, 6/21/10

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Plans to build a mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks have touched off a firestorm among New Yorkers nearly a decade after Muslim extremists linked to al Qaeda slammed planes into the World Trade Center.

The Cordoba House mosque, part of a Muslim center to be built two blocks from what is now known as Ground Zero proposed as a conciliatory move, was overwhelmingly approved by a local community board in May.

But the plans are being resisted by some New Yorkers who say a mosque would be inappropriate so close to the place where nearly 3,000 people were killed. . .

"When someone claims to do something in the name of Islam and you don't know much about Islam, it's much easier to go, 'Well, maybe it is because of Islam,'" said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"One benefit of having a mosque in an area is that when people have contact with ordinary Muslims, prejudice goes down," he said. (More)

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ANTI-MOSQUE PROTESTERS ON SI BRING OUT NYC'S INNER BIGOT - TOP
Gothamist, 6/21/10

A national Muslim group is refusing to back down from plans to turn a former Catholic convent on Staten Island into a mosque, and yesterday about 175 locals turned out in the blazing heat to voice their opposition. Here's a sample of some of the reasoned discourse from the protesters outside the convent.:

* "We just want to leave our neighborhood the way it is - Christian, Catholic."
* "Mosques breed terrorism, I'm sorry."
* "The city has had enough terrorism and everything else. We just don't want to take the chance, and they can't prove to us otherwise."
* "Why is a mosque coming here? [Are there] that many Muslims? It's just everything, and to unravel it, gee wiz, it's gonna take a miracle."
* "To me, they’re too closed. We don’t know them. It’s up to them to show us what and who they are. It’s very frightening." (More)

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LIDDY: MUSLIMS "CERTAINLY ARE ADEPT AT SLAUGHTER" - TOP
Media Matters, 6/22/10
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201006210052

From the June 21 broadcast of Radio America's The G. Gordon Liddy Show.

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KROGER PULLS WEEKLY 'RUTHERFORD READER' OVER 'HATE RHETORIC' - TOP
Janell Ross, The Tennessean, 6/19/10

Islam condemned

In April, Mijares walked into a Smyrna Kroger and saw something in The Rutherford Reader that really troubled him. The paper ran a column that said, "Islam is evil" and a "defiling" and "dehumanizing" religion. It also said "Muslim immigration should be halted." (More)

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ANTI-ISLAM SENTIMENT VIES WITH PLEAS FOR TOLERANCE - TOP
Scott Broden and Doug Davis, Gannett Tennessee, 6/21/10

MURFREESBORO -- Plans for a new Islamic center south of Murfreesboro have some residents denouncing the Muslim religion and others calling the dispute one of the ugliest displays of religious intolerance in the county's history.

Questions of whether the public was given adequate notice about the proposed mosque and community center off Bradyville Pike quickly turned into attacks on the Muslim faith during the public comment portion of Thursday's Rutherford County Commission meeting.

"Everybody knows they are trying to kill us," Karen Harrell said. "People are really concerned about this. Somebody has to stand up and take this country back." (More)

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MUSLIM ADVOCACY GROUP CRITICIZES FBI FOR QUESTIONING OF 5 SOCAL MUSLIMS -TOP
Los Angeles Times, 6/21/10

A national Muslim advocacy organization Monday criticized the actions of the FBI, saying agents unjustifiably questioned five Southern California Muslims last week.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the men were among a group detained last December by police in Henderson, Nev., after they stopped at a parking lot to pray during a road trip. The organization had filed a complaint with the Henderson Police Department at the time. (More)

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MUSLIM GROUP SAYS FBI STILL ON NEVADA PRAYER CASE - TOP
Ken Ritter, Associated Press, 6/21/10

LAS VEGAS -- A Muslim advocacy group representative accused the FBI on Monday of wrongly questioning five Muslim men in the Los Angeles area about praying in a shopping center parking lot in southern Nevada six months ago. (More)

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FEDS REFUSE ENTRY TO US CITIZENS - TOP
Free Speech Radio News, 6/18/10

The Obama Administration's expansion of the no-fly list is barring American citizens from returning to the country -- at times, leaving them in limbo in third party countries.

The FBI says it's necessary to keep air travel safe, especially after federal lapses in security over the failed bomb attempt at a Detroit-bound plane last Christmas and other recent incidents. Civil rights groups warn that the policy could violate constitutional protection and, in some cases, amount to rendition, when US citizens are sent to other countries to be interrogated.

Yusuf Wehelie is a 19-year old US citizen detained with his brother by the FBI in Egypt. Although he was eventually allowed to return home, US officials took away his brother Yahya's passport and have not allowed him entry into the US. Yusuf spoke to reporters about the situation earlier this week:

"A man wearing a suit soon entered and asked me some questions. When I asked him who he was, he claimed to be the CIA and said that I would not go home until I answered his questions and he put me in prison. He interrogated me for a short time, I then asked to use the restroom and I was taken to a small prison in the airport. I was kept there overnight. The next day, after only eating a small piece of bread, I was taken before an egyptian judge who allowed me to be released. But I wasn't released. Instead I was put into the back of an Egyptian police car, handcuffed, blindfolded and driven to what I believe to be the police ministry. I was there and I was placed in a corridor with other prisoners shackled to the wall."

For more on this issue, FSRN’s Dorian Merina spoke with Khadija Athman, she's the civil rights manager with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.