HADITH OF THE DAY: TEACH GOODNESS - TOP

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "God and His angels, the dwellers of the Heavens and of the Earth, even an ant in its hole and fish (in the depths of the sea), invoke blessings on (a scholar) who teaches people goodness."

Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 70

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Photo: Muslims Hold Friday Prayers at Zuccotti Park (New York Times)

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HERMAN CAIN'S GO-TO HISTORIAN ON THE MUSLIM WORLD: DESTROY ISLAM - TOP
Tim Murphy, Mother Jones, 10/21/11

Now that Herman Cain is officially a front-runner for the Republican nomination, the vetting process has picked up in a hurry. The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf stumbled upon a treasure trove of syndicated columns the Atlanta businessman wrote between 2006 and 2009, which doesn't do much to shatter the perception of Cain as a loose cannon (he refers to Iraq war opponents as "Hezbocrats" and calls them "the enemy.")

But I was drawn to a different piece: A 2006 column from Cain on Islam that copiously cites the work of Ohio televangelist Rod Parsley--the same pastor whose Islamophobic writings and sermons would later force Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to reject his endorsement. Parsley, as MoJo's David Corn first reported in 2008, argued that American Christians have an obligation to destroy Islam. Cain, though, saw Parsley not as a polarizing religious figure, but as an expert on Middle Eastern affairs:

The roots of Islam began in modern day Saudi Arabia in the year 610 A.D. The Arabian city of Mecca was, and still is, the Arabs' center of worship. According to Pastor Rod Parsley, author of Silent No More, Arabs from over 270 tribes regularly gathered around a building called the Ka'aba to worship their individual tribal gods. The Quraysh tribe, of which Muhammad was a member, worshipped the god Allah. (More)

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CAIR-MI: FBI VIEWS MUSLIMS AS A 'SUSPECT COMMUNITY' - TOP
George Hunter, The Detroit News, 10/21/11

Dearborn -- Documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union confirm the FBI's concern about possible terror cells in Michigan, and have reignited the debate over how to balance civil rights with security.

The ACLU on Thursday unveiled its "Mapping the FBI" initiative, which accuses the FBI of racial and ethnic profiling, a claim federal officials dispute.

Arabs locally and nationwide on Friday said they were outraged, but not surprised, by the ACLU report, which claims federal authorities are "mapping American communities around the country based on crude stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes," according to an ACLU release.

"Nationwide, the FBI is gathering reports on innocent Americans' so-called 'suspicious activity' and sharing it with unknown numbers of federal, state and local government agencies," the ACLU said in a statement.

The Michigan office of the Council on Islamic Relations (CAIR-Michigan) released a statement Friday saying it already felt the FBI views the Muslims in Michigan as a "suspect community."

"To map Arabs and Muslims as suspect communities tells us that the FBI believes that we are predisposed to criminality, which is not only untrue but is also an inaccurate means of investigating crime. These newest revelations as we approach the two-year anniversary of the tragic death of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah is but another troubling chapter in how the FBI views and interacts with Michigan Muslims," said Dawud Walid, the executive director of CAIR-Michigan. (More)

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DOJ TO SENATORS: DON'T BLAME US FOR THE ANTI-MUSLIM TRAINING WE FUNDED -TOP
Ryan J. Reilly, TPMMuckraker, 10/21/11

The Justice Department has a message for the Senators worried that federal funds are flowing to anti-Muslim training programs: no worries, we've got this thing.

TPM obtained a copy of a letter DOJ sent to Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins nearly six months after the lawmakers first asked for answers about biased counterterrorism training sessions being funded by taxpayers.

Basically there are two ways that federal dollars from the Justice Department could potentially fund biased training. First, there's DOJ's State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) program, which officials say they've got a pretty good handle on.

It's when you get into the grants that DOJ has issued to states and training providers that it starts to get a bit more complicated.

"It is the [State Administering Agency] and the service provider's responsibility to determine how these funds will be distributed among local and state law enforcement agencies and how they will be used to vet potential instructors and ensure training content relevancy," Weich writes. "While BJA provides guidance to the SAAs regarding how these funds should be used, it is ultimately up to the SAAs and service providers to select and award sub grantees." (More)

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VIDEO: CAIR DIRECTOR DISCUSSES LIBYA'S FUTURE AFTER DEATH OF DICTATOR -TOP

CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad on Fox 5 in Washington, D.C., to discuss Libya's future after demise of that nation's dictator.

Watch the video.

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CAIR: MUSLIM JR. ROTC STUDENT WANTS TO WEAR HEAD COVER WITH UNIFORM -TOP
Perry Chiaramonte, FOX News, 10/21/11

You can wear a Muslim head scarf, and you can wear the uniform of the Junior ROTC. Just not at the same time.

That's the word from the U.S. Army, which is supporting an officer's ruling last month that a 14-year-old Tennessee girl could not wear her traditional head covering while in uniform at a parade.

The student, Demin Zawity, of Brentwood, Tenn., quit the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Ravenwood High School and returned to regular gym classes when commanding officers said she had to take off her hijab if she wanted to march in the homecoming parade.

"It was during Spirit Week. We were getting ready for the homecoming parade and the head officer said that I wouldn't be able to wear the head scarf while I had the uniform on," Demin said. ...

But Demin's family feels she is being discriminated against, and has reached out to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is calling on the school district and the Department of Defense to change a policy that it says "effectively bars a Muslim student from participating in the class."

"It's an unwise policy," CAIR staff attorney Gadeir Abbas said. "It's acceptable for a Jewish student to wear his yarmulke under his uniform hat. The regulations already reflect that there are religious obligations among members." (More)

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CAIR: DEMIN ZAWITY FORCED TO LEAVE ROTC AFTER ORDER TO REMOVE HIJAB -TOP
Louise Boyle, Daily Mail, 10/21/11

A 14-year-old girl has been told she cannot wear her traditional Islamic headscarf while on parade with the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC).

Demin Zawity was forced to quit the programme at her high school after a commanding officer said she must remove the hijab while in uniform on parade.

The student, from Brentwood, Tennessee, told Fox News: "It was during Spirit Week. We were getting ready for the homecoming parade and the head officer said that I wouldn't be able to wear the headscarf while I had the uniform on." ...

Speaking of her senior officer, Miss Zawity added: 'We were practising all week and the day before the parade he pulled me over to the side and said that I couldn't march.

'I wanted to break down and cry right there, but I held it in and went into stoic mode.'

The student's family has sought the advice of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) which is calling for a change to policy. (More)

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1819 PORTRAIT OF MUSLIM AFRICAN-AMERICAN SOLD - TOP
Stephan Salisbury, Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/21/11

One of the earliest formal portraits of an African American - a well-known oil painting of a kufi-wearing free black man painted by Charles Willson Peale in 1819 - has been sold by the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The striking portrait of Yarrow Mamout, an elderly Muslim and former slave living in Washington, is the most recent in a string of art and artifact sales made by the history museum, largely to finance its $5.9 million building renovation project. (More)

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TEA PARTY-BACKED OPPOSITION TO NJ MOSQUE HEATS UP - TOP
Sergio Bichao, MyCentralJersey.com, 10/21/11

The Township Council is beefing up its defense team, hiring a second lawyer to handle a lawsuit filed by a Muslim group alleging religious discrimination in a zoning battle over a proposed mosque.

The Al Falah Center filed its suit in April in federal district court in New Jersey, claiming that a township zoning ordinance was drafted with the sole purpose of preventing the group from turning a former 7.6-acre banquet hall property on Mountain Top Road into a house of worship.

The case, meanwhile, has caught the attention of the U.S. Justice Department, which has requested the township turn over copies of zoning documents and reports as part of a routine investigation into whether officials may have violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. (More)

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DC: UNIVERSITY ACCUSED OF DISCRIMINATING AGAINST MUSLIMS - TOP
Amanda Pellegrino, The Tower, 10/20/11

New charges have recently been filed against the University on counts of illegal discrimination against its Muslim and female students. The allegations are being reviewed by the District of Colombia Office of Human Rights (OHR), which has the strictest discrimination laws in the country. President John H. Garvey and the University is being urged to respond to the charges.

John F. Banzhaf III, the George Washington University Professor of Public Interest Law who initiated the legal controversy surrounding same-sex residence halls, is also the one behind these new charges.

The official allegations claim that CUA, "does not provide space – as other universities do – for the many daily prayers Muslim students must make, forcing them instead to find temporarily empty classrooms where they are often surrounded by Catholic symbols which are incongruous to their religion," according to a press release on PRLOG.com.

This formal complaint also maintains that the new same-sex residence halls are particularly discriminating against female students, which is a new position on the same-sex lawsuit that began last month.

Banzhaf claims that the University is denying Muslim students the same benefits that students of other religions are able to enjoy since there is no formal Muslim association sponsored by Catholic University but the Columbus School of Law has an association for Jewish students

"Denying Muslim students the opportunity for form a student group on campus could hardly be based upon any fundamental Catholic doctrine since Georgetown University not only has such a Muslim student group, but also provides its Muslim students with a separate prayer room and even a Muslim chaplain," said Banzhaf in that press release. (More)

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REPORT: HERTZ FIRES 25 MUSLIM DRIVERS IN DISPUTE - TOP
Associated Press, 10/21/11

More than two dozen Somali Muslim drivers for Hertz at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are being fired after refusing to clock out for daily breaks during which they normally pray. (More)

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GREENWALD: OBAMA TARGETS U.S. CITIZENS FOR DEATH WITHOUT DUE PROCESS -TOP
Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, 10/20/11

Two weeks after the U.S. killed American citizen Anwar Awlaki with a drone strike inYemen -- far from any battlefield and with no due process -- it did the same to his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, ending the teenager's life on Friday along with his 17-year-old cousin and seven other people.

News reports, based on government sources, originally claimed that Awlaki's son was 21 years old and an Al Qaeda fighter (needless to say, as Terrorist often means: "anyone killed by the U.S."), but a birth certificate published by The Washington Post proved that he was born only 16 years ago in Denver.

As The New Yorker's Amy Davidson wrote: "Looking at his birth certificate, one wonders what those assertions say either about the quality of the government's evidence -- or the honesty of its claims -- and about our own capacity for self-deception."

The boy's grandfather said that he and his cousin were at a barbecue and preparing to eat when the U.S. attacked them by air and ended their lives. There are two points worth making about this:

(1) It is unknown whether the U.S. targeted the teenager or whether he was merely "collateral damage." The reason that's unknown is because the Obama administration refuses to tell us. (More)

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