Dawud Walid: Attack against pilgrims calls for renewed intrafaith cooperation

Attack against pilgrims calls for renewed intrafaith cooperation

By Dawud Walid 

(As published in Arab American News)

Thursday, 10.24.2013, 09:12pm

News that Michigan Muslims were attacked at Hajj recently, due to sectarianism, increases the need for American Muslim leaders and activists to cultivate a spirit of constructive engagement among the followers of Islam, especially in America.

I personally know some of the Shia Muslims who were reportedly beaten, choked, threatened with rape, and called “kafirs” (disbelievers) in Mina.  I have no reason to doubt that this incident happened, as I have witnessed sectarian harassment up close, while visiting Saudi Arabia and other places.  Moreover, in the past decade, we have seen certain regions ravaged by sectarian violence, including numerous bombings at houses of worship during Friday prayer sermons

It is a mistake to act as if sectarianism does not exist among Muslims; as if ignoring the problem will make it go away.  Moreover, it is irresponsible to say that the mere mention of it is somehow promoting it.  It must be approached, head on, with spirituality as the guide, as well as wisdom. In February 2006, after the bombing of Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) saw an opportunity to bring the Metro Detroit Muslim community together by, not only asking its religious leaders to denounce sectarianism, but by also creating a platform that could bring them together.  This area of cooperation was needed, in order to robustly challenge Islamophobia, which is a common enemy to all Muslims and to the integrity of America as a whole.  I was part of the effort, which organized imams for bi-weekly meetings over a span of months and produced scholastically correct replies to common attacks used by anti-Muslim bigots against the Qur’an, Prophet Muhammad (prayers and peace be upon him and his family) and the Prophet’s wives.  These answers can be found online, under “Imams Defend Prophet (S).”

These meetings birthed the practice of Detroit area imams attending and speaking at events, hosted at Islamic centers of different schools of thought, as well as the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan Imams Committee monthly meetings, which are now under the banner of the Michigan Muslim Community Council (MMCC).

In 2007, Michigan imams showed leadership, by signing the Muslim Code of Honor, which affirms that Muslims should respect differences of opinion within Islamic theology and jurisprudence and not to pronounce “takfir” over other Muslims, calling them nonbelievers.  In September of this year, a number of national Islamic organizations, including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and CAIR, signed onto a similar code that rejects sectarianism among Muslims.

We ought to demand that Islamic scholars overseas and governments abroad vigorously denounce violent sectarianism and grant all people of faith equal protection under the law.

However, our primary concern should be on working towards better cooperation among Muslims of all schools of thought in America.  We face challenges that range from Islamophobia to the crisis of drug and alcohol use among our youth, which Muslims have a vested interest in addressing with our intellectual and financial resources.  We simply cannot allow voices of intolerance to concretize the community discourse to the point that we divide ourselves to the detriment of our collective interests in America.

As pilgrims return home, it is my hope that our community renews its commitment to a key principle of Hajj, which is the unity of the collective interests and welfare of all people under their Creator.  We will never eradicate sectarianism, but we can work, in our own way, to marginalize those who seek to promote intolerance and hatred and who falsely fly the banner of Islam.

UPI Ouside View Column "CAIR: Column promotes crass stereotypes of Muslims"

(Piece I wrote published recently by UPI)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- American ideals embrace the notion of freedom of religion. Our realities can be somewhat different. A recent article distributed by UPI ("Mosques -- Smiling dens of iniquity?" by James Zumwalt) shows that the willingness to promote crass religious stereotypes remains a serious issue.

Anti-Semitism has long been a stain on our national dignity. A U.S. Army manual written for World War I recruits alleged that Jews were more likely to "malinger" than others. Signs could be found around the nation proudly announcing "No dogs. No Jews." Henry Ford, of automotive fame, authored "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem."

Anti-Catholic sentiment also has a lengthy history. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era", James McPherson reports on suspicion of Catholic immigrants in the 1800s saying: "Most of these new Americans worshipped in Roman Catholic churches. Their growing presence filled some Protestant Americans with alarm. Numerous nativist organizations sprang up as the first line of resistance in what became a long and painful retreat toward acceptance of cultural pluralism."

Thus it comes as no surprise that 37 groups dedicated to spreading anti-Islam prejudice in the United States enjoyed access to at least $119,662,719 in total revenue between 2008 and 2011, according to "Legislating Fear," a new report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR's report says that Islamophobia in the United States has resulted in a certain willingness to undermine the U.S. Constitution.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution prohibits any "religious test" for public office. However, in 2010 Time reported that "twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court" and that "nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for president."

Herman Cain, at one point the front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, manifested a version of this sentiment when he said that to serve in his administration he would require loyalty oaths from Muslims.

In 2010 Oklahoma voters approved SQ 755, a state constitutional amendment banning judges in that state from considering Islamic religious principles in their rulings. In practice this would have prohibited a judge from probating an Islamic will. In the voting booth, Oklahomans were told that Islamic religious principles are "based on two principal sources, the Koran and the teaching of Mohammed."

The First Amendment clearly prohibits any such government interference in the free exercise of a religion. For this reason a CAIR staff person in Oklahoma challenged the law in court. In 2013 a federal judge struck the amendment down as unconstitutional.

Oklahoma's bill wasn't unique. In 2011 and 2012, 78 bills or amendments designed to vilify Islamic religious practices were introduced in the legislatures of 29 states and the U.S. Congress. Seventy-three of the bills were introduced solely by Republicans.

Anti-Islam bills are now law in seven states.

There are other indicators that Islamophobia is a societal issue in America.

In September 2011, the Public Religion Research Institute noted, "Forty-seven percent of Americans agree that Islam is at odds with American values, and 48 percent disagree." PRRI later reported that the number of Americans who say Muslims are working to subvert the Constitution rose from 23 percent in February 2012 to 30 percent in September 2012.

While these facts are disconcerting, they are nothing new. Just a Jews, Catholics and others stood up to prejudice, so, too, are Muslims. In fact, Muslims benefit from the lessons these other faith traditions learned in their struggles against prejudice.

America's Muslims also recognize that while the lens of prejudice may be on us today, it will eventually turn elsewhere. We want to make sure our struggle is a benefit to this next group and our nation as a whole.

Our nation has historically evolved for the better. The shame of the three-fifths compromise, by which southern and northern states agreed to count slaves as partial human beings for the purposes of the distribution of taxes and representation in Congress, was removed from the Constitution. Equally, the 15th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are inspiring reminders that our nation evolves. It took until 1920, 144 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, to pass a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, but we got there.

For this reason people of conscience must continually remind themselves that the specters of bigotry, discrimination and second-class citizenship are omnipresent.

CAIR on Malala Yousafzai

The People and Groups Behind Anti-Islam Legislation

David Yerushalmi, is an attorney with U.S. Islamophobia network inner core groups the Center for Security Policy and the American Freedom Law Center. He is confident in his hatred of Islam. Writing in the American Spectator in 2006 Yerushaml asserted, “Our greatest enemy today is Islam. The only Islam appearing in any formal way around the world is one that seeks a world Caliphate through murder, terror and fear.” Yerushalmi is also a founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence, a group that once advanced a policy advocated incarceration for “adherence to Islam.”

 

Outside of his anti-Islam activism Yerushalmi is notable for writing, "There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote." According to an article in New York Jewish Week in 2007, Yerushalmi also says he finds truth in the view that Jews destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite.

 

He is also the author of American Laws for American Courts (ALAC), the template for many anti-Islam bills introduced across the nation.

 

He wrote the bill for the American Public Policy Alliance (APPA). While the organization has a professional-looking website, its Washington, D.C. address is a UPS Store. APPA has a minor Facebook presence, with less than 100 friends as of early 2013.

 

Yerushalmi’s bill is then pushed at the state-level by groups like ACT! for America, the Eagle Forum and to a lesser extent Pamela Geller’s Stop the Islamization of America.

 

In its 2011 IRS filings, ACT! for America includes among the organization’s accomplishments a total membership of 175,000 people, 635 chapters, and 40,000 Facebook fans. The group also celebrates its role in the passage of anti-Islam bills in Arizona and Tennessee. Also among its accomplishments ACT! lists the distribution of thousands of “Sharia Law for Non-Muslim” [sic] pamphlets and the hosting of multiple events at which participants were inaccurately taught “how the Islamic doctrine of abrogation, which is the annulling of contradictory passages in the Koran, has annulled up to 124 peaceful and superseded them with violent and jihadist verses aimed at non-Muslims.”

 

In 2008, ACT! for America founder Brigitte Gabriel told the Australian Jewish News: "Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim." Speaking at the Intelligence Summit in Washington, D.C. on February 19, 2006, Gabriel told the audience, “America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy. Islam.”

 

In a newsletter the Eagle Forum told its supporters, “Sharia law is becoming part of the American landscape as Christianity is being systematically removed. Christian students are being told they cannot pray at school activities or even pray in front of American institutions, while public school students adopt Muslim names, pray on prayer rugs and celebrate Ramadan under a state-mandated curriculum," according to the Houston Chronicle. Tennessee’s anti-Islam bill was given to legislators by Tennessee Eagle Forum President Bobbie Patray. Texas Eagle Forum president Pat Carlson testified in favor of that state’s anti-Islam bill.

 

In December 2012, an Alaska ethics panel recommended that Karen Sawyer, former chief of staff to state Rep. Carl Gatto, be fired after it found “she used state resources to help an anti-Islamic group.” The panel also recommended that Sawyer never be allowed to work for the legislature again. Sawyer resigned before she could be fired. According to the panel’s findings, Sawyer allowed David Heckert of Stop Islamization of America to “use the Wasilla legislative information office and equipment for work related to his organization.” It also found that Sawyer used state equipment to help plan activities related to a 2011 group conference, and that she failed to file a timely disclosure showing she was a member of the group's board in 2011 and 2012.” The Associated Press also noted that the panel found that SIOA’s "main mission appeared to be promoting their organization and its mission with HB88 [Alaska’s anti-Islam bill] as a validation point."

 

Summed up, one man with a history of anti-Islam prejudice writes a bill for a group that appears to exist only on the internet which is then pushed by organizations committed to spreading fear and prejudice about Islam.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Islamophobia Network Outer Core Bradley Foundation

Islamic rights group's report rips Bradley Foundation funding

 
By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

A Milwaukee foundation that has donated more than $300 million to conservative causes over the last decade is accused of promoting Islamophobia in a report released this week by a the nation's largest Islamic civil rights group.

In "Legislating Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the United States," the New York-based* Council on American-Islamic Relations includes the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation among a list of donors that it says finance a vast network of individuals and organizations that spread prejudice against or hatred of Muslims.

"There's no doubt that there is a small minority (of Muslims) that are twisting my faith and using it to justify violence. But the Islamophobic network says, no, that's all Muslims," said council spokesman Corey Saylor. "They think Muslims are here to dominate, to subvert the constitution, and that's what they're going around the country teaching people."

Bradley Foundation President Michael Grebe acknowledged that it funds some organizations that are critical of radical Islam.

[Saylor note: According to the Foundation’s 2012 Annual Report, it gave $60,000 to the Center for Security Policy $25,000 to Middle East Forum, and $225,000 to David Horowitz Freedom Center that year. Center for Security Policy counsel David Yerushalmi has said, “Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization.” Middle East Forum head Daniel Pipes. In 1990 Middle East Forum head Daniel Pipes asserted: "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." In Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the Radical Left, Freedom Center founder David Horowitz said that both Muslims and progressives abhor America and American values.” Given that these are sweeping indictments of the entire Islamic faith, it is troubling that the Bradley Foundation finds such organizations simply “critical."]

"But we don't promote...Islamophobia, and indeed we provide grants to a number of groups that would be described as moderate Muslims," he said.

[Saylor note: In my mind even if they funded CAIR that would not let them off the hook. For example, if a group funds white supremacists they cannot wave off criticism because they fund the NAACP as well. In my book, donating to inner core groups should be as socially acceptable as funding white supremacists or anti-Semites.]

The Council's report lists an "inner core" of 37 organizations and individuals whose primary purpose it says is to foment hate toward Muslims. The Bradley Foundation appears in the "outer core," a list of 32 groups that do not share that primary focus, but whose work "regularly demonstrates or supports Islamophobic themes."

Among the report's findings:

* Nearly $120 million flowed to anti-Muslim groups, including three funded by the Bradley Foundation, between 2008 and 2011.

* Anti-Muslim rhetoric and stereotypes pervade every aspect of society, from government and law enforcement organizations to religious communities.

* There were 51 recorded anti-mosque acts in 2011 and 2012, including two spikes — one after the killing of Osama Bin Laden and another after the massacre at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek.

The study provides little detail about the outer core organizations, and the Council said that would come in a subsequent report. But Saylor pointed to a 2011 report bythe Center for American Progress, which called the Bradley Foundation one of the top seven organizations financing Islamophobia.

According to that report, the Bradley Foundation awarded $4.2 million to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, $815,000 to Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy and $305,000 to Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum over the years.

Islamic Society of Milwaukee President Ahmed Quereshi, who said he was surprised by the Bradley connection, called the trio some of the most notorious Islamophobes. Wisconsin members of two groups mentioned in the report — ACT! for America and the Eagle Forum — voiced opposition to a Brookfield mosque that is now under construction. Quereshi said he would be speaking with others in the Muslim community about reaching out to the foundation.

Grebe provided a list of organizations the Bradley Foundation has funded that he said promote pluralism and moderate Islam. Among them: American Islamic Congress' Project Nur, which it says promotes civic leadership among Muslim-American students; and the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies. None of the other organizations appears in the Council's report.

*CAIR’s headquarters in in Washington, D.C., but we have a great chapter in New York.