Muslim American News Briefs, October 5, 2007

Abu Hurayrah once told the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him): "While I was (at prayer) in my house, a man came in to visit me and I was (inwardly pleased that he saw me praying)." (Abu Hurayrah was concerned that this was an inappropriate reaction on his part.) The Prophet replied: "God have mercy on you Abu Hurayrah! You will have a double reward, one for praying in secret and one for praying in public."

The Cincinnati office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Ohio chapter (CAIR-Ohio) today called on a local radio station to reprimand a talk show host who claimed that the goal of Islam is "sex with children for eternity."

Yesterday, WLW-AM host Bill "Willie" Cunningham said on air: "The great war of this generation's time is the war against Islamic fascists. . .They do not live for life, they live for death. Only through death can they believe they can be with those 72 virgins in heaven and have sex with children for eternity, which is the goal of that religion."

(Cunningham's "Voice of the Common Man" will be syndicated nationally on 325 stations beginning October 7.)

"These outrageous and inflammatory remarks can only serve to promote the kind of anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry that have such a negative impact on our society and on our nation's international image," said CAIR-Cincinnati Executive Director Karen Dabdoub. "Unfortunately, this troubling incident is further evidence of the growing level of rhetorical attacks on Muslims and Islam in the public arena."

She cited recent remarks by presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who said he would not be comfortable with a Muslim in the White House, and by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) who said "we have too many mosques in this country."

Dabdoub added that hate-filled words can and do lead to violent actions against Muslims. She said there have been several recent apparently bias-related incidents targeting Muslims in Ohio, including Nazi swastikas and the phrase "white power" spray-painted on a Toledo Islamic school and rocks thrown at worshipers outside a Columbus mosque.

Other recent incidents nationwide include a shot fired into a Texas mosque, a Muslim woman in New York being badly beaten in a bias attack, arsonists torching a mosque in Northern California, and vandals slashing the tires of vehicles owned by a Maryland Muslim activist.

WLW-AM is no stranger to charges of inaccuracy and bias. Bill Cunningham recently had to apologize for falsely claiming an athlete was "drunk" while playing in a game. The station was also involved in a controversy over an advertising campaign that resulted in a boycott of advertisers by the Hispanic community.

The Cincinnati office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Ohio chapter called Tuesday for WLW-AM (700) to reprimand talk show host Bill Cunningham for what they call anti-Islamic remarks he made on the air Monday.

"The great war of this generation's time is the war against Islamic fascists," Cunningham said. "... They do not live for life, they live for death. Only through death can they believe they can be with those 72 virgins in heaven and have sex with children for eternity, which is the goal of that religion."

Such remarks "can only serve to promote the kind of anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry that have such a negative impact on our society and on our nation's international image," said Karen Dabdoub, executive director of the Cincinnati office of CAIR.

Contacted Tuesday, Cunningham said: "One of the tenets of Islam is that if you die a martyr, you get to spend eternity in heaven with 72 virgins. I said, 'That's pretty sick. If that's the goal, I don't want to be there. That's not my concept of heaven.’” (READ MORE)

Dozens of parents said at an Oak Lawn school board meeting Tuesday night that while they're happy to have a student body of varying religions, they want to keep celebrating what they say are traditional American holidays and customs.

That doesn't mean they aren't open to observing other religions' holidays, the parents told the Ridgeland School District 122 board, which was looking at its policies concerning religious teachings and observances. At issue is whether Christian holidays, such as Christmas, should be celebrated now that Muslim children make up about 30 percent of district pupils.

After meeting for 2 1/2 hours in a closed session, board members decided to keep the district's Christmas and Halloween parties and add a Ramadan celebration.

The debate, which has raged in the community for weeks, was sparked by a parent, Elizabeth Zahdan, who asked that stars and moons be displayed in schools in honor of Ramadan. She was denied and told that schools couldn't partake in religious celebrations.

"I want everyone to be equally acknowledged. I never demanded that no one can celebrate. I never said take Christmas away," Zahdan said at the meeting before the board went into a closed session...

"This thing has gotten so big that the board needs to know the legalities of the separation of church and state and its policies about teaching religion in school," he said before the meeting. (READ MORE)

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is backpedaling from his statement that the "Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation."

In an interview with Beliefnet.com , McCain said the most important issue to consider when selecting a president is "Will this person carry on in the Judeo-Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?". . .

In response, Muslim and Jewish organizations are saying McCain's comments are divisive and ignore the nation's traditions of religious pluralism and inclusion born from the Constitution. They add that McCain's comments are heaped on top of a number of gaffs from Republican leaders who suggest the party is one that excludes people who are different from the mainstream.

"If the GOP wants to reach out to minority communities, they're not doing a good job," says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We have a string of these Republican gaffes: Virgil Goode said 'No Muslim should take an oath on the Koran.' Peter King said there are too many mosques in the U.S. Daniel Pipes said Palestinian villages should be razed—and he's an adviser to [GOP presidential candidate Rudy] Giuliani. These are troubling remarks and there's absolute silence from the Republican Party." (READ MORE)

God's name is nearly identical in ancient languages used to write the Koran and Old Testament. Muslims revere Abraham as a prophet and believe in the immaculate conception of Jesus. And the ranks of mainstream Muslims include plenty of soccer moms and sports fans.

The similarities between Muslims and people of other faiths took center stage at a Saturday evening open house held by the South Valley Islamic Community, whose plans to build a mosque in San Martin have stirred up a hornet's nest of anti-Islamic sentiment.

After months of hostile letters to the newspaper - and a growing number of letters defending the group - roughly 200 visitors from as far as Hollister and Santa Clara gathered at the San Martin Lions Club Saturday to learn about Islamic culture and the challenges faced by American Muslims in a post 9-11 world.

"Americans are not discriminating against us because of what they know about us, but because of ignorance," the crowd was told by Maha Elgenaidy, a speaker from the Islamic Networks Group, a nonprofit formed after 9-11 to spread knowledge about Islam to government officials, law enforcement personnel, schoolchildren and other groups.

Elgenaidy explained that Muslims, like their Christian and Jewish peers, greet each other with expressions of peace. Similar to the Judeo-Christian religions, Muslims believe in a single God and high moral character - essentially the Golden Rule of "do unto others," Elgenaidy said. The perceived differences in Islamic culture are often distortions or outright fabrications, Elgenaidy said.

The pink, flowered scarf covering her head, for instance, is not an emblem of female oppression but one of liberation, Elgenaidy said, explaining that Muslim women cover their hair and bodies so that they are judged by their intellect and character rather than their sexuality.

The word "jihad," meanwhile, is another staple of Islamic culture that has been distorted by media in both the East and West, she said. Violent Islamic fanatics have "hijacked" the word, which in its truest form represents the internal struggle of every Muslim to live a life of purity and high moral character. In mainstream Islam, she said, the word also describes selfless actions such as charity or the prevention of abuse or violence.

"Osama Bin Laden to me is like David Koresh or the Davidians," she said, referring to the cult leader and his followers who died in an FBI raid in 1993. "He has nothing to do with my religion."

The evening, which included a Muslim prayer and several other presentations, was far from gloom and doom.

"As you can see by looking around the room, Muslims come in all shapes and sizes," joked Athar Siddiqee, a Bay Area representative from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national civil rights watchdog and advocacy group for Muslims in North America.

Siddiqee, an American-born Muslim who works as a software instructor, said he spends his days fretting about his kids' education and whether quarterback Alex Smith can resuscitate the San Francisco 49ers.

"These are the things that keep me up at night," he said, drawing laughs from the crowd.

Those comments came after he recited a list of recent hate crimes directed against Bay Area Muslims. The list includes arson at an Antioch mosque and a Sikh man in Santa Clara who was stabbed in the neck because of his Middle Eastern garb (the perpetrator was a neighbor who said he feared the man was a terrorist).

In 2006, Siddiqee said that CAIR received nearly 2,500 civil rights complaints, with more than a quarter of them from California. The figure represents a jump of roughly 500 from the year before. (READ MORE)

On the October 1 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, during a discussion with right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, co-host Alan Colmes said, referring to a chapter in Coulter's new book, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans (Crown Forum): "[Y]ou're quoted as saying, 'Maybe I'm winning the camel jockeys over,' " to which Coulter responded: "Yes ... That's actually in the book. That's not a made-up quote."

Colmes then asked: "So you have no problem referring to Arabs as camel jockeys?" Coulter responded: "Oh. Yeah. No. They killed 3,000 Americans. I'll be very careful with my language." In response, Colmes said: "[W]hen you refer to an entire ethnicity as camel jockeys, it sounds bigoted," to which Coulter again asserted: "Yes, and it's so mean after they killed 3,000 Americans, and I shouldn't be mean to them," adding, "We have sure moved away from the day when we called them Krauts and Nips."

The description of Coulter's book by publisher Crown Forum states: "Now you can read all the quotes that have so outraged her enemies and so delighted her legions of fans. More than just the definitive collection of Coulterisms, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans includes dozens of brand-new commentaries written by Coulter and hundreds of never-before-published quotations."

Later in the segment, Coulter said that her "camel jockeys" comment "was a quote on [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad." Colmes responded: "You were talking about camel jockeys. That's plural." As Media Matters for America documented, Coulter did refer to Ahmadinejad as a "camel jockey" in her February 15, 2006, nationally syndicated column, but she also used the plural version of the phrase "camel jockey" in her book without referring to any individual. (READ MORE)

Prosecutors have charged a Woodbridge travel agency with fraud for allegedly bilking Muslims wishing to make the pilgrimage to Mecca known as the hajj.

The state Attorney General's Office claims Shama Hajj Ziyarat Tours, L.L.C., and its owner, Molana Syed Ali Haider Abidi, violated the state's Consumer Fraud Act by selling more than 50 customers trips to Saudi Arabia for thousands of dollars then failing to provide a tour or a refund.

The state wants the company, which also does business as Karwan-E-Iman-E-Sajjad (USA), to give refunds to the customers.

"These last minute cancellations without explanation cost consumers thousands of dollars and prevented them from making a pilgrimage to Mecca," Attorney General Anne Milgram said in a statement.

A man who answered the telephone at the travel agency who identified himself as Abidi's son declined to answer questions. He directed all inquiries to Thomas Monahan, a lawyer representing the agency. Monahan didn't return telephone calls seeking comment on Wednesday.

The complaint alleges that the travel agency's Hajj Travel Package was supposed to include round-trip airfare to Saudi Arabia, hotel accommodations and internal travel in the Middle Eastern country.

The trips cost $4,500, and some customers paid an additional $1,000 in order to stay in upgraded hotels, according to the Attorney General's office.

The customers were supposed to leave Dec. 20, 2006 and return on Jan. 4, 2007. But when they arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport and other airports around the country, they discovered there were no tickets waiting for them.

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