VIDEO: The mother of Salman

The late Salman Hamdani was an American hero. He was a 'first responder' on September 11 2001, placing himself in harm's way to save other human beings. For 6 months, he was regarded as a suspect. Then when his remains were found at Ground Zero, Salman Hamdani was finally exonerated.

For those 6 months, his parents lived a double jeopardy of distress - their son was missing and they had neighbours looking at them suspiciously as rumours spread that their son may have been a terrorist.

Now with a terror-loving congressman holding hearings into Muslim radicalism, Salman Hamdani's story was being cited by Congressman Keith Ellison in his emotional testimony. And the American Right are having a field day of bigotry, alleging Ellison made the whole thing up. Matthew Shaffer, a Fellow at the National Review Institute, does some googling and alleges that there really weren't any serious rumours about Hamdani at all.

Shaffer should tell this to Talat Hamdani, Salman's mum. Here's what she has to say:

Despite his noble instincts, the tabloid media initially suggested that because of his Pakistani-American heritage, he might have been involved with the attacks.

My grief was compounded by the suspicions that clouded Salman's name and the suggestion that his faith -- my faith -- not the acts of 19 murderers, was somehow responsible.

Her entire piece, written in response to the IRA-supporting Peter King witch hunt, should be read in full.

All of which just goes to show how irrational is racial and religious profiling.



Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

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VIDEO: Protecting victims of violence against women in Dubai

This is a report from 2007 about an American woman living in Dubai who has set up an organisation providing shelter to victims of domestic violence, sex trafficking and other forms of abuse. Yes, it happens in all societies including nominally Muslim ones. And even the wealthiest of them are not immune.



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VIDEO: Congressman Keith Ellison testifies ...

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VIDEO: Hamza Yusuf talks about the King hearings and increasing Muslim-phobia in the United States

PROFILE: Brigitte Gabriel - American wacko

Brigitte Gabriel isn't her real name. Apparently she is too afraid to use her real name in case she is attacked.

Attacked? By who?

Gabriel is an all-American wacko, a master xenophobe who has made it her mission to convince Americans that any and every Muslim anywhere and everywhere is plotting and scheming to destroy America.

Gabriel has visited Australia in May 2007 when she was keynote speaker at a dinner hosted by the Jewish National Fund. Then Prime Minister John Howard was also present at the dinner.

The New York Times recently profiled Gabriel recently. She is described as

... one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders.

Here's how the NYT quotes her.

“America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”

Any reasonably objective person would hear Gabriel's message and realise she is trying to push a barrel.

She presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion.

Like so many xenophobic fruitloops, Gabriel insists that she has no truck with 'moderate' Muslims. She's only worried about Muslims as extreme as her.

She insists that she is singling out only “radical Islam” or Muslim “extremists” — not the vast majority of Muslims or their faith. And yet, in her speeches and her two books, she leaves the opposite impression. She puts it most simply in the 2008 introduction to her first book, “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.”

“In the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream,” she wrote. She said that there is a “cancer” infecting the world, and said: “The cancer is called Islamofacism. This ideology is coming out of one source: The Koran.”

And in case you thought Gabriel's followers only had problems with Muslims, think again.

ACT! members are challenging high school textbooks and college courses that they deem too sympathetic to Islam. A group leader in Eugene, Ore., signed up to teach a community college course on Islam, but it was canceled when a Muslim group exposed his blog postings denouncing Islam and denying the scope of the Holocaust.

And while Gabriel and her ilk claim to target terrorism, the reality is that their conspiracy-mongering and hate-speech is actually helping extremists.

Brian Fishman, a research fellow at both the New America Foundation in Washington, and the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said, “When you’ve got folks who are looking for the worst in Islam and are promoting that as the entire religion of 1.5 or 1.6 billion people, then you only empower the real extremists.”

Unfortunately I cannot embed this interview on CNN. Gabriel belongs to the Hilaly school of answering questions, forever claiming to be quoted out of context. She also claims that the Prime Minister of Australia is some person named Erbekan.

Still, here's Brigitte talking about Obama being a Muslim.




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COMMENT: Critical Muslim Studies?

The University of South Australia has just established the Bob Hawke International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding. Here is an excerpt from its website.

Critical Muslim Studies draws on and extends the insights of post-Orientalism, post-colonialism and post-structuralism in examining the assumptions of western hegemony, the political formations of Muslim and non-Muslim subjectivities and the unresolved imbrications of multiculturalism and racism ...

One of the ways of conceiving coloniality is to see it as a framework in which the distinction between the West and non-West becomes the overriding dyad that structures the world. The reduction of the non-West to a residual category announced the subaltern position of the rest of the world as a lack in relation to the West.

I believe English language interpreters will be provided in all courses at the Centre. And I thought lawyers were bad at communication.



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INDIA: Eleven sentenced to death as mass murderers remain in power

Eleven Indian Muslims have been sentenced to death by a court in Gujarat for setting fire in 2002 to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, amongst them a contingent of supporters of a fundamentalist political party. Some 60 people were killed in that fire which led to communal rioting that saw over 2,000 civilians systematically massacred. Those orchestrating the massacre have managed to escape responsibility.

63 other accused were acquitted while some 20 were given life sentences. Here is a timeline of the case. All accused had been detained since 2002.

The sentence was awarded as Indian Muslims across the world commemorated the 9th anniversary of the Gijarat pogrom.

Here is an excerpt from an AlJazeera report:

Narendra Modi, Gujarat's chief minister and a prominent member of the BJP, was accused of failing to stop the riots, and even of encouraging them.

Gujarat officials have denied the claims.

Last month an Indian supreme court panel criticised Modi for his "partisan" handling of the unrest, but found no evidence to justify criminal prosecution of him.

A national enquiry into the fire concluded the fire was an accident, but other official investigations have differed in their findings.

One prominent civil rights lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, questioned the verdict and the evidence used.

It is a totally wrong verdict, based on wrong evidence ... Though the sentenced persons can go to the higher courts, what is needed is a re-investigation. The case is based on wrong premise that warrants a re-investigation ... On any account, the sentenced persons cannot be charged with murder and conspiracy. At the worst, they should be charged for arson.

One of those acquitted was one Muslim religious scholar, Maulana Husain Umarji, who has been demonised by the Gujarati media. Here is what a columnist from The Hindu has to say about Maulana Umarji.

... the 70-plus maulvi became the monster that he remains now in the eyes of most of those who lost family members on the Sabarmati Express. The acquittal of 63 accused in the train burning case has annoyed them, but it is for the Maulana that they reserve their anger, citing his “role” in inciting the mob — as reported by the media. The tragedy is that the role played by the Maulana was exactly the opposite. It was only he who, after the burning of the train, expressed regret on behalf of his community, repeatedly and publicly. Again, he alone restrained the young Ghanchi Muslims whose blood boiled at the sight of raped and battered Muslims pouring into the relief camps in Godhra during the massacres which followed the Godhra train-burning, and who itched to retaliate against the police for their continuous combing operations in Muslim localities after the incident.

Anil Dharker writing in the Hindustan Times also has some pertinent things to say about the verdict.

On the face of it, the judgement seems to contradict itself. As we now know, 31 people were convicted for criminal conspiracy, while 63 were acquitted. Significantly of the 63, there were two people, Maulvi Hussain Umarji and the then president of the municipality, Billal Hussain Kalota, who were accused to be the main conspirators. If your main conspirators are innocent, how can you have a conspiracy?

Can't argue with that.



Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

NEWS: Housemaids in Saudi Arabia resorting to suicide

I've blogged about abuse of women in Saudi Arabia in the past. An article published around 12 months ago in the Arab News (a Saudi paper) reports about the situation with domestic servants working in the Kingdom. This includes violence and mistreatment of various forms.

In the last couple of years there have been countless reports of abuse in the media, including testimonies from maids about the withholding of salaries, verbal or physical abuse and restrictions on their movements ...

Maids who are physically or emotionally abused have no choice but to either run away or attempt suicide. Those maids are expected to work around the clock, sleeping for only two or three hours a night.

“I worked in a house where the sponsors used to feed us one meal a day and lock the fridge later to make sure we didn’t eat anything else,” said Salma, an Indonesian housemaid.

Earlier this year, a maid tried to hang herself from the ceiling. Another tried to drink detergent to end her life. Yet another threw herself from the window of a building. The lucky ones were saved. Maids are also beaten up or sexually abused by their sponsors. An Arab News report published on Feb. 27 told the story of an Indonesian maid taken to hospital when she fell from the third floor of her sponsor’s building.

The doctors later found that the maid had been beaten up and tortured and found burns and lashing marks on her back. They also detected internal bleeding and an injury to her head.

I'm not sure whether the Prophet Muhammad would recognise those employing these servants as his followers. And in case you thought it was just happening in Saudi Arabia ...



Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

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