Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)

GOP Congressman Says Islam Will ‘Motivate People To Murder Children’

By Hayes Brown on Apr 26, 2013 at 2:32 pm

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) during a hearing on Friday said that he believes that Islam as a whole is a threat to the United States, labeling it as a religion that will “motivate people to murder children.”

During a hearing he chaired on “Islamist Extremism in Chechnya: A Threat to the U.S. Homeland?” Rohrabacher continually referred to the 2004 Beslan hostage situation — in which Chechen extremists took control of a school in Russia resulting in the death of more than 180 children — as an example of the threat that Islam poses.

At one point, the California Republican sought to clarify that he wasn’t opposed to any religious group gaining power within a region — only Islam. “What we need to worry about is if it happens to be a religion that convinces people that part of their faith is to go off and murder other people’s children,” he said, referring to Islam broadly. Later in the hearing, Rohrabacher was more clear:

ROHRABACHER: At the end of the Cold War, I was the Soviet Union’s worst enemy, nemesis, because I believe that free people need to determine who their number one enemies are and work to try to defeat them. And that doesn’t mean that the people you work with are perfect, et cetera. We did bring down the Soviet Union and we worked with a lot of people who had a lot of faults. Today radical Islam and China appear to be the main adversaries, the main threat to the free world. I hope we all work together against a religion that will motivate people to murder children and other threats to us as a civilization.

Watch his statements here:

Islamophobia has seen a resurgence in the aftermath of the Boston attacks, with Fox Newsleading the charge in promoting a new wave of fear towards Muslims. Rohrabacher is no stranger himself to controversy surrounding Islam. In 2012, he accused President Obama of “pandering to radical Islamic forces” in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.

Oh no, what are those wily Mooslims up to again? Looks like they’re using the good ‘ole American entrepreneurial spirit to create stunning dresses, designed no doubt to Islamize what will soon be known as Caliphfornia.

Who is going to protect us from the Muhajababes when stealth Muslim president Barack Obama takes away our guns!? (h/t: CriticalDragon)

Islamic clothing is getting a bit more hip in Southern California.

Home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the nation, the Southland has become fertile ground for a new generation of designers crafting clothes for women who are limited by faith and conviction from flashing too much skin.

Although Muslim women have been dressing fashionably for years, many in the U.S. say they still face tricky challenges when getting dressed — and especially dressed up.

“We are Muslim and we can still express ourselves, be fashionable, as long as we do it in a halal way” or in keeping with Islamic law, said LaTanya Maassarani, 30, a postal carrier from Long Beach. “But unless you have lots of money or lots of time to shop, it’s been hard for years to find clothes in America that aren’t dowdy.”

Filling that void now are designers such as Afra Said-Ahmed and her sister Eiman Ahmed, both Muslims, who launched Irvine clothing company Mohajababes. The name is a mash up of the words “babe” and “Muhajiba,” or one who wears a hijab scarf.

“Trying to conform to Muslim dress codes, you get stuck in a rut of black, black, black all the time,” said Ahmed, 26. “It’s definitely very difficult, especially in the U.S. You want to fit in, but still be appropriately dressed.”

So she and her sister scraped together $2,000 and began selling caftans and rhinestone accessories for head scarves at the end of 2011. The line is modest — caftans sweep the floor and hang loosely on the body. Yet the jewel-colored clothing comes with feminine frills such as silky fabrics and metallic embroidery.

Said-Ahmed said their goal was to dress fashion-conscious shoppers who are faithful to Islamic mandates but want nothing to do with traditional black coverings such as abayas and burkas, which are too hot for the California sun.

…

“Our ultimate goal is to sell in a department store like Bloomingdales and Nordstrom,” she said. “Right now we are marketing toward our Muslim community because we know there’s a void, but many women would want a long-sleeved dress every now and then.”

Read the whole article

Did you hear that, freaking Bloomingdales and Nordstrom!!

Anti-Muslim bigotry failed as members of the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony to “celebrate the upcoming start of construction on its long-in-the-works mosque project.”

Groundbreaking ceremony for Temecula mosque

The protests, marathon public hearings and years of meeting in homes and business parks were just memories Friday afternoon.

That’s when members of the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony to celebrate the upcoming start of construction on its long-in-the-works mosque project.

The mosque, which will be built in two phases, will be the center’s first permanent home for its members, who have worshiped in members’ homes and commercial areas in both Temecula and Murrieta.

“This is a glorious day. A day to celebrate. Be proud to be in America, a Muslim in America,” said Emad Rasheed, the center’s chairman, addressing a cheering group of the center’s members.

Alex Irshaid, the project manager, said it will take about six months to complete the first phase, putting the ribbon-cutting ceremony on track for the spring.

The center’s plans for a mosque, which were opposed by a group of Southwest County residents that included some who were concerned about traffic on Nicolas Road and others who said they were trying to protect the U.S. from the spread of Sharia law, were approved by the Temecula City Council in early 2011 when it denied an appeal of the Planning Commission’s decision.

City officials said that 2011 meeting, which ended at 3 a.m., was the longest in the city and, apropos for its length, it wrapped up months of debate that included a protest in front of the center’s former home on Rio Nedo and numerous public forums on Islam and the center’s plans.

After Friday’s ceremony, which included actual dirt being moved as members gleefully dug around a large rock on the site, Rasheed harkened back to that history.

“It took a lot of years,” he said, referring to the center’s work to get the plans approved by the city and its outreach to the community, which included some residents who, he said, expressed “hatred against Muslims.”

North County Times, 28 September 2012

California governor signs law protecting Sikhs, Muslims, from workplace bias

California employers face new restrictions against shunting Sikh and Muslim workers to backroom jobs out of public view based on their wearing of turbans, beards and hijabs, under a law signed Saturday by Gov. Jerry Brown.

“This bill, AB 1964, makes it very clear that wearing any type of religious clothing or hairstyle, particularly such as Sikhs do, that that is protected by law and nobody can discriminate against you because of that,” Brown told some 400 Sikhs and supporters at a rally of the North American Punjabi Assn. on the steps of the Capitol.

Brown also signed SB 1540, which requires the state Board of Education to consider a new history framework for schools that the governor said will include “the role and contributions of the Sikh community in California.”

A series of court cases have muddied the water on what employers must do to accommodate the religious practices of workers, and the new state law clarifies the requirements, said Rajdeep Singh, director of law and policy for the Sikh Coalition. The new law does not guarantee a positive outcome for workers but requires employers to meet a higher standard of objectively showing how religious accommodation would be a significant hardship, Singh said.

“It’s needed because Sikhs and other religious minorities continue to experience job discrimination on account of their religion,” Singh said.

The new law restricts employers from segregating an employee from customers and the public as a means of accommodating the employee’s religious beliefs. It clarifies that employers must accommodate a worker’s religious practices unless it creates “significant difficulty or expense” for the employer. It also specifies that religious dress and grooming qualify as protected religious observances, according to Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada (D-Davis), who wrote the bill.

“This to me is like the Rosa Parks issue of the 21st century,” Yamada added. “An employee should not have to work in the back of the store in order to observe his or her faith.”

Los Angeles Times, 8 September 2012

The remains of the Islamic Society of Joplin mosque (Credit: Islamic Society of Joplin/Facebook)

If events continue like this we are sure to see more such attacks in the future, as the anti-Muslim ideology shows no sign of abating in the USA or Europe.:

Eight attacks, 11 days

BY UZMA KOLSY

There’s a crime wave targeting houses of worship, most of them Muslim. Is something sinister at work?

David Conrad, a resident of Morton Grove, Ill., was likely peeved by the noise from the Muslim Education Center. Conrad’s home is adjacent to the center’s parking lot, and during the holy month of Ramadan, men, women and children pack the mosque on a nightly basis. On Friday, Aug. 10, Conrad allegedly shot a pellet rifle at the mosque wall, while some 500 people were praying inside. The building structure sustained minor damage, but no one was hurt. Was this just the rumbling of a disgruntled neighbor? Maybe.

But given a chain of incidents at mosques across the country over the past two weeks, the Morton Grove shooting doesn’t appear to be an isolated event. In the past 10 days, there have been eight cases of vandalism and attacks on houses of worship across the nation, including the deadly shooting spree in a Sikh gurdwara in Wisconsin on Aug. 5. The other seven incidents were mosque defacements, which have sent a tremor of fear through America’s Muslim community.

While Morton Grove Police have not charged Conrad with a hate crime, the FBI is currently investigating the attack as a hate crime and CAIR has also called on the FBI to investigate the Lombard incident as such. Just 25 miles from Morton Grove, an Islamic school in Lombard was targeted with an even more chilling assault on Sunday night. An assailant flung a homemade “MacGyver bomb” at the building, while worshippers prayed inside. The soda bottle — filled with household chemicals, including acid — did not break the window, and again, the worshipers were rattled but unharmed. According to local reports, no one has yet been charged, and the FBI is investigating the matter.

Calif. Muslims want fed probe of pig-leg vandalism

(SacBee)

ONTARIO, Calif.—Pig’s legs were thrown on the proposed site of a Southern California mosque, and a Muslim civil rights group is asking federal officials to investigate.

Worshippers said two women threw the three legs onto the driveway of the proposed Al-Nur Islamic Center in Ontario shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday and sped away in a white pickup, said Munira Syeda, spokeswoman for the Greater Los Angeles Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Pork is forbidden to practicing Muslims and pigs are considered unclean animals.

“This is Ramadan. It’s the holiest time of the year for most Muslims, so it’s especially offensive,” Syeda said Friday.

The site is a house where Muslims gather to worship until a mosque is built there, Syeda said.

A security guard saw the incident and a vandalism report was filed with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

No arrests have been made, sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said.

In a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday, the council urged the government to open a hate-crime investigation.

“Only firm action by local, state and federal law enforcement authorities will send the message that bias-motivated attacks on Muslims, or Americans of any faith, will not be tolerated,” CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said in a statement.

No investigation has been opened, but it could be in the future if officials believe it is warranted, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Plans for the proposed mosque are still in the approval process and some residents have expressed opposition, Syeda said.

Some worry that the mosque will create traffic and other problems, but some simply do not want a Muslim house of worship in the city, she said.

“Unfortunately, there’s a wave of anti-Islamic sentiment around the country,” Syeda said. “It’s a time for Americans to remember our values of pluralism and diversity.”

The vandalism came only days after four teenagers were arrested for allegedly throwing lemons and oranges at a mosque in the San Francisco Bay area of Hayward. It occurred last Saturday during prayers at the American Muslim Association.

Four Hayward boys, ages 13 to 16, were arrested on suspicion of vandalism that interfered with the civil rights of the worshippers.

It was one of several recent vandalism attacks on the mosque, authorities said.

CAIR’s national headquarters issued a community safety advisory for U.S. mosques this week following “other incidents targeting mosques” in Missouri and Rhode Island and after the deadly shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the group said.

We need more of this:

Temple and mosque collaboration seeks to become a national interfaith model

By Ruxandra Guidi

Sitting at an outdoor cafe, wearing knee-high black leather boots and hip sunglasses, Sarah Bassin doesn’t look like most people’s idea of a rabbi. She’s young, lively, and personable. Bassin believes in the need for greater Jewish and Muslim dialogue. From her perspective, it’s a no-brainer.

“The greatest predictor for whether somebody is going to be Islamophobic, is if they already hold anti-Semitic beliefs,” she says.

Research indicates that both Muslims and Jews tend to suffer equally from discrimination and hate crimes; that’s one experience that these two faiths have in common.

“A lot of the way the fight against Islamophobia has been framed for communities outside of the Muslim community is, that’s the right thing to do,” says Bassin. “And that’s true. I think it’s also important to speak to that added element of self-interest. It’s not just this altruism, that we’re reaching out and saying this is an issue that needs to be addressed: It’s an issue of self-protection, right?”

Self-protection, the idea of defending one’s beliefs and religious identity, is only one of the many issues taken on by a project called NewGround.

The idea came in the summer of 2006, around the breakout of a 34-day conflict in Lebanon that pitted the Israeli military against the militant group, Hezbollah. The war also pitted Muslim and Jewish religious leaders here in Los Angeles–over which side was wrong, and who Americans should support.

Things got so bad that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa convened a task force to bring Muslim and Jewish leaders to the same table. This effort gave birth to NewGround, a joint fellowship project by the Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. In 2011, NewGround became independent from these two organizations; today, it is housed within the city’s Human Relations Commission.

On a recent night at Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, a group of about 20 people — Muslims and Jews, young and old; not all of them devout — sit in a circle and discuss their faith. Over the past three months, this group has been meeting weekly to ponder big questions and figure out exactly what makes them a Jew, or a Muslim.

“People feel very strongly, and they can talk about their experiences as a white person, or as a black person, or as an Asian American person. They can talk a lot about gender, you know, male or female,” says Tasneem Noor, one of the facilitators. “But for a lot of people when it comes to religion, there’s I think, a lot of exploration that needs to be done on that level.”

A lot of these NewGround explorations can be somewhat esoteric: Do all Muslims read lines in the Quran in the same way? What’s the difference between how Jews and Muslims think of heaven?

Kiran Hashmi and her husband first heard about NewGround last Ramadan, as they attended a service at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City.

Read the rest here…

Deborah Pauly

A year ago, Pauly called local Muslims “terrorists” and was quoted saying she knew “quite a few marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise.”

OC GOP Removes Islamophobe Deborah Pauly from her Post as Vice Chair

Last night, the Republican Party of Orange County Central Committee voted 47 to 16 in favor of removing Deborah Pauly from her post as First Vice Chair of the OCGOP.  The motion to remove Pauly was brought on by OCGOP Chairman Scott Baugh stating that Pauly’s behavior has been divisive, vulgar and has caused much distraction and division within the Republican party.  At 9:28pm, the votes were announced and Pauly was officially removed as First Vice Chair.

Minutes from last nights Central Committee meeting are captured here.

A year ago, Pauly called local Muslims “terrorists” and was quoted saying she knew “quite a few marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise.”  The Villa Park City Council adopted a weak statement distancing itself from her comments.

Nachum Shifren is still trying to run for senate. He thinks “White Americans” like “him” are under assault by everyone else. In the past we exposed Shifren for being the racist and hate-monger he is in our article, Rabbi Nachum Shifren: Rides the Wave of Islamophobia and Rabbi Nachum Shifren: EDL is the Salvation of the West from the “Muslim Dogs”.

I am not even sure if Shifren is still a Jew, how can he say this and remain a Jew, perhaps he is a “self-hating” Jew?:

… I AM an Islamophobe, and everything we need to know about Islam, we learned on 9-11! I believe in peace and justice for everybody – but that’s not why they’re here…. We’re getting sucker-punched because we as white – yes I said it! – as white, Christian Americans are being taught that somehow WE are to blame for all the problems.

Clearly he didn’t mean to say that he is a “Christian,” maybe he forgot to add the “Judeo” part?

Also see Richard Silverstein’s take: California Tea Party “White Christian” Settler Rabbi for US Senate

California: EDL-supporting Senate candidate claims to defend ‘white Americans’ against threat of Islam

San Mateo, CA — In the US Senate primary in California on June 5th, where 23 candidates vie to challenge Senator Dianne Feinstein in November, conservative candidates were recorded on videoverbally attacking teachers, Muslims, and minority groups to excite their base at GOP and Tea Party venues.

The video was recorded at a “Get to Know Your Candidates” event hosted by the San Mateo GOP at the American Legion Hall here. Dr. David Levitt, the candidate who recorded the event, reports unmasked homophobia, Islamophobia, and racism in the Republicans’ speeches.

In the video Republican candidate Rabbi Shifren cries, “… I AM an Islamophobe, and everything we need to know about Islam, we learned on 9-11! I believe in peace and justice for everybody – but that’s not why they’re here…. We’re getting sucker-punched because we as white – yes I said it! – as white, Christian Americans are being taught that somehow WE are to blame for all the problems.”

PRWeb, 14 May 2012

In October 2010 Nachum Shifren visited the UK to express his solidarity with the English Defence League, joining them for ademonstration in support of Israel and against “Islamic fascism” at which he was the main speaker. Fired up by Shifren’s Islamophobic rhetoric – he described Muslims as “dogs” who were trying to “take over our countries” – three EDL members attacked an Islamic literature stall and were later convicted of public order offences, with one of them receiving a seven-day prison sentence and a five-year CRASBO.

Shaima AlAwadi

New facts emerging in the Shaima AlAwadi murder case reveal a family in turmoil, and though we have not reached the end of the investigation, it seems the turmoil within the family has cast doubt on the likelihood that Alawadi’s murder was a hate crime.

The uncertainty and dearth of facts surrounding the case is why at the time I wrote,

*We cannot conclude anything at this point, some facts have been presented, such as the note but we will have to wait for the police investigation to relay more information on this crime.

Of course the hatemongerers, the same people who were quick to attribute the Oklahoma City bombings to Muslims, the terrorist shooting rampage by Anders Breivik to Muslims and many more such incidents are receiving the news with glee. Islamophobes are already jumping to the conclusion that the murder is an “honor killing” though there is no evidence for such a claim.

In any case lets hope justice is served and the murderer identified and sentenced.

We will pen an update about this case as more facts are presented and also discuss the ramifications and the critical distance necessary when presented with an ambiguous murder:

Police Records Suggest Death Isn’t a Hate Crime | NBC San Diego

Police records obtained from the murder of an El Cajon woman nearly two weeks ago suggest the it may not be a hate crime.

The records reveal new information about a possible suspect and a police call made to police — in late January — by the victim herself: Shaima Alawadi.

This case has received national attention because some believe it could be a hate crime. But recently obtained records could paint a different picture.

Alawadi, 32, was found bloodied and beaten inside this home on March 21. Her 17-year-old daughter Fatima found her on the floor of their dining room – a piece of paper nearby. That note and one the family found earlier in the month — has left some fearing terrorism.

“It said this is my country, go back to yours…terrorist,” Alawadi’s son Mohammed said in an interview last week.

But police are continuing to call this an “isolated incident” and no arrests have been made.

Police records reveal on the day of the crime –a neighbor gave police a description–of a possible suspect. An unidentified witness spotted a young man running from the crime scene.

The suspect is described as a “darker skinned boy in his late teens or early 20s … with a skinny build, carrying a donut shaped cardboard box.”

The suspect was seen at 10:30 a.m., about 45 minutes before Alawadi’s 17-year-old daughter called 911.

Police would not comment on these records — which also reveal — Alawadi called the police herself nearly two months earlier to report her 17 year old daughter missing.

On Jan. 31 Alawadi reported the girl had been missing for 2 hours, but the call was cancelled 20 minutes later when the 17-year-old was located.

The investigation is ongoing.