Tennessee State Senator Bill Ketron (R)

Republicans were all for this bill that would take money out of public schools and put them in private or parochial schools until they realized that– since the law applies equally to all citizens–Muslims may also apply for the same funding!

How will they solve this conundrum? Well Bill Ketron of recent ‘Sharia Mops’ fame wants to exclude them from the “new voucher  program,” keeping the voucher program “Judeo-Christian.”

Tennessee May Deliberately Exclude Muslim Schools From New Voucher Program

By Adam Peck on Apr 3, 2013 at 11:45 am

Several conservative lawmakers in Tennessee are throwing the brakes on a fast-moving bill that would divert money away from public schools and towards vouchers for students to attend private or parochial schools. Republicans are taking a second look at the bill after the possibility arose that some Islamic schools could apply for the same funding made available to other religious schools.

The bill is a top priority for Republican Governor Bill Haslam, but several anti-religion lawmakers in the state senate, led by Sen. Bill Ketron who sponsored several anti-Islam bills in the last few years, are hoping to strip away the ability for any school that caters to Muslim children and their families to receive public dollars:

“This is an issue we must address,” state Sen. Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville) said. “I don’t know whether we can simply amend the bill in such a way that will fix the issue at this point.”

State Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) and Tracy each expressed their concerns Friday over Senate Bill 0196, commonly called the “School Voucher Bill” and sponsored by fellow Sen. Mark Norris (R-Collierville), which would give parents of children attending failing public schools a voucher with which to enroll in a private school.

Ketron has cultivated a reputation as the state’s chief Islamophobe, proposing a bill in 2011 that could have introduced punishments of up to 15 years in jail for any Muslim who observed the holy month of Ramadan or prayed five times a day towards Mecca, a religious requirement for observant Muslims.

Tennessee is not the first state to try and carve out exemptions to education funding that target only Muslims. Last year, Louisiana Republicans threatened to hold up an education bill backed by Governor Bobby Jindal (R) for similar reasons: a single private Islamic school had applied for a handful of vouchers that Republicans intended to make available only to nondenominational and Judeo-Christian schools. That bill ultimately passed and was signed into law but only after the school — the Islamic School of Greater New Orleans — withdrew its application for vouchers.

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert on Tennessee’s Shariah Mops. Hilarious! (h/t:Critical Dragon):

Oh noes, it appears the wily stealth Mooslims installed a terrorist sink in the Tennessee state legislature! Or so thought a couple of Tennessee House and Senate members, namely Republican Sen. Bill Kreton and Rep. Judd Matheny. These two lawmakers also happened to be the main sponsors of a 2011 anti-Sharia bill.

Apparently Bill and Judd believed the offending sink was a “Muslim foot bath,” it was actually just a “mop sink.”

(h/t: fxmatt4)

TN lawmakers confuse mop sink for Muslim foot-washing sink

(The Tennessean)

NASHVILLE — Sometimes a mop sink is just a mop sink.

Building managers and legislative staffers have sought to reassure some concerned Tennessee lawmakers that recent renovations at the state Capitol did not install special facilities for Muslims to wash their feet before praying.

“I confirmed with the facility administrator for the State Capitol Complex that the floor-level sink installed in the men’s restroom outside the House Chamber is for housekeeping use,” Legislative Administration Director Connie Ridley wrote in an email. “It is, in layman’s terms, a mop sink.”

The nearly $16 million renovation completed in December focused on upgrading electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems in the more than 150-year-old Capitol. Parts of the building also got new carpets, paint and security upgrades.

Senate Clerk Russell Humphrey said he had been approached by a House and Senate member to inquire about the sink, which replaced a utility sink that had been mounted higher on the wall and was used for filling and emptying buckets.

“There was concern about why it had been modified,” said Humphrey, who declined to identify the lawmakers or elaborate on their concerns.

“I certainly wouldn’t want to quote a member inaccurately about what they may or may not have said,” he said.

Republican Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, confirmed that he had spoken to Humphrey about whether there were religious reasons for the new sink after the issue was raised by Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma.

“I just asked the question about what was the intent of that,” Ketron said. “And it satisfied my curiosity after it was presented to me.”

Matheny denied that he was involved in raising questions about the basin.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told The Associated Press last week. “It’s not ringing a bell.”

While details of the practice vary by sect, Muslims are required to wash their faces, hands and feet before praying as an act of ablution, or ritual purification. Forms of ablution are practiced in almost all major faiths.

The ritual washing of others’ feet is practiced by some Christians as a sign of humility and emulating Jesus Christ, who was said to have washed the feet of his disciples before the Last Supper.

Matheny and Ketron were the main sponsors of a 2011 bill that sought to make it a felony to follow some versions of the Islamic code known as Shariah law.

Hundreds of Muslims came to the Legislature to express fears the measure would outlaw central tenets of Islam, such as praying five times a day toward Mecca, abstaining from alcohol or fasting for Ramadan.

A heavily watered-down law ultimately enacted by the Legislature bore little resemblance to the original proposal and references to any specific religion were removed.

Sharia law ban and Muslim wives

(AlJazeera English)

When Kansas State Senator Susan Wagle voted for Senate Bill 79 that would ban Sharia law in Kansas, she said that a vote in favour of the legislation was “a vote to protect women”. “In this great country of ours, and in the state of Kansas,” Wagle said, “women have equal rights.”

Her words echoed the sentiments of many of the 33 Senators in Kansas, in March 2012, who voted in support of the law. The Bill passed and was signed into law by the Governor of Kansas. On July 1, 2012, the application of foreign or Sharia law was effectively banned in the State of Kansas.

A mere month later, in August 2012, a court in Johnson City, Kansas, faced the consequences of the ban whose intent was to “preclude[s] the courts from applying foreign law, legal codes or systems that violate the public policy of our state or federal constitutions”. It has been widely viewed as precluding courts from applying Sharia law.

Before the Johnson City District Court came the Soleimanis, both from Iran and now divorcing in Kansas. The wife, Elham Soleimani asked the court to enforce their Islamic marriage contract which stipulated a payment of $677,000 from the husband to the wife in case of divorce.

The facts of the case were a saga of love, betrayal and abuse. Faramarz Soleimani had left Iran decades ago, fleeing from the draconian changes brought on by the Islamic Revolution. With him, was his wife Zohra Bamani.

The two arrived in Kansas and opened a restaurant, obtaining amnesty in their new country so that they would not have to return to a much changed Iran. They stayed for 30 years, until Soleimani, now nearly 60 years old, got on the internet and found love again.

His new flame was Elham Moghadem, 24 years younger, living in Iran. Rapt in passion, Soleimani divorced Zohra Bamani and arrived in Iran to marry again. His second marriage took place on July 19, 2009, two years before the Sharia ban and long before either the new husband or the new wife could predict just how bad things would become between them.

In the first heady months of romance, the newly married Elham and Faramarz Soleimani revelled in wedded bliss. To prove the eternity of his devotion to his new partner, Soleimani had her name tattooed on his chest. To prove she was a loving wife, Elham tried her best to get used to Kansas.

The divorce case of the Soleimanis

Based on the story told by court records, the end came hard and fast and with an avalanche of court proceedings. On June 1, 2011, less than two years after her marriage to Soleimani – the man she had found on the internet and followed across the world – Elham filed for divorce in the courthouse in Johnson City, Kansas.

Surrounding the divorce petition were allegations and pleadings of domestic violence, assault and battery, rape and even a marital tort case for spousal abuse.

By the time she filed for divorce, Elham, the once beloved bride, was alone, destitute, living in a domestic abuse shelter and looking to American courts to help her after her marriage became a harrowing ordeal.

Her account was one of betrayal, of having been wheedled into marriage by a man who boasted about his great wealth and promised her a fairy tale life in luxurious America. What she had found instead, like so many immigrant women arriving with little known and hardly seen husbands, was a domineering and abusive old man who wished to keep her in servitude.

So, betrayed Elham relied and asked for relief from the Johnson City court on the one thing she felt was in her favour: the Islamic marriage contract (mahr) signed between the parties during their wedding in Iran.

Based on its stipulations, Elham Soleimani, the wife, could demand the payment of 1,354 gold coins (valued at $677,000) from her estranged husband in the event of divorce. With no other recourse and little prospect of help under the rules of marital property division under Kansas law, she asked the court to enforce the agreement and make her husband pay up.

She was about to be disappointed again. On August 28, 2012, nearly two months after Kansas’ much touted Sharia ban went into effect, the District Court in Johnson County refused to enforce the agreement between the parties and grant Elham Soleimani the money she believed was due from her husband under the terms of Islamic marriage contract.

One of the most significant reasons offered by the court for its refusal to do so was the religious nature of the agreement, the precise sort they felt the Kansas Legislature had wanted to ban.

Enforcing the agreement, the court concluded, would “abdicate the judiciary’s role to protect such fundamental rights, a concern that was articulated in Senate Bill No 79″. If they enforced the mahr agreement and force Soleimani to pay it, the court felt, they would be violating the ban on Sharia law in Kansas.

Here is where the court in Johnson City, Kansas, went wrong. While it is indeed true that separation of Church and State provisions under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States prevents US Courts from interpreting religious texts, the court in Kansas disregarded longstanding precedent that insists that when the stipulations of a contract are clear, its religious origins do not preclude enforcement by a US Court.

One determinative case in this regard was Avitzur v Avitzur (1983), decided in the Second District of New York, where a Jewish woman petitioned the court to force her ex-husband to obtain a religious divorce decree as they had agreed in a contract prior to their marriage.

In Avitzur, the Supreme Court of New York decided that forcing the husband, Boaz Avitzur to obtain a Jewish divorce as per the agreement between the parties was not a violation of the separation of Church and State, and that the court could enforce the agreement despite its religious origins and content.

Foreign law not banned in New York 

Unlike Kansas, the State of New York has not banned Sharia or foreign law and so it can safely be concluded that the same case decided in that state would have yielded a markedly different result.

That is indeed exactly what happened in SB v WA - decided in New York in August 2012 – after the decision was issued by the court in Johnson City, Kansas. In that case, a Muslim-American woman married to an Egyptian immigrant, who subsequently divorced in the United Arab Emirates, was able to get a mahr payment of $250,000 enforced by the court.

The court decided in favour of the wife even though the agreement, an Islamic marriage contract, was entered in a foreign country and had just as much of a theological origin as the case in Kansas.

The issue at hand in both cases, fresh after the onslaught of Sharia ban that roared through the US, is not the issue of separation of Church and State – which has a long history of American jurisprudence attached to it – but rather the issue of the status of women, specifically Muslim women under Sharia law and the role of American courts in relation to it.

The case in Kansas reveals that imposing a blanket ban that refuses to allow for the consideration of the specifics of a case or the particularities of the position of an individual Muslim female litigant like Elham Soleimani, does more harm than good.

Where no ban would have resulted in an immigrant woman being able to avail of the resources that would allow her to begin a new life in the US and rehabilitate herself from an abusive relationship, a Sharia ban enabled the opposite, leaving her with nothing and allowing her more established husband to discard her with few consequences.

While all of these facts were argued in the feverish seasons in which the Kansas Legislature along with those in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Louisiana and others debated Sharia bans, the case of the Soleimanis lays in actual terms and actual lives the reduction of their effect and the dubiousness of their purpose.

If protection of women was indeed the issue before the Kansas court, or if the facts of the case were such that the same marriage contract would provide the wife with less than what would be available to her under the marital property division statutes of American law, then it would have made perfect feminist and jurisprudential sense to strike down the agreement under the Equal Protection Clause that provides for just such situations.

This was however, not the case. Under the provisions of stipulated mahr under her Islamic marriage contract, Elham Soleimani was entitled to more than she would have received under American laws of property division that would be governed the length of the marriage and the property acquired during the two years.

But in Kansas, with its Sharia ban in effect, Elham Soleimani lost out, not because she was a woman, but because the basis on which she argued her case for a future and for empowerment was Islamic.

Rafia Zakaria is on the board of directors of Amnesty International. She is a lawyer and a Political Science PhD candidate at Indiana University.

Follow her on Twitter: @RafiaZakaria

William Coley, the founder of Muslim4Liberty has articulated along with other like-minded individuals a philosophy of Islamic libertarianism that they explain as existing within the Islamic corpus for millenia.

Coley’s pioneering activism most significantly included making the arduous but necessary and ultimately very successful decision of reaching out to Tea Party groups in East Tennessee and challenging them on their anti-Muslim/Islam strategy. The below Illume Magazine article incidentally highlights the diversity of views amongst the Muslim American community and how identities don’t neatly fit into easy black and white categorizations of Right vs. Left.

Loonwatch is mentioned as we were one of the first to highlight Coley’s work.

New Muslim Movement Challenges Islamophopbia on Home Turf

by Carl S. Berg (Illume Magazine)

Tea Party circles in East Tennessee might seem an unlikely environment for launching a Muslim organization. Will Coley, a 31-year-old Tennessee native, Muslim convert and Tea Party activist did just that.

His one person outreach project to Tea Party conservatives and libertarians grew into the first national organization countering Islamophobia on the Right.

Their message: Islam is compatible with an anti-big government or libertariarian philosophy.

“I have noticed everywhere we go it is about the same,” says Coley. “We talk to 50 people. The five to six that pointed the group in an anti-Islam direction still hate us, but the rest start thinking, researching.”

Most notably, in 2011 Coley persuaded the majority of Tea Party organizations in East Tennessee to take a stand against Islamophobia.

After speaking with fourteen Tea Party chapters about Muslim beliefs on liberty and sharia (Islamic religious law code), twelve of them agreed to reject anti-Muslim appeals. They even publically supported a petition opposing a proposed “sharia ban” in Tennessee.

Coley’s efforts drew the attention of members of the small but growing community of Muslim libertarians, especially after an initial article on the anti-Islamophobia website Loonwatch.com.

Davi Barker, 31, a California journalist, national columnist at Examiner.com and blogger for Silver Circle Underground and Daily Anarchist, first contacted Coley to do a story on him. The two quickly began working closely together. Coley did the public presentations, and Barker writing on their philosophy of Islamic libertarianism. They were soon joined by Hesham El-Meligy, 41, from New England and Ramy Osman, 35, from Virginia.

The last two had started a website called Muslims4Liberty.org, while Coley and Barker had independently started a Facebook group called Muslims For Liberty. They decided to combine forces.

“[W]e started collaboration with them and we became a family immediately,” says El-Meligy.

By 2012, Muslims4Liberty/Muslims For Liberty (M4L) has gained hundreds of followers, establishing chapters in Tennessee, California, Ohio, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., as well as in Australia, Malaysia and Pakistan.

El-Meligy, drawing on his connections and experience in the Northeast US, led M4L’s work with other groups in opposing New York Police Department surveillance of American Muslims. Osman organized M4L’s participation in the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms’ (NCPCF) “Ramadan Gifts for Prisoners” charity drive. M4L also co-sponsored the only two national debates featuring third party presidential candidates during the 2012 election, hosted by Larry King and broadcast by C-Span and Al Jazeera.

The rapid growth and rise of M4L developed as an entirely grass-roots effort, without the support of more established Muslim or civil rights organizations.

“It started out as just me, basically,” says Coley. “[G]oing to events, going to protests, educating people about Islam.”

Coley began doing Tea Party outreach in Florida in 2009. He started as an ordinary Tea Party activist, concerned about economics and allegedly growing government power.

But his concern at what he saw as the emergence of Islamophobia in the Tea Party movement spurred him to act.

“I was watching the neocon takeover happen,” says Coley. “Literally overnight I saw groups devoted to economics and constitutional limits turn into something else. Suddenly there were invites to see anti-Islam speakers. This crazy anti-Islam message was taking over.”

Coley responded by going to events, giving speeches and presentations, and challenging alleged anti-Muslim speakers.

The libertarian talk show host Phil Russo invited him onto his show as a guest. When Russo’s co-host quit in protest, he invited Coley to become his new co-host.

Coley also found other allies. “[W]e had republican candidates serving the homeless at Masjid al-Haqq,” says Coley adding that he “got A LOT of help from non-Muslims.”

At this time, Coley’s work was entirely solo. Other Muslims had a “you go and then tell us how it went when you get back” attitude, says Coley. “An event would be me inviting everyone I know, and then myself, my wife, and our 5 month old….500 people there, 3 Muslims.”

Things changed in 2011, when Coley moved his family to his home state of Tennessee. “I wanted to raise my family here, not in big city Orlando,” says Coley.

He also began doing outreach to local Tea Party groups. His original intention was to focus on educational basics about Muslim belief and practice, such as the Five Pillars and the Qur’an, as well as Muslim artwork.

The sudden announcement in the press of anti-sharia legislation in the Tennessee House and Senate changed everything.

“[We] changed the format of the Islam Awareness lectures at the library. Since sharia had become the issue, we decided to devote each week to covering a different area or aspect of sharia,” says Coley. “We invited two Tea Party groups. One cursed at me, called me names and said I was Muslim and therefore they had no interest in speaking to me or hearing anything my ‘lying mouth’ had to say. The other invited other Tea Party groups.”

“After the lectures, these Tea Party groups took our information home with them. We offered paper, pens, and wrote notes on the board. Then there was a meeting of all the East Tennessee tea party groups, fourteen in all, and they had a vote. 12/2 was the vote, to abandon attacking Islam as a tactic.”

The rise of an American Muslim libertarian movement is not surprising to Anthony Gregory, 31, a leading antiwar libertarian, policy analyst and commentator.

Read the rest…

Imam Ossama Bahloul speaks Sunday during the grand opening ceremony of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Ahmad Abu-Halimah stands beside him. / HELEN COMER/DNJ

Congratulations Murfreesboro and all of the residents who supported the Islamic Center in the face of the insane anti-Muslim onslaught.

The interfaith gathering also points to the fact that the zealots who opposed the mosque were a radical fringe even within their own communities.

Mosque celebrates opening

— Samantha E. Donaldson, 615-278-5155

Isn’t this one of the most understated NPR titles ever? Many, including us have been reporting about this phenomenon for some time now.

A good article that highlights how the anti-Shariah legislation is really a “solution in search of a problem.” (h/t: Critical Dragon)

Fears About Shariah Law Take Hold In Tennessee

(NPR)

It’s getting tougher to be a Republican in some parts of the country while also fully accepting the practice of Islam.

In Tennessee, an incumbent in the U.S. House found herself on the defensive after being called soft on Shariah law, the code that guides Muslim beliefs and actions. And the state’s governor has been forced to explain why he hired a Muslim.

Lee Douglas, a dentist just south of Nashville and an anti-Shariah activist, points to the Muslim woman hired in Tennessee’s economic development office as evidence of an “infiltration” of Islam in government. Douglas helped draft a resolution criticizing the governor and Islam. A version of the document has been signed by a growing list of GOP executive committees, from rural counties to the state’s wealthiest.

“By stopping this now, we’re going to save ourselves a lot of difficulty in the future,” he says.

Republican Gov. Bill Haslam defends his Muslim staffer’s credentials and says she grew up in a small town. “This is somebody who is very Tennessee,” says the governor.

The fact that she’s a fellow Tennessean hasn’t silenced the critics.

The number of Muslims in Tennessee remains tiny, but it is growing. Many come as refugees. Others are college professors. They’re planting roots in one of only three states where, according to a Pew Forum survey, more than half of the population is evangelical protestant.

Douglas believes Islam is diametrically opposed to his faith.

“I don’t want anybody to persecute any religion including Islam, but we have a duty as Americans to understand that they intend to take us over and compel us to become Islamic,” Douglas says.

The First Amendment may provide the freedom to practice all religions, but, according to Douglas, the “government is showing a deference and is accommodating one single religion — Islam, Shariah,” he says.

Douglas says deference should be shown to the religion of the country’s Founding Fathers. Instead, Douglas sees the Justice Department making sure a mosque in nearby Murfreesboro could open despite legal challenges.

Rebin Omer attended the first prayers in that mosque. The Kurdish refugee dismisses claims that Islam is violent.

“We haven’t seen anything like that from our upbringing or anything, so it’s kind of surprising, but the First Amendment gives you the right to worship any religion you want,” Omer says.

As one of a thousand mosques built in the U.S. over the past decade, this Islamic center ignited debate across the country and political spectrum — from pulpit pastors to wealthy Republican donors. Health care investor Andy Miller tries to isolate his concerns to the moral code laid out in Muslim holy books, where he finds discrimination toward women.

“I am not anti-Muslim at all. I don’t hate anybody. But I do have issues with Shariah law. When you look at Shariah law, it’s so antithetical to the things that we hold dear as Americans,” Miller says.

This year, Miller pumped a couple hundred-thousand dollars into superPACs supporting a candidate who shares his views. Lou Ann Zelenik made Islam a campaign issue in both of her failed but fiery bids for Congress.

While Zelenik lost to Rep. Diane Black again in this month’s Republican primary, Black felt pressure to show toughness.

“I understand the devastation that Shariah law could mean here in our country, and I’m a sponsor of a bill that will once again say that the United States Constitution is our law and that it is the supreme law,” Black said.

Besides the federal legislation, more than 20 states have considered bills banning the use of Shariah law. The proposals are a solution in search of a problem, according to many. But to the anti-Shariah crowd, they are another way to get their fears taken seriously.

Gov. Bill Haslam hired a Muslim and got hell for it from anti-Muslim haters. Now Gov. Haslam, an Elder in the Presbyterian Church  is being accused of being part of a massive conspiracy to promote so-called “Islamist radical ideology.”:

Anti-muslim website says Bill Haslam promotes the interests of radical Islamists

(Politifact)

Earlier this summer, a handful of Republican Party county committees in Tennessee passed resolutions criticizing Republican Gov. Bill Haslam for hiring Samar Ali, an accomplished young Muslim-American native of Waverly, Tenn., and honors graduate of Vanderbilt University and its law school. Now, at least two new websites are attempting to perpetuate the idea that Tennessee’s governor is somehow involved in a massive conspiracy to “promote the interests” of “Islamist radical ideology,” including “Shariah compliant finance.”

For the purposes of this item, we are going to examine a statement from billhislam.com: “The Governor of the great state of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, has made it clear by his repeated actions that he will pursue a policy that promotes the interest of Islamist (sic) and their radical ideology as long as he is governor.”

We’re feeling déjà vu. PolitiFact Tennessee addressed an associated claim in July when GOP state Senate candidate Woody Degan of Shelby County charged the Haslam administration was “making our Economic Development Department Sharia compliant,” in part by hiring Ali as international director earlier this year. The governor and the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (ECD) rejected the contention that Ali or the department was doing anything relating to Sharia. We gave it our Pants On Fire ruling as not just false, but ridiculous.

At its simplest, Sharia law is the moral code and religious law of the Islamic faith, addressing a variety of personal and secular topics. Aspects of Sharia law do govern business dealings, and some Muslims conduct business only under Sharia-compliant conditions. For example, Sharia may prohibit interest on loans, considering it usury, but may allow other lending fees in lieu of interest. But most people, constitutional scholars and others, agree that attempting to install Sharia as U.S. or Tennessee law would be unconstitutional and there’s been no bills at the state level to attempt it.

The voters of Senate District 32 gave Degan a drubbing. He got 10 percent of the vote against state Sen Mark Norris, R-Collierville, in their Aug. 2 primary. Despite that, the shadowy movement that Degan connected with during his campaign has not been deterred.

In addition to billhislam.com, there’s another anonymous blog calling itself the “tn Council 4 political justice,”  which has posted 39 “newsletters” on its site since April 9, focused on the purported threat of Islam on Tennessee and the Haslam administration’s role in it. The latest of these, posted Aug. 23, attempts to link Samar Ali’s father, noted Waverly, Tenn., physician Subhi Ali, to The Jerusalem Fund. The anonymous bloggers write that the Washington, D.C.-based humanitarian non-profit’s policies “reflect overtly pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas/anti-Israel positions.” The bloggers also claim that “in addition to making grants for social services in the ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories,’” a branch of the Fund also “supports the Palestine Diabetes Institute” and that Samar Ali served as the transatlantic liaison during the development of that project.

From diabetes to terrorism?

Those behind billhislam.com make that leap: they titled their Aug. 23 link to the tn Council 4 political justice “newsletter” on Dr. Ali and the Jerusalem Fund as “Dr. Jihad.” They go even further, with one post trying to connect the dots between “Sharia compliant finance investments” that the Haslam administration strongly denies going after to the potential maiming of American soldiers in Afghanistan. Dave Vance of Big Rock, Tenn., writes on billhislam.com that “Apparently, Governor Haslam is comfortable with the distinct possibility … that at least some of the SCF (Sharia compliant finance) investments on which he intends to spend taxpayer funds will go to provide funds to the very people who are killing American troops in Afghanistan.”

It would be one thing if all this had stayed buried in the cyber netherworld but it worked its way into Degan’s campaigns and aforementioned resolutions passed by a few county GOP organizations (notably including the state’s most affluent county, Williamson). Even the governor feels compelled to spend time addressing it occasionally. Last week, his top assistant, Deputy to the Governor Claude Ramsey, wrote the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, Chris Devaney, a letter disputing the allegations so Devaney could assure the GOP faithful that their standard-bearer is not a radical Islamist.

Read the rest…

After more than two years of loony anti-Muslim hate the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro was finally able to open its doors to worshippers. The hate brigades were largely silent with the exception of one sole protester and disgraced blogger Eric Allen Bell (Eric Edborg) soliciting donations to keep the “fight” against “Muslims” alive.

After a Struggle, Mosque Opens in Tennessee

(NewYorkTimes)

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — The worshipers bowed low, their heads touching the freshly laid carpet, as the new mosque filled with echoes of exultation.

“God, thank you for the ability to worship here today,” said Remziya Suleyman, 27. “Thank you, thank you.”

After years of threats, attacks and court action, the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s new mosque opened its doors Friday, allowing 300 people to mark the occasion on Islam’s day of weekly public prayer. After the shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on Sunday and an arson attack on a mosque in Missouri on Monday, the opening went off without the protests or violence that some had feared.

Muslims from across Tennessee gathered at the 12,000-square-foot center to begin the final week of Ramadan. The congregation’s former building was so small that members often spilled into the parking lot and car-pooled to save parking spaces. Here, they fit comfortably.

“We’re all humbly enjoying the right to worship, an American tradition that a small minority tried to eliminate out of ignorance and misunderstanding,” said Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who flew here from Washington.

For two years, the opposition in this city of 110,000 about 30 miles southeast of Nashville has been small but vocal. In 2010, vandals painted “not welcome” on construction signs at the mosque and set fire to construction equipment. A Texas man was indicted in June on charges that he left messages threatening to detonate a bomb at the center on Sept. 11.

In May, a county judge ruled that the construction plans had not received sufficient comment from the public and that an occupancy permit could not be granted. Federal prosecutors filed a discrimination lawsuit, and a federal judge ruled in the mosque’s favor last month.

Only one opponent of the mosque came to voice his concerns at the opening. Dan J. Qualls, 50, a former auto plant worker, wearing an “I Love Jesus” hat and a Ten Commandments shirt, said he understood that the First Amendment protected the right to worship freely but said he believed Islam represented violence. When he heard about the mosque’s opening on the local TV news, he decided to come out and “represent the Christians.”

“My honest opinion is, I wish this wasn’t here,” he said.

The mosque prayer hall forms just one part of the center, which will eventually be expanded to more than 50,000 square feet to include a gym, a swimming pool and other facilities, said Saleh Sbenaty, a board member. The prayer hall itself, about 4,500 square feet, can hold up to 500 people, but has a movable wall to divide the area to allow for other uses, like interfaith events with churches, synagogues and other religious groups.

The center is in a quiet, suburban neighborhood, beside a Baptist church. On Friday, workers hoisted an American flag up a pole.

Many in Murfreesboro have embraced the congregation’s right to worship freely. “That religious organization has been treated just exactly as we treat any other religious group,” said Ernest Burgess, the mayor of Rutherford County. “It has been a difficult struggle through the legal process. But we treated these people fairly, as they deserved.”

Mr. Sbenaty said the center will hold an official, full-scale opening in several weeks after a permanent certificate of occupancy is issued, but on Friday the prayer hall was opened for the weekly Friday worship, known as jumaa. He estimated there were about 250 to 300 Muslim families in the area who would likely be regularly served by the center.

Mr. Sbenaty said the center’s members were “very concerned” about safety after the Sikh temple shooting near Milwaukee and the fire at the mosque in Joplin, Mo., and had hired a private security team. “Even before those incidents, we were the subject of vandalism, intimidation, arson and bomb threats,” he said. “We are not new to this. But we are not going to be deterred. We are not going to give up our rights just because somebody is going to threaten us.”

Joe Brandon Jr., a lawyer representing several Murfreesboro residents who sued to block the mosque, could not be reached.

(Via IslamophobiaToday.com)

Murfreesboro Mosque Granted Temporary Occupancy Permit

NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - A temporary occupancy permit has been granted for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro after a final inspection on Tuesday morning.

Mosque leaders hope to hold evening prayers there as early as Friday.

Officials said it could take a few days before a permanent certificate of occupancy is issued.

Recently, members of Grace Baptist Church put up several white crosses along Bradyville Pike, alongside the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.

They said the crosses are a statement of their Christian faith and their feelings towards the new mosque. Officials for the Islamic Center said they aren’t upset, and believe they must love their neighbors.

Opponents have spent two years trying to halt construction of the mosque for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. In July, a federal judge ruled the congregation has a right to worship there as soon as the building is ready.

The 12,000-square-foot mosque will replace a smaller one that’s been used for 30 years.

Opposition to the new mosque has included a lawsuit, a large rally, vandalism, arson and a bomb threat.