Jewish and Muslim leaders join forces to combat xenophobia

Russian and Ukrainian Jewish and Muslim leaders meet in Kiev to discuss rise in Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as part of month-long European efforts to heighten awareness and fight racism, extremism and discrimination.

80 leading Jewish and Muslim leaders from across Ukraine and Russia met in Kiev on Thursday May 12, pledging to work together to fight a rising cascade of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in the two countries.

In the first-ever “Muslims and Jews United Against Hatred and Extremism” conference held in the Ukrainian capital, community leaders from both countries heard chilling accounts of discrimination and abuse.

Conference participants spoke of the beating and harassment of Muslims and Jews in the two former Soviet republics, desecration of Muslim and Jewish cemeteries and bombings as well as other attacks on communal institutions of the two faiths.

The leaders pledged to work together to combat forces of extremism and hate and to put pressure on their local authorities to take a more assertive stand in fighting perpetrators of Islamophobic and anti-Semitic attacks.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding (FFEU) and vice president of the World Jewish Congress, hailed the historic event in Kiev, commenting; “The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, together with our partners, is gratified to be standing in support of joint actions by Muslims and Jews in the former Soviet Union and across Europe.

He added that the meeting’s “purpose is to make clear that Jews and Muslims will be there for each other if either is being unfairly attacked, and will stand united in support of principles of democracy and pluralism that will ensure a decent future for all Ukrainians and Russians.”

The Kiev conference was sponsored by the Ukrainian Jewish Committee and the Institute of Human Rights and the Prevention of Extremism and Xenophobia under the leadership of the noted Member of Parliament and business leader Oleksandr Feldman, in cooperation with FFEU.

80 Muslim and Jewish leaders from across Ukraine and Russia participated in the historic conference.

The Kiev conference was one of nine Muslim-Jewish events being held in countries in Europe during the month of May in commemoration of Europe Day.

Events opposing racism, extremism and prejudice against Muslims and Jews are being held in Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, in addition to the Ukraine throughout May, and are sponsored by FFEU, the World Jewish Congress, European Jewish Congress, World Council of Muslims for Interfaith Relations and the Muslim-Jewish Conference.

The events will culminate in Brussels on May 30, when top Jewish and Muslim leaders are to present a joint declaration to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, committing to “resolve to work together to counter efforts to demonize or marginalize either of our communities. Bigotry against any Jew or any Muslim is an attack on all Muslims and all Jews. We are united in our belief in the dignity of all peoples.”

http://www.islamophobiatoday.com/2011/05/17/jewish-and-muslim-leaders-join-forces-to-combat-xenophobia/

Muslims Kicked off Plane Bound for CLT

CHARLOTTE, NC – Muhammad Zaghloul and Masudar Rahman arrive in Charlotte after what they’re calling a “Rosa Parks” experience.

“The supervisor, Mr. Russell said, 'Mr. Rahman and Mr. Mohammad, unfortunately pilot is not allowing you to go to the plane,’” says Masudar Rahman.

The two men had already boarded a Delta flight from Memphis around 8:30 Friday morning, when they were asked to come back for another screening.

“They were still very cooperative, complied with all the requests and yet were denied the right to come back on the plane after they were cleared to go yet again,” says their attorney, Mo Idlibi.

They were told it was the pilot’s decision.

“When asked why the pilot did not allow them back on the plane, the pilot said that some of the passengers didn't feel comfortable,” Idlibi says.

Their attorney says passengers were then questioned, but none raised concerns, even Delta supervisors couldn’t get the pilot to change his mind.

“He urged the pilot to allow us to go, he said, he's not giving any reason, he's stubborn and he's not listening to me,” Rahman says.

They were booked on another Delta flight from Memphis, which landed at Charlotte-Douglas around 7pm Friday night.

They were coming from to Charlotte for a conference where they planned to speak on Islamophobia.

Their attorney says they are looking into legal action, and waiting to find out more about why the pilot felt they were a potential threat.

Islamophobia on rise since Osama's Execution

Islamophobic tendencies have risen since the US decided to kill off the myth of Osama Bin Laden. BBC news reporter, Mishal Husain’s, children being racially abused in a supermarket is just another of the latest “acceptable forms of bigotry” left.

In America, the “USA, USA” chants have led to a rise in hate crimes against Muslims.

From having graffiti sprayed across Masajids, to having a teacher telling her student in front of a packed classroom that “You must be sad that they killed your uncle,” racist tendencies are beginning to peak yet again.

It’s not just the public who seem to have this problem, as evidenced when two Muslim religious leaders, on their way to a Charlotte conference on “Islamophobia,” were removed from a commercial flight because the pilot refused to fly with them on board.

You can see the irony, two people on their way to a conference to discuss Islamophobia, get stopped on their way, because of….Islamophobia.

It’s not exclusively America’s problem either.

Here, in the UK, Zonist smut peddler Richard Desmond’s Express got the ball rolling with crazed accusations that the police had seized a small container of “suspicious material” at one of the suspects’ homes.

Which of course turned out to be left over chicken curry in the fridge. True to form, there was no proportional coverage by the media of the men being released without charge.

Buried at the bottom of page 7 in a later issue of the Express we find a single paragraph which read:

“The five students who sparked an Al Qaeda terror alert near the Sellafield nuclear power station were there because of a satnav error. Rather than being terrorists avenging the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Bangladeshis from London were enjoying a picnic on Monday after putting CA20 in the satnav instead of CA12 for a hike on Scafell Pike, Cumbria, England’s highest peak. They were freed without charge.”

Right wing media and commentators alike must be responsible for their reporting, when you state:

“One down….1.8 billion to go”

Effectively calling for the wholesale slaughter of a fifth of the world’s population, then the wider community needs to do more to shut their extremists up, or is that a false charge that can only be attributed to Muslims?

When you have such irresponsible bile, it only leads to one conclusion, the neo-con inspired “Clash of Civilisations”, as can be described by last Friday’s events in London, with Anjem Choudry and his followers protest in front of the US Embassy.

But this is what we have come to expect from the right wing, Zionist owned, tabloid press.

They repeatedly boost the importance and significance of Anjem Choudary and his tiny group, suggesting to their readers that he represents substantial forces within Britain’s Muslim communities, when in reality he represents next to nothing.

This in turn feeds the paranoid far-right fantasies of the English Defence League, who organised a counter-protest against MAC yesterday. EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon recently predicted, with an entirely straight face, that “there’s going to be a hundred thousand Anjem Choudarys”.

We’re constantly told that now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, it’s a great victory for the “moderate” Muslims, it doesn’t seem to me that memo reached the racists out there.

After 9/11 & 7/7 there were huge attacks against Muslims, which one, if hard pressed can understand the retarded logic in.

But if you’ve succeeded in your mission to kill your #1 enemy, then why is it that Muslims are still being targeted?

Read more: http://www.mpacuk.org/story/090511/islamophobia-rise-osamas-execution.html#ixzz1Lus2FFNL

Muslim group asks FBI to investigate ‘KKK’ and swastika graffiti

The Minnesota Council on American-Islamic Relations is asking the FBI to investigate “KKK” and swastika graffiti on the home of Somali family in Rochester as a possible hate crime.

“We urge the FBI and state law enforcement authorities to treat this incident as a civil rights violation and to send a strong message that incidents of hate will not be tolerated in our community,” said Lori Saroya, CAIR’s Minnesota president.

The graffiti was written on the side of a home in northwest Rochester with black spray paint on Wednesday night.

“It’s kind of a scary thing to look at,” said Ayan Hilowle, 23, whose mother and father live with six children in the house. “In the beginning, we thought it was kids joking around, but this was a very hateful thing to do. It was like, ‘What’s next? Are they going to burn our house down?’”

Hilowle’s family moved to the United States from Somalia in 1996. They lived in Owatonna until 2004, then moved to Rochester. Hilowle said they’ve had some negative comments from people since moving to the U.S. but have encountered nothing like the recent vandalism.

Hilowle’s mother, Zainab Hassan, said that she would tell the vandals if she could that the family has been in the U.S. for 15 years and it’s their home now. “We’re not going anywhere,” she said.

Neighbors rallied around the family Thursday night, helping scrub the paint off the side of the house.

Saroya said her organization is reaching out to the Rochester Muslim community and will be conducting safety trainings and outreach sessions there.

Hilowle, who considers the spray paint vandalism a hate crime, said her family’s house has been targeted before.

In the first incident last fall, a woman threw a beer bottle from a passing vehicle at a car parked in the driveway and broke a window, Hilowle said. The house was shot by a paintball gun soon after, and a month later Hassan mother noticed slit marks in the mailbox. A police officer said the holes appeared to have been made by a knife, Hilowle said.

“They thought it was a knife because it was really sharp and it had a weird edge to it,” she said.

Shortly after the mailbox incident, the family found a strange set of footprints through the snow that led to a patio door. There was no sign anyone tried to enter the house, Hilowle said, but “it was like, ‘Who would creep up there in the middle of the night?’”

The house of Hilowle’s family was the only one hit by spray-paint vandalism in the area Wednesday night, said Rochester police Capt. Brian Winters. Police canvassed the neighborhood Thursday and looked for evidence, Winters said. It will take further investigation to conclude whether the vandalism incidents are connected, he said.

http://www.islamophobiatoday.com/2011/05/06/muslim-group-asks-fbi-to-investigate-kkk-and-swastika-graffiti/