In recent news stories from Europe this past year, where there is a population density of Muslims twice as high as in America, there have been several court cases involving people who have criticized Islam. One notable case in The Netherlands had a member of Parliament accused of a hate crime because he read some violent passages from the Islamic Koran. In another case in Austria another activist faces jail for voicing similar criticism.
After nearly six months, a trial against Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders ended Thursday in Amsterdam. A court acquitted the right-wing populist politician on charges of incitement, racial hatred and discrimination against Muslims.
In his verdict, leading judge Marcel van Oosten said that, while Wilders' statements were indeed offensive to Muslims, they were also part of the legitimate political debate. Wilders' claim that Islam is a violent religion and his demands for an immigration ban for Muslims had to be viewed in the context of the larger societal debate about immigration policies, the judge argued. He said the statements could not be directly blamed for increasing levels of discrimination against Dutch Muslims.
In Austria, a free speech activist has fallen foul of the law for expressing similar views being chorused by major European leaders. Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff says that after decades of mass immigration multicultural society is not working. She faces three years in prison for inciting religious hatred, after she criticized Islam and Sharia law.
Now, here in America, with a much smaller minority of Muslims but with one significant difference - they have a huge Muslim influence in the White House - a disproportionate minority of Muslims are calling for radical changes in our society. In spite of the Supreme Court ruling that the obnoxious group of people from the Westboro Baptist Church had every right to protest the funerals of American soldiers with signs that read "Thank God for IED's" and "Pray for more dead soldiers" because they had the right to free speech, we now read of Muslim demands to remove crosses from a Catholic University. But they are not content with just that. American Muslims have now petitioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice to find a way to criminalize our free speech when anyone criticizes Islam. Here are two stories that should make you very concerned.
Muslim leaders urge DOJ to criminalize criticism of Islam!
A particularly dangerous and noxious doctrine within sharia law is the prohibition against “blasphemy” or “defamation” of Islam and the prophet Mohammed.
This is a direct affront to our cherished first amendment right of free speech, as it silences any critique or criticism of Islam.
European countries are already prosecuting people for “hate speech” against Islam, in effect implementing the sharia prohibition. ACT! for America chapter leader Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is one of those people. Canada’s Human Rights Commission went after author Mark Steyn. Could this eventually happen in the U.S.?
Consider the latest. Some Muslim leaders, including the head of ISNA (Islamic Society of North America, a Muslim Brotherhood front organization), recently urged Department of Justice officials to take steps to criminalize criticism of Islam (see article below, highlights added). They are calling criticism of Islam “discrimination” and “racist.”
Couple this with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s apparent recent embrace of the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) push for a UN resolution calling for governments to criminalize defamation of religion.
This is serious folks! Can you see why we are putting so much emphasis on combating sharia law? They’re trying to confiscate our first amendment rights!!
You can help us fight back by signing the pledge of support to stop sharia in your state. If you haven’t yet done so, please do so today! Acting today could well protect your right to act tomorrow.
Muslims tell DOJ to find a way to crimalize criticism of Islam!
Posted on October 24, 2011
http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/muslims-tell-doj-to-find-a-way-to-crimalize-criticism-of-islam/
And cut back anti-terror funding amongst other things. Neil Munro with a very disturbing piece with absolutely unimaginable consequences when it becomes reality. And it will if we the People do not start protecting our freedoms.
Holder & Perez
Top Justice Department officials convened a meeting Wednesday where invited Islamist advocates lobbied them for cutbacks in anti-terror funding, changes in agents’ training manuals, additional curbs on investigators and a legal declaration that U.S. citizens’ criticism of Islam constitutes racial discrimination.
The department’s “civil rights lawyers are top of the line — I say this with utter honesty — I know they can come up with a way” to redefine criticism as discrimination, said Sahar Aziz, a female, Egyptian-American lawyer.
“I’d be willing to give a shot at it,” said Aziz, who is a fellow at the Michigan-based Muslim advocacy group, the Institute for Social Policy & Understanding.
The audience of Islamist advocates and department officials included Tom Perez, who heads the department’s division of civil rights.
“We must continue to have the open and honest and critical dialogue that you saw in the robust debate,” Perez responded in an enthusiastic closing speech a few minutes after Aziz made her demands at the event.
“I sat here the entire time, taking notes,” Perez said. “I have some very concrete thoughts … in the aftermath of this.”
The meeting at George Washington University showcased the expanding alliance between American progressives and Islamists, said Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor in New York.
Progressives “are making these Islamist groups into the [political] representatives of Muslims in the United States,” he told The Daily Caller. That elevation of Islamists to a leadership role sidelines the majority of American Muslims who don’t want Islamist leaders, as well as American Muslims who are female or gay, he said.
McCarthy investigated and prosecuted Egyptian-born Imam Omar Abdel-Rahman, dubbed “the blind sheik,” for urging Muslims to kill New Yorkers. Abdel-Rahman was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996.
Progressives ally with the Islamic lobby because “they think it will be a political voting bloc that will be reliably Democratic,” said Robert Spencer, an author and expert on Islam.
None of the Islamist advocates of civil rights officials in attendance, including Perez, objected to Aziz’s call for free-speech restrictions.
The event did not include Zuhdi Jasser, an Arizona Muslim, former naval officer and a co-founder of a coalition of modernist Muslim groups, the American Islamic Leadership Coalition. “The Islamist groups’ victimology feeds into the left’s propaganda that the right is anti-minority and anti-Muslim, so there’s a mutual political benefit there,” said Jasser, who clashes with Spencer over rival responses to the Islamist groups.
Nor did the conference include any influential critics, such as McCarthy and Spencer, who argue that Islamist terror attacks are partly motivated by Islamic texts. These texts include the Koran’s verse 9:5, which says “when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them.”
Aziz, however, used her invitation to argue that Americans’ fear of Islamists’ bombs has evolved into racism towards dark-skinned men.
The word “Muslim,” she said, “has become racialized. … I don’t accept this formalistic cop-out that this is all about religion.”
Aziz did not offer any evidence for her claim, which she said justifies the use of Title VI anti-discrimination laws against institutions and individuals who argue that Islamic texts spur Islamic violence.
This legal redefinition, she said, would also “take [federal] money away from local police departments and fusion centers who are spying on all of us.”
Aziz also argued against the commonplace police practice of informally talking with people in communities, including Muslim communities. “This has been a real problem with this outreach stuff,” she said. Muslims “are acting in good faith, and then they find their imams, who were going to outreach meetings, were being spied on,” she complained. “Some have been deported. Some have been prosecuted.”
In March, Afghan-born New York Imam Ahmad Wais Afzali was ordered deported after he admitted he lied to the FBI about warning a suspected Muslim terrorist that he was being investigated. That terrorist, Najibullah Zazi, admitted that he was planning to place bombs in the New York City subway. The imam learned about the investigation because he had offered to work with local police to help identify potential terrorists in his congregation.
“People are going in good faith” to talk with police, Aziz said. “They’re being very honest about what their grievances are. They’re telling the government, ‘This what we want you to do … [and] we want you not to spy on our community.’”
Dwight Holton, a Justice Department legal counsel based in Oregon, said the threat of criminal gangs or terror attacks justifies routine police contacts with locals. “When we go to a barber shop to talk to the community, we don’t tell them you can have a lawyer,” he said.
“You should,” Aziz immediately replied.
Aziz’s advocacy was supported by a second Islamist advocate, Islamic Society of North America president Mohamed Magid. He argued that “teaching people that all Muslims are a threat to the country… is against the law and the Constitution.” [Editor’s note: no one we know of, including ACT! for America, is teaching that “all Muslims are a threat to the country.”]
Magid asked Perez to change the federal government’s rules governing terror investigations, for more private meetings with top justice department officials, for the reeducation of FBI agents, and for more people to oppose criticism of Islam, which he labelled “religious bigotry and hate.”
[CONTINUE READING FULL ARTICLE HERE]
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www.actforamerica.org
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From Jihad Watch:
Crucifixes? At a Catholic university? How about that.
Of course, at the heart of this complaint is the hope of establishing a Muslim prayer space on the campus that would be subject to different standards than the rest of the university -- a little enclave of Islamic law where its ban on the display of crosses would be "respected."
It is mentioned below that Muslim students say they like CUA because they feel "safe" and "comfortable." They are receiving the benefits of what Catholics have built at CUA, but are expecting more. They want to bend the institution to their own purposes for their own "comfort."
They think it's a fine place, if it just weren't so, you know, Catholic, and therefore un-Islamic. "University Accused of Discriminating Against Muslims," from CUA's The Tower, October 20 (thanks to B.):
New charges have recently been filed against the University on counts of illegal discrimination against its Muslim and female students. The allegations are being reviewed by the District of Colombia Office of Human Rights (OHR), which has the strictest discrimination laws in the country. President John H. Garvey and the University is being urged to respond to the charges.John F. Banzhaf III, the George Washington University Professor of Public Interest Law who initiated the legal controversy surrounding same-sex residence halls, is also the one behind these new charges.You'll want to read this sitting down:
The official allegations claim that CUA, “does not provide space – as other universities do – for the many daily prayers Muslim students must make, forcing them instead to find temporarily empty classrooms where they are often surrounded by Catholic symbols which are incongruous to their religion,” according to a press release on PRLOG.com.This formal complaint also maintains that the new same-sex residence halls are particularly discriminating against female students, which is a new position on the same-sex lawsuit that began last month.For both aspects of the complaint: it's a Catholic university, a private institution. No one is being forced to attend it. On the other hand, its very nature and identity puts a giant target on it for social engineering.
Banzhaf claims that the University is denying Muslim students the same benefits that students of other religions are able to enjoy since there is no formal Muslim association sponsored by Catholic University but the Columbus School of Law has an association for Jewish students“Denying Muslim students the opportunity for form a student group on campus could hardly be based upon any fundamental Catholic doctrine since Georgetown University not only has such a Muslim student group, but also provides its Muslim students with a separate prayer room and even a Muslim chaplain,” said Banzhaf in that press release.“An important reason [that Muslims are gravitating towards Catholic universities] is that the Muslim students, especially those who are observant, feel comfortable and safe at the institution,” said President Garvey in an interview with NPR in December of 2010. “It’s a place where their own faith practices are mirrored by our own. And they feel both welcome and understood at the campus.”Gentlemen, start your platitudes:
“Even though it’s a Catholic school, a lot of its teachings are very similar to Islam,” said Al Salmi. “It teaches respect, community service, love, worship etc. which are things that Islam also teaches.”The discrimination charge asserts that although OHR has been investigating alleged discrimination on campus since Banzhaf’s lawsuit began, “neither the President nor anyone else speaking for the University has sought to explain to the public, or even to CUA’s own students, why it believes that its discrimination does not violate the Human Rights Act.”“As University spokesman, I have repeatedly explained to anyone who has asked me, including the media, that we reject the premise of Banzhaf’s argument, namely that single-sex residence halls are discriminatory,” said Victor Nakas, University Vice President of Public Affairs. “And we also reject his assumption that the Human Rights Act requires residence halls to be co-ed.”That does a fine job of illustrating the mindset at work here. Rules and standards are hate and discrimination.
As these charges are being considered by the Office of Human Rights, the University administration said they will continue to work towards the betterment of its students.“Catholic University is committed to the religious freedom and dignity of all members of its community,” said Nakas. “This includes the dozens of Muslims who come to the University for its academic excellence as well as its demonstrated history of outreach and dialogue to people of all faiths.”
UPDATE 10-29-2011 FOX NewsProfessor's 'Death to Israel' Rant Sparks Controversy at Kent State University
By Todd Starnes
Published October 28, 2011
A Kent State University professor allegedly with former ties to a jihadist website shouted “Death to Israel” at a public lecture delivered on the Ohio campus by a former Israeli diplomat.
The outburst came during a presentation this week by Ismael Khaldi, a former deputy counsel general at the Israeli consulate in San Francisco. During the question and answer period, KSU history professor Julio Pino launched a series of provocative questions at Khaldi.
At some point, the professor shouted “Death to Israel” and then stormed out of the building. The event was first reported by the KSU student news site KentWired.
KSU president Lester Lefton, who is Jewish, denounced Pino’s outburst, calling it “reprehensible and an embarrassment to our university.”
At the same time, he defended Pino’s free speech rights. (emphasis mine)
“It may have been professor Pino’s right to do so, but it is my obligation, as the president of this university, to say that I find his words deplorable and his behavior deeply troubling,” his statement read.
Now, of course, if a Jew had shouted out "Death to Islam" he would have been immediately branded by the news media as a bigot, but a Muslim is forgiven for expressing his hate speech. And, ironically, the person who forgave him was a Jew. That is what makes the difference in America.Pino, who is originally from Cuba and a convert to Islam, did not return calls for comment.
