—FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—
 
WASHINGTON D.C. (April 19, 2013) – The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) issued a statement during a joint press conference today with other national Muslim organizations at The National Press Club in the capital.

“The death of innocent lives is heartbreaking and we offer our condolences to the families of the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombings. And, we pray for the speedy and full recovery of the injured. Our thanks go to the law enforcement officers for working around the clock in identifying and going after the terrorists. ICNA stands with the rest of the American Muslim community in condemning such heinous crimes.

We want to make it very clear to our fellow Americans that such acts of terrorism have no place in Islam. These acts are not just against Americans but against all mankind. Islam, our faith, condemns those who murder innocent people and God Almighty declares the killing of even a single innocent person as murdering the entire humanity.

ICNA calls upon the American Muslim community to engage in social justice and service work being offered by ICNA Relief and other Muslim relief organizations.

We also thank the media for not jumping to any conclusions and showing responsibility in reporting of the situation in Boston.

We pray for peace and harmony, and may such moments of trials bring our hearts closer to one another.

The Islamic Circle of North America is a leading American Muslim organization dedicated to the betterment of society through the application of Islamic values. Since 1968, ICNA has worked to build relations between communities by devoting itself to education, outreach, social services and relief efforts.

—END—

Islamic Circle of North America
E-mail:
Office: (718) 658-1199

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Islamophobia Awareness Conference: Edinburgh 2013

Muslim Bashing...so wrong...so stop it now!

Saturday 16th March 2pm to 5pm

Augustine United Church, 41 George 4th Bridge, EH1 1EL

Speakers:
Inayat Bunglawala: Muslim writer (inayatscorner.wordpress.com)
Yvonne Ridley: Journalist and war correspondent
Eddie Truman: Co-founder of Islamophobia Watch
Craig Murray: Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan
Margaret Woods from Unite Against Fascism

Organised by Edinburgh Stop the War, Radio Ramadan, Muslim Women's Association of Edinburgh, SACC, Unite Against Fascism

Stalls and food at the event

No charge for entry but donations to cover costs welcome

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Geller and Geert Wilders at CPAC 2009Anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller has been turned away from the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference, despite speaking at the event for the past four years, she says. "This year, I applied to speak and was ignored," she wrote on her blog. "So, for the first time in five years, I won't be at CPAC."

CPAC is the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the country, and one of the few places where conservative politicians, movement leaders, media personalities and big donors all come together under one roof.

Salon, 4 March 2013

See also Loonwatch, 3 March 2013

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Campus Extremism, Freedom and Security Conference

12 March 2013, 4pm – 7:30pm, at the New Theatre, East Building, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

In light of the increased opposition among student groups and university lecturers around the government's counter-terrorism strategy, the LSE Students' Union is convening this conference to provide a forum for dialogue and discussion between key stakeholders in the debate around campus extremism, freedom and security.

Speakers:

1) Trevor Phillips, Former Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission
2) Dr Phyllis Starkey, Former MP and Chair of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee
3) Professor Ian Cram, Head of the Law School at the University of Leeds
4) Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari MBE, The East London Communitites Organisation
5) Jonathan Birdwell, Head of the Citizens Programme at Demos
6) Hicham Yezza, Editor-in-chief of Ceasefire Magazine and the 'Nottingham Two'
7) Pete Mercer, Vice President of the National Union of Students
8) Michael Chessum, President of the University of London Union
9) Omar Ali, President of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies

Chaired by: Dr Kai Spiekermann (LSE) and Dr Jasmine Gani (LSE)

This Conference is supported by the University of London Union (ULU) and the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS)

Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #LSExtremism

For further information, visit: http://bit.ly/14gctyY

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For a Europe without fascism, racism and xenophobia

Unite Against Fascism national conference

Saturday 2 March, 11am to 5pm
TUC Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS

Unite Against Fascism's conference this Saturday (2nd March) will bring together a broad coalition of anti-racist and anti-fascist activists, faith communities, trade unions and political parties set out a strategy to defeat the rise of fascists and neo-Nazis in Britain and across Europe.

A key focus will be to deprive Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons of the European Parliament seats they won for the British National Party four years ago.

It will also assess the lessons of the last year's success in uniting communities in many towns and cities across the country to prevent the violent racists of the English Defence League from storming into multicultural neighbourhoods.

The conference will also hear from a number of speakers from Europe. Petros Constantinou from Greece will address the shocking breakthrough by the Nazi Golden Dawn party in that country and Marwan Mohammed from France will speak about opposition to the Front National, which came third in last year's presidential elections.

They will join a range of speakers – from TUC president Leslie Mercer, to former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, Farooq Murad of the Muslim Council of Britain, Peter Hain MP, Gerry Gable of the veteran antifascist magazine Searchlight and many others (see below).

"The Unite Against Fascism conference this year continues to face a very serious situation where the ideas that feed the support for fascist groups have not gone away and street-fighting group like the EDL are still very active. But at the same time we have welcome successes to build upon." says Sabby Dhalu, UAF joint secretary.

"The BNP have been driven back in the last few rounds of local elections, and the EDL met such a determined and united community response to its attempts to stir up hatred in multicultural areas like Tower Hamlets and Walthamstow that its support fell away. In Cambridge – its most recent attempt on 23rd February – only 26 people turned up to its 'national mobilisation', while the UAF united community response numbered 1500.

"But this success is down to the UAF's systematic campaign against the BNP, the EDL and all neo-Nazi groups. It is certainly not down to a diminishing threat or potential support base. In fact, reckless media scaremongering, ubiquitous anti-Muslim rhetoric and scapegoating at a time of economic hardship are on the increase.

"The potential for all that to spill over into fascist advances and violent racism remains worryingly present. The BNP took two seats in the last European elections four years ago and Griffin and Brons are still members of the European Parliament. We are determined to defeat them in the 2014 Euro-election and any efforts by the far right to break through elsewhere. Our campaigns in the North-west and Yorkshire & Humberside Euro regions are already underway."

Fellow UAF joint secretary Weyman Bennett adds: "You only have to look at Europe to see the urgency.

"What happens in Europe clearly affects us in Britain. Moreover there are direct attempts by prominent fascist figures from the continent to boost their co-thinkers here. Two years ago Geert Wilders of the Dutch extreme right Party for Freedom was here, last week the FN's Marine Le Pen was in Cambridge, the Hungarian Jobbik Party is reportedly looking to open an office here.

"The UAF organizes against all such attempts to import Euro-fascism to Britain, and is stepping up its solidarity with the European antifascist movement.

"Just as fascists and racists are seeking to coordinate across Europe, so are antifascists. We represent the majority in each country; but if the majority stays silent, a racist minority can quickly grow. At our conference on Saturday we will be exploring with European friends how to better co-ordinate and reinforce our efforts."

Full list of speakers

Ken Livingstone Former Mayor of London and Honorary President, UAF
Diane Abbott MP
Andy Slaughter MP
Claude Moraes MEP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Murad Qureshi London Assembly Member
Leslie Mercer TUC President
Christine Blower NUT General Secretary
Chris Keates NASUWT General Secretary
Hugh Lanning PCS Deputy General Secretary
Linda Roy CWU National Equality officer
Farooq Murad Muslim Council of Britain General Secretary
Daniel Trilling Assistant Editor New Statesman / Author 'Bloody Nasty People: The rise of Britain's far right'
Owen Jones Writer and journalist
Symon Sentain Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust Chair
Edie Friedman Director, Jewish Council for Racial Equality
Azad Ali Head of Community Development, Engage
Fr. Steven Saxby We are Waltham Forest
Omar Ali President, Federation of Student Islamic Societies
Petros Constantinou Greece anti-fascist campaign KEERFA national organiser
Glyn Ford Unite Against Fascism European Officer
Gerry Gable Editor, Searchlight
Marwan Muhammed Collective Against Islamophobia (CCIF)
Helen Shaw Co-Director, Inquest
Omer El-Hamdoon President Muslim Association of Britain
Ken Fero Film maker and Director, Migrant Media
Myriam Francois-Cerrah Writer and journalist
John Campbell Yorkshire UAF Chair
Daud Abdullah British Muslim Initiative
Denis Fernando Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism
Aaron Kiely NUS Black Students' Officer
Sabby Dhalu Unite Against Fascism Joint Secretary
Weyman Bennett Unite Against Fascism Joint Secretary

Hosted by:
UAF, OSMC, PCS, NUT

Supported by:
MCB, Engage, East London Mosque, Islamic Forum Europe, London Muslim Centre, BMI

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The Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MD) is calling on Marylanders to contact several public officials in that state to request that they withdraw from participation in the upcoming Maryland Conservative Action Network Conference in Annapolis because the leader of a designated anti-Muslim hate group will speak at the event.

An action alert distributed by CAIR-MD calls on concerned citizens to send those officials a letter, which states in part:

"You are one of the few public officials who have chosen to speak at this conference. I believe your appearance with a hate group leader would be a disservice to your constituents and would bring disrepute to your office. I respectfully urge you to withdraw from this conference.

"The headline speaker at this event is Pamela Geller, one of the nation's most virulent Islamophobes. Geller's organization, Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which also named Geller as a member of the 'anti-Muslim inner circle.'

"Geller has bragged online that she uses a Quran, Islam's holy text, as a doorstop. Two hotels, one in Texas and another in Tennessee, dropped scheduled events that featured Geller as a speaker. Her hate blog was cited by Anders Breivik, the terrorist who went on a killing spree in Norway.

"Geller has claimed that 'Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by Islam' and that Islam 'mandates' lies and deception. She has also posted images on her blog that include a fake photograph of then Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in a Nazi uniform, another fake image of President Obama urinating on an American flag, and drawings purporting to depict Islam's Prophet Muhammad as a pig.

"One image posted by Geller, headlined 'Piss Be Upon Him,' showed one of the controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet covered in urine. ('Piss Be Upon Him' is designed to mock the traditional phrase 'Peace Be Upon Him' that Muslims use when mentioning any prophet of God.) In a 2010 blog entry, Geller posted a video claiming that Muslims engage in bestiality."

CAIR-MD is also encouraging concerned citizens to take part in a protest of Geller's presence at the Saturday event.

CAIR press release, 9 January 2013

See also "Kipke rejects group's call to boycott speech by 'Islamaphobe'", Maryland Gazette, 9 January 2013

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Liberal leadership contender Justin Trudeau told an Islamic conference Saturday that groups who attacked his decision to attend the gathering only work to divide Canadians.

Trudeau told a crowd of thousands at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference in Toronto that his critics attempted to tap into "fears and prejudices" that sap the acceptance of others.

"It is short-sighted to pit groups of Canadians against one another. It may make some feel good for a little while, or even work politically in the short term, but it is no way to build a country," Trudeau said in a keynote address. "It is not who we are."

Trudeau was criticized earlier this month by some Jewish groups and media outlets for agreeing to address the conference because of allegations of a link between one of its sponsors, IRFAN-Canada, and the militant group Hamas.

Canadian Press, 22 December 2012

The attack on Trudeau's participation at the Islamic Spirit conference in fact originated with the Point de Bascule website.

As the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations pointed out in a press release: "Point-de-Bascule describes itself as a 'non-partisan' website that 'defends our liberties by educating people on the Islamist threat'. However, its Islamophobic bias regularly takes aim at Muslims using misinformation to foster fear and suspicion."

Indicative of Point de Bascule's politics was its condemnation of the presence of Tariq Ramadan as a speaker at the Toronto conference, on the grounds that Professor Ramadan is a "Muslim Brotherhood heavyweight" who wants to colonise the USA.

Point de Bascule's witch-hunt against Trudeau and the conference organisers received the enthusiastic backing of the notoriously Islamophobic French website Riposte Laïque.

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Earlier this month Anjem Choudary announced his latest publicity stunt – a conference at the Lal Masjid in Islamabad on 30 November, where fatwas would be issued against Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, its current president Asif Zardari, and Malala Yousafzai, the young woman shot by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan last month.

Choudary of course has a long history of announcing provocative plans that he has no intention of actually carrying through, and then, having milked the resulting outrage for all the publicity he can, calling them off at the last minute. These non-events have included a March for Shari'ah in London in 2009, a demonstration at Wootton Bassett in 2010 where his followers were to carry 500 coffins to symbolise the deaths of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, a rally outside the White House the same year to advocate sharia law in the US, and a protest against the royal wedding in April 2011. So nobody had any excuse for falling for Choudary's latest con-trick.

If any confirmation was required that Choudary's Islamabad conference was a fraud, on 21 November the London correspondent of The News reported that a representative of Lal Masjid had contacted the paper to insist that they had never even spoken to Choudary or his organisation and knew of no proposal to hold a conference at the mosque on 30 November. The spokesman emphasised that "Maulana Abdul Aziz and the whole mosque administration condemn the inflammatory statements used by this group, clearly seeking publicity".

It was hardly unexpected, therefore, that earlier this week Choudary should issue a press release stating that the conference had been "postponed". In a statement to The News, Choudary cited as one of the reasons for this decision "the refusal of the apostate Pakistani regime to issue visas to key speakers". However, the paper reported that he and his supporters "never applied for Pakistani visas" in the first place.

This entirely predictable outcome didn't prevent certain interested parties from treating Choudary's Lal Masjid conference as if it was a serious proposal. In response to the initial announcement of the event, Maajid Nawaaz of Quilliam demanded indignantly "We gonna let this happen??" On 18 November, in an article that was considered sufficiently important to be advertised on its front page as an "exclusive", the Daily Star Sunday informed its readers: "British-based Muslim extremists want the schoolgirl shot by the Taliban to face a possible death sentence. The radicals will head to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad to link up with hardliners for a demonstration urging a fatwa against Malala Yousafzai."

The Spectator for its part ran a piece by Shiraz Maher which similarly accepted the announcement of the Islamabad conference as good coin, and went on to suggest that Choudary – a British citizen – should be prevented from re-entering the UK when he came back from Pakistan. The article, headlined "Few would shed tears if Britain barred Anjem Choudary from returning", appeared on 27 November – the same day that Choudary revealed that he had in fact no intention of going. Maher's stupid article was reproduced with evident approval by the anti-racist organisation Hope Not Hate.

Will this latest nonsense from Anjem Choudary lead to commentators taking a more sceptical view of his next provocation? It's highly unlikely, unfortunately. Whether it's the Islamophobic right-wing press or "experts" like Maajid Nawaz and Shiraz Maher who have built careers out of exaggerating and misrepresenting the threat of "Islamist extremism", there are plenty of people who have a vested interest in promoting Choudary and his minuscule group of nutters as if they represent a significant trend within the British Muslim community.

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A film that provoked a storm of violent protests among Muslims across the world will be discussed in Southampton next week.

The Muslim Council of Southampton (MCS) is holding a conference about the anti-Islamic video that was posted on Youtube by a US citizen. The clip led to protests that have caused more than 75 deaths and hundreds of injuries across the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Mohammad Khan from MCS says the evening of talks is designed to take a more measured approach to dealing with the video. He said:

"So many people have been killed because of the protests provoked by the film – it's not necessary and it's what whoever created the film wanted. We thought rather than that, we will have something positive. This talk is more for non-Muslims than Muslims because it’s about understanding our point of view."

The evening, entitled "Is Islam Intolerant? Challenge Your Prejudices" will tackle topics such as what Prophet Muhammad did when faced with insults and how the Muslim world should respond to the video. It takes place on Tuesday, November 27 at 6.30pm at the Itchen Lecture Theatre, Solent University. For more details, email info@mcs-online.org.

Southern Daily Echo, 25 November 2012

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Loonwatch draws our attention to an attack on Islam made by a Hindutva extremist named Babu Suseelan at the so-called "International Freedom Congress" in New York last month that was organised by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer's Stop Islamization of Nations.

"If we do not kill the bacteria, the bacteria will kill us", Suseelan told the audience. Otherwise, he warned, "Muslims will breed like rats and they will be a majority". But Suseelan finished on an upbeat note: "Islam can be stopped! And it can be wiped out."

Only a few weeks earlier Geller had denounced speeches made by Iranian political leaders to mark International Quds Day. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly stated that "the Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumor" and said that the region's nations would "soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land", while Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei described the Israeli regime as "the root of evil in the Middle East" and called on Muslims worldwide to take up the task of liberating Palestine from the grip of Israel and its allies. Geller described this as "genocidal rhetoric".

So, applying Geller's own criteria, there is no question that a speaker at her own conference advocated genocide against Muslims. Did Geller and Spencer immediately dissociate themselves from Suseelan's poisonous words? Not a bit of it. According to an eyewitness: "Spencer laughed, but Geller covered her face, as if witnessing the antics of a naughty child."

Update:  For more on Suseelan, see Bartholomew's Notes on Religion, 8 October 2012

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Over at Harry's Place Hasan Afzal of British Muslims for Israel is crowing over the success of their campaign to secure the cancellation of next month's "Month of Mercy" conference at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London organised by the Al Muntada Trust.

As we have previously noted, the "call to action" issued by Harry's Place received an enthusiastic response from the racist thugs of the English Defence League and the associated hooligan group Casuals United.

Unsurprisingly, both the EDL and Casuals United share HP's glee over the cancellation.

It is interesting that Hasan Afzal makes no mention of the reason given by the Principal Hayley Group, the hotel operator responsible for the venue, for cancelling the booking. We are left to assume that it was the dangerous "jihadist" ideology of the Al Muntada Trust that led to the decision.

However, as you can see from the Casuals United screenshot, the explanation given by the venue operator was as follows: "The safety of our staff and guests is our absolute priority at all times. After careful consideration and liaison with the local police force we have taken the decision to cancel the booking."

I had emailed the Principal Hayley Group myself, urging them to reject calls to cancel the conference, pointing out that the people behind the campaign were extremists like the EDL and Harry's Place. This morning I received the same email quoted by Casuals United. 

I emailed back saying that I couldn't understand how a conference organised by an entirely peaceful organisation like the Al Muntada Trust could have compromised the safety of staff and guests at the Grand Connaught Rooms. I received the following explanation: "We cancelled the event due to the risk of public disorder, damage to our property and safety of our staff. This decision was made on Police advice."

So it wasn't the supposed "jihadist" ideology of the conference organisers that caused the cancellation of the booking – it was the threat of violence from opponents of the conference. In other words, Harry's Place managed to get the conference cancelled by mobilising far-right racist thugs against it. They must be really pleased with themselves.

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Where does the English Defence League get its ideological inspiration from? Well, obviously from the likes of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, with whom the EDL is jointly organising the launch of a "worldwide counter-jihad alliance" in Stockholm in August.

However, the international counterjihad movement is not the only source of inspiration for the EDL. They also take their cue from the terrorism-supporting Zionist blog Harry's Place, as is shown by their enthusiastic response to a "call to action" against a so-called "jihadist conference" in London next month, posted at HP by Hasan Afzal of British Muslims for Israel.

Meanwhile the football hooligan group, Casuals United, have announced that if the conference goes ahead they will be organising a protest to stop it along with the EDL and the United British Alliance.

This is by no means the first time that the thugs of the EDL have been inspired by Harry's Place, as we have pointed out before.

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Dearborn, home to one of the nation's largest concentrations of Arab Americans, once again will become a focal point for debate over the practice and persecution of Islam in the west.

Pamela Geller, conservative activist and co-founder of Stop Islamization of America, is scheduled to host the "Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference" from the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dearborn on Sunday at 5 p.m.

The event is named after a 20-year-old woman fatally shot by her stepfather last year in Warren. Initial reports suggested Rahim Alfetlawi shot Mokdad because he believed she had strayed from Islam, but prosecutors have since said that religion did not play a role.

Despite opposition from family members who say Mokdad's murder has nothing to do with Islam, Geller has refused to rename the conference, suggesting an attempt to cover up what she continues to call an "honor killing."

"Unlike those closest to her, we are going to honor Jessica's memory and stand up against the brutal practice that took her life," Geller said in a statement announcing the conference.

Local leaders say the conference is misleading and argue that Dearborn has become a convenient target for anti-Muslim groups, pointing to recent protests led by activist Pastor Terry Jones.

To counter Geller's conference, The Arab American Institute and partners have scheduled a competing town hall on Sunday titled "Rejecting Islamophobia: A Community Stand Against Hate." It is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. at the Doubletree Hotel in Dearborn.

"This is clearly not the first time our community in Michigan has had to deal with a hate group," AAI President Jim Zogby said in a statement. "Despite repeated efforts to target Arab Americans and American Muslims, the community has remained resilient and poised, sometimes choosing to ignore the fervor.

"This group we cannot ignore and this is the time to stand up and make our voices loud and clear in opposition to the politics of division and bigotry."

MLive.com, 27 April 2012

See also "Rejecting Islamophobia: A community stand against hate", Arab American Institute press release, 25 April 2012

And Sheila Musaji, "Geller & Spencer's human rights conference another anti-Muslim hate fest", The American Muslim, 26 April 2012

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