Anti-Islam advocates from across the U.S. gathered Sunday in Dearborn for a conference to bring attention to what they say is a problem of Muslim honor killings.

About 150 gathered at the Hyatt in Dearborn for the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference, named after a 20-year-old Arab-American Muslim woman who was killed by her stepfather last year in Warren.

But at another conference in Detroit, about 100 people gathered earlier in the day to oppose the anti-Islam conference, saying it was the latest attack on metro Detroit's Arab-American and Muslim communities. Dearborn has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the U.S., many of them Muslim.

"We stand for America," said Osama Siblani, publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab-American News, at a panel at the DoubleTree hotel in Detroit. "And they (anti-Muslim activists) stand against America and against the American way of life."

Later, at the Hyatt, the message was the opposite. People gathered there said they are the ones who are standing up for the U.S. Constitution, freedom and justice. Islamic law "asserts authority over non-Muslims," said Pamela Geller, a blogger from New York City who often writes about Islamic extremism.

Robert Spencer, an author who also speaks out against Islamic extremism, said he and others have been unfairly labeled as bigots. "There is nothing hateful about saying we want everybody to be subjected to the same law," he said. Spencer said that Islam teaches Muslims to rule over non-Muslims and subject them to second-class status.

Geller said Mokdad's death was a honor killing based on Islam, but Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Bill Cataldo told the Free Press on Friday it was not. The family of Mokdad is opposed to the anti-Islam conference and didn't want Mokdad's name on it, Cataldo said.

Imam Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn said at the Arab-American conference in Detroit: "Honor killing has no religious roots in Islam."

Speakers also included U.S. Reps. John Conyers and Hansen Clarke, both Detroit Democrats, as well as Daniel Kirchbaum, executive director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. It was organized by the Arab American Institute, based in Washington, D.C.

Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the anti-Muslim activists are "against our true American values."

Detroit Free Press, 30 April 2012

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Barack Obama himself has never had the guts to say it.

Indeed, while it is famously difficult to prove a negative, it seems apparent that few people in all of politics and media have had the guts to say it. Did John McCain ever say it? Did Rick Santorum or Bill O'Reilly?

So let us plant a little flag for, mark with a yellow highlighter, the thing Rep. Raul Labrador said Sunday on Meet The Press: that "it wouldn't matter" if President Obama were a Muslim. And if it seems rather much to be handing out medals for such a modest statement of principle, well . . . the principle has been under fire for so long that even a modest statement feels momentous.

In recent years, public figures have made news for refuting (like McCain) or failing to refute (like Santorum) the canard that Obama is a follower of Islam. But outside of Colin Powell, who did so a few years back on Meet The Press, it is difficult to think of many – or any – who have dared to confront the notion implicit in the lie. Namely, that being a Muslim is incompatible with being an American.

Leonard Pitts Jr. applauds Idaho Republican congressman Raúl Labrador's statement on the NBC news/interview programme Meet the Press.

Miami Herald, 10 April 2012

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