The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate an apparent act of retaliation against a local community leader by FBI agents at the Minnesota field office.

CAIR says the alleged retaliation, in the form of an FBI visit to the home of the director of the civil rights group's Minnesota chapter Lori Saroya , followed just two business days after public disclosure by that chapter of an FBI investigation into alleged intimidation tactics used on a local Somali Muslim by two agents.

CAIR press release, 13 February 2013

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The RCMP is investigating the possibility of a hate crime after several piles of bacon were found outside a mosque in Port Coquitlam, B.C.

Police say it's the second such act of vandalism and mischief at the Islamic Society of British Columbia mosque and Islamic Centre in the last 18 months.

Society president Saad Bahr said Tuesday it's clear the action was intended to offend, but his group would welcome the opportunity to speak to those responsible and have them learn about Muslim beliefs. "We believe that whoever is responsible for this act does not know us and does not understand what we stand for," Bahr said in a news release.

Coquitlam RCMP Supt. Claude Wilcott said police are disturbed someone would deliberately choose to target the society. Wilcott said investigators haven't been able to eliminate the possibility that the two incidents were motivated by hatred. "We want to send a clear message that we take this type of activity seriously and it won't be tolerated in our jurisdiction."

Police were called to the same mosque in March last year after someone spray painted two racially offensive words on the outside wall of the mosque.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Jamie Chung said the act could just be a stupid practical joke, but for now police are looking at the possibility it was a crime directed at the Muslim religion. Chung said the bacon was scattered around the property in piles of four or five pieces each. "It is very deliberate if [they] spread them out in several different places. It is not just someone walking by and dropping a package of bacon on the sidewalk."

The property is equipped with closed circuit cameras and investigators are in the process of reviewing the video.

Police are also seeking the public's help in trying to find who dumped the bacon, which was discovered last Wednesday, Chung said.

The Coquitlam RCMP has been working with the Islamic Society of B.C. and the Integrated Provincial Hate Crimes Unit on the investigation.

CBC News, 2 October 2012

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A progressive evangelical group has launched an online petition urging the U.S. Justice Department to investigate a July 4 fire at a Missouri mosque as a potential hate crime.

Sojourners, a Washington-based organization dedicated to social justice in a Christian context, sent out an e-mail announcing the campaign July 18. It follows an earlier plea by the Council on American-Islamic Relations for state and federal hate crime investigations of a suspicious fire at the Islamic Society of Joplin, Mo.

The blaze, which did not cause major damage, was the second fire in four years at the mosque in the southwestern Missouri city, best known for its show of unity following a destructive E-5 tornado that resulted in at least 161 deaths and more than 900 injuries in May 2011.

The FBI has offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case, and released surveillance video of a man walking up to the mosque and throwing something on fire onto the roof.

Sojourners says if Christians are to be taken seriously in their advocacy for global religious liberty, they must begin in their own backyard.

"By asking the Department of Justice to investigate this attack in Joplin as a potential hate crime, Christians can send a clear message that violent attacks targeting Muslims in the United States are unacceptable and must stop," says a statement on the Sojourners website.

The American Civil Liberties Union has tracked dozen of attacks on American mosques during the last five years, enough to display on an interactive map on the ACLU website.

"We've seen a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment and anti-mosque attacks," Heather Weaver, an ACLU staff attorney told the Joplin Globe. She said such attacks were especially prominent during the debate over the Park 51 Center in New York City, the so-called "ground zero mosque."

Weaver said it was particularly disturbing that the Joplin incident took place on Independence Day. "I think it's especially troubling," she said. "On Independence Day, we should be celebrating all of our freedoms, including freedom of religion."

The Sojourners petition calls on the federal government to investigate the Joplin incident as a possible hate crime, "devoting to this investigation the attention and resources warranted by the offensive nature of the attack."

Associated Baptist Press, 18 July 2012

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One of the slides from a presentation that was merely intended to 'stimulate discussion'Poor judgment and poor oversight led to the teaching of anti-Islamic material at a military school for officers, the Pentagon said Wednesday

Though an Army lieutenant colonel who taught the class has been relieved of his teaching duties, investigators recommended reviewing the actions of two civilian officials at the school to see if they also should face discipline, the Defense Department said in a statement. A second military officer will receive counseling.

Materials in a course for military officers at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., portrayed the U.S. as at war with Islam. That's an idea counter to repeated assertions by U.S. officials that the war being fought by America is one against terrorists.

Some of the material suggested the U.S. ultimately might have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia without regard for civilian deaths, following World War II precedents of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Japan, or the allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany.

The teacher, Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley, also suggested that the Geneva Convention, which guides behavior toward prisoners, was "no longer relevant" and that Muslims "hate everything you stand for."

The Pentagon suspended the course in late April when a student objected to the material. The FBI also changed some agent training last year after discovering that its curriculum, too, was critical of Islam.

The new findings come from a report sought by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey. He had ordered all service branches to review their training to ensure that other courses don't use anti-Islamic material and that procedures are in place to screen course content. The report itself has not been released, but the conclusions were described by Dempsey's spokesman, Marine Col. Dave Lapan, in a written statement to the media and later in a conversation with Pentagon reporters.

Lapan said the intent of the inflammatory material was to be provocative – "to be something to stimulate discussion and challenge people's beliefs and generate academic discussion," he said. But briefing slides used in the class, for instance, did not explain that. "The flaw was that it didn't clearly define that it was meant to be provocative," Lapan said.

Associated Press, 20 June 2012

See also "Military instructor suspended over Islam course", Reuters, 20 June 2012

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A Reformist priest from a tiny Bernese village is under investigation by church leaders after it emerged that she helped run a fanatical anti-Islamic website.

The Council of Reformist Churches for Bern, Solothurn and Jura has criticised the priest, and declared her activities on website 'Politically Incorrect' to be "incompatible" with her position as a priest due to the "Islam-baiting" that takes place on it, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported.

The priest has been involved for a long time with the Politically Incorrect forum, a website frequented mainly by Germans, and has been operating clandestinely, the newspaper reported.

It has been alleged that the priest has been funding the website herself, the Tages Anzeiger reported. The prosecutor also believes it possible that she has been contributing some of the racist content, albeit under pseudonyms.

The Council had already warned the priest previously for her participation at extreme-right Islamophobic events in Germany. Having reviewed the content of the website, the Council described the articles posted there as "inflammatory and derogatory".

The priest is now accused of breaching anti-racism laws and of failing to prevent criminal acts. Despite the accusations, she has still been permitted by her immediate superiors to continue to preach in the village.

The Local, 25 May 2012

The pastor's name is Christine Dietrich and far from "operating clandestinely" she has been publicly involved with Politically Incorrect for a number of years. Indeed, in 2009 she featured in a TV interview on Russia Today as a spokesperson for PI.

In January this year PI reported that Dietrich had severed her links with the the hate site after mounting criticism of her role had forced her church to take action. An investigation into Dietrich by the church synod had reportedly found "no proof of islamophobic statements or writings by the pastor". Yet Dietrich's colleague Michael Stürzenberger openly admitted that she had written for PI for years "against the misogyny of Islam, its affinity for violence, its legitimization of murder as well as its totalitarian claim to power".

Perhaps the reference in The Local's report to Dietrich "operating clandestinely" refers to her continuing involvement with PI since January.

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