QUEENS, New York (February 18, 2013) –ICNA’s annual General Assembly meeting was held this year from January 26th -27th in Queens, NY. Members from all over the country gathered to review the work of ICNA and its entities. ICNA’s newly elected president Mr. Naeem Baig was sworn in for the term 2013-2014.

2012 proved to be a year of significant growth for the Islamic Circle of North America, as detailed in reports compiled by the national grassroots organization. Based on “ICNA Vision 2020,” a 10-year visionary plan for the growth of ICNA, the report covers progress made by branches of ICNA over the past four years. The report also discusses new initiatives undertaken by ICNA that align with the strategic goals of ICNA Vision 2020.
 

Highlights from “A Steady Growth of Fulfilling ICNA Vision 2020” include

•Increased Tarbiyah/educational initiatives: All branches of ICNA worked together to organize four leadership family retreats, which attracted about 1,500 individuals across the country. ICNA’s Islamic Learning Foundation also produced more classes, both on-site and online. 11 classes were held onsite in cities such as Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City and San Antonio; over 1,300 people attended these lectures. 6 classes were held online, attracting less than 1,000 students.
•Increase in MGAs: Between 2009 and 2012 there was a net increase of 67 MGAs. The organization now has 455 MGAs and over 5,000 members.
•Better communication throughout ICNA: ICNA maintained better channels of communication at the national level and between national and local levels in 2012. The Central Shura met 17 times (14 phone conferences and three physical meetings), while the HQ/Secretariat met over 28 times (25+ phone conferences, three physical meetings). ICNA’s most attended General Assembly Meeting was held in Dallas in 2012, with 167 MGAs in attendance. The Central leadership also increased its trips, making 95 visits to 35 places in the past year alone. In addition, 6 issues of Working Together, ICNA’s newsletter on unit activities, were sent out to about 2,500 subscribers in 2012.

•Expanded Dawah activity: ICNA’s Dawah Department continued outreach through billboards, publications, Dawah booths, television ads and initiatives by WhyIslam, GainPeace and Message Magazine as well as individual ICNA chapters. Dawah in Spanish was a top priority last year; a successful Spanish language session was held at the ICNA Convention, an annual Spanish Dawah booth at the Cinqo de Mayo Festival was held in LA, and a Dawah team was established in Mexico City. The Dawah Department also collaborated with NHIEC at the 10th Annual Hispanic Muslim Day in NJ, marched for the 2nd year in a row at the Union City Hispanic Day Parade with Radio Islamico.
•Growth in Message Magazine: From 2009 to 2012, Message Magazine’s circulation numbers increased from 50,000 to approximately 200,000. The magazine’s content grew as well, with 50 writers producing nearly 80 articles for Message Magazine in 2012.
•Expansion of social services: ICNA Relief’s services covered health services and mobile clinics, women’s shelters, food pantries, the Mercy on Wheels project, the Back to School Giveaway, and disaster services. In 2012, ICNA Relief worked especially hard on disaster relief following Hurricane Sandy.
•Increased youth activity: ICNA and YM co-hosted several youth conferences nationwide, reaching about 15,000 people through these events. ICNA also organized two youth summits for brothers and sisters. The number of youth study circles and NeighborNets doubled, while YM’s social media presence also significantly increased in the past year.
•Increase in ICNA’s physical acquisitions/properties: ICNA purchased four new properties (Houston, Atlanta, New York City and Southern California), bringing the total amount of ICNA’s properties to 30. This number doubled in size from 2008, when ICNA had 15 physical properties across the United States. ICNA’s headquarters in Jamaica, NY was also renovated and expanded.

•Successful conventions and annual events: Over 15,000 people attended last year’s annual national convention, a three-fold increase since 2005. The convention and the parallel youth conference was also streamed online to 11,000 viewers.
•Growth in revenue: ICNA’s overall financial worth grew 3 times in the past four years.
 

ICNA launched various new initiatives in recent years to work towards the goals outlined in “ICNA 2020.”

•ICNA Council for Social Justice: The ICSJ established a permanent office in the nation’s capital and worked to develop a strong relationship with major civil rights, social justice, interfaith, Muslim and other political groups in DC. ICSJ also led the Campaign on Hunger and the Understanding Shariah campaign.

•ICNA Social Media and IT Dept.: ICNA developed its IT Department and focused on revamping its online presence on icna.org, social media platforms and through its eNewsletter. In 2012, 30 national eNewsletters were sent out to over 80,000 subscribers. The IT Department also worked to build better online presence for several ICNA entities and chapters. ICNA’s channel on YouTube crossed 2 Million views while its Facebook and Twitter profiles doubled in just the last year.



•Muslim Family Day: Approximately 42,000 people attended Muslim Family Day, which was was held in LA, the Bay Area, Dallas, New Jersey, Chicago, Atlanta, Maryland, Boston, Buffalo, and Albany in 2012.
•National Campaigns: ICNA launched the Defending Religious Freedom, Understanding Shariah campaign and worked with a PR firm to engage mainstream national media and gain coverage in outlets such as Reuters, CNN, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, PBS, and NPR. Two issues of Message Magazine and one issue of Noor Magazine were dedicated to the campaign; a national website and hotline were also launched for the campaign. Apart from this ICNA also launched the national campaign “Save family, Save Society” in 2009 and “United Against Hunger, Standing Up for Justice” in 2010.

Mr. Naeem Baig, said “Let us all build a bond of brotherhood and strengthen our relationships with one another. ICNA is committed to working together with all Muslim organizations and masajid. We do not represent any one ethnicity or follow any particular sect. We are an organization of American Muslims and we have made a commitment to work for the betterment of all people. I invite you to join ICNA and I assure you that, inshaAllah, you will not find yourself in the company of strangers.” Read the complete address here.

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A two-year inquiry into multiculturalism in Australia has found overwhelming concerns on Muslims and their faith.

It found that out of 513 submissions to the inquiry, 212 raised concerns about or discussed the question of Islam in Australia.

Some 113 submissions objected to the possible introduction of legal pluralism to accommodate the requirements of Islamic Shari`ah.

A two-year inquiry into multiculturalism in Australia has found overwhelming concerns on Muslims and their faith.
It found that out of 513 submissions to the inquiry, 212 raised concerns about or discussed the question of Islam in Australia.
Some 113 submissions objected to the possible introduction of legal pluralism to accommodate the requirements of Islamic Shari`ah.

OnIslam report

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The All Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community has expressed concern regarding high levels of Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi female unemployment in its new report on the issue. The report follows a five month inquiry.

The report and inquiry was written and undertaken in partnership with the Runnymede Trust, which acts a secretariat for the group.

It argues that discrimination is present at every level of the recruitment process, and cites examples of women changing their names or removing religious dress, such as the hijab, for job interviews.

The report, accompanying short film and evidence submitted is available here.

The press release is available here.

For more information contact Vicki Butler, who wrote the report on behalf of the APPG: vicki@runnymedetrust.org / 020 7377 9222

Runnymede Trust news report, 7 December 2012

See also "Ethnic minority women face jobs crisis", Guardian, 7 December 2012

And "Women 'remove hijabs to get work' as ethnic minorities face more discrimination", Daily Telegraph, 7 December 2012.

The APPG report states: "Muslim women who wear the hijab reported discrimination and women of all three ethnic groups reported questions asked about intentions regarding marriage and children. This was often tied to assumptions based on ethnicity – for example it was assumed that Muslim women would want to stop work after having children."

The report says that Zamila Bunglawala, author of Valuing Family, Valuing Work: British Muslim Women and the Labour Market, highlighted some of her own research during the inquiry, which found that some Muslim women who removed their hijab for interviews were successful in getting a job, having worn their hijab to previous interviews and being unsuccessful.

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets also cited evidence from the Equality and Human Rights Commission which found that 1 in 5 Bangladeshi women under 35 experienced negative comments about wearing religious dress.

The report backs this up with oral evidence: "A group of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in Oldham mentioned a number of friends and relatives who wear hijab who have found it particularly difficult to find jobs. For some of the older women, discrimination towards hijab wearers was met with a grudging acceptance, with one woman stating that she decided to stop wearing the hijab many years ago in order to help her get a job."

One of the women interviewed spoke about how a friend who is a recent first class graduate from a Russell Group university has struggled to find work and believes that her "decision to wear the hijab is restricting her from getting a job". She added that because her friend experiences a bad reception at interviews she has even considered "taking the hijab off" while looking for a job and then "putting it back on once she has found employment". The same young woman has been successful obtaining work where she has not required a face-to-face interview, such as marking exam papers.

A Pakistani woman in Oldham is quoted as saying about a friend: "From her appearance you can not tell she is a Muslim, but she has a Muslim name and when she mentions her name [to employers] that's it – they back off."

For Muslim women, convincing employers to allow time in the day for Muslim prayer was cited as a difficulty and lack of attendance at work social occasions in pubs was argued by some witnesses as being a disadvantage for future job prospects within an organisation.

The report states: "Yvonne Coghill from the NHS highlighted how not drinking alcohol and not entering pubs can limit opportunities for Muslim women, as it means they are not 'part of the mix' at work network events. This could make them be seen as outsiders and thus more vulnerable to redundancy. Whilst Coghill suggested Muslim women should consider going along to these events even if they do not drink at them, Noor Ali from Morrisons argued that Muslims should not feel as if they should enter pubs to further their career as this is not allowed under their religion. She added that it is more important to change other people's views of Muslim culture, which has been her approach."

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A man launched a drunken attack on a mosque after watching a news report about the desecration of Commonwealth graves in Libya.

Barry Stanbury, 42, was caught on CCTV cameras at shortly before 2.30am on March 5, wandering around the Exeter Mosque before a window was smashed, Exeter magistrates heard.

The court was told Stanbury was wearing "a distinctive hoodie" with a logo of a large cross on it, and a police officer recognised the defendant.

Clifford Howard, prosecuting, said: "The criminal damage occurred at the Exeter Mosque at 2.23am. We have the precise time because it was caught on CCTV."

When interviewed Stanbury said he was "so drunk he did not remember doing it".

Mr Howard said he told police his motive for carrying out the religiously aggravated criminal damage was seeing on the news that Commonwealth graves had been desecrated in Libya.

Stanbury, of Laxton Avenue, Exeter, denied racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage at the mosque but was convicted after a trial. Magistrates sentenced him to 80 hours unpaid work, £100 compensation and pay £150 costs.

Exeter Express and Echo, 1 November 2012

Via ENGAGE

The claim that Stanbury's attack was suddenly triggered by a news report is clearly nonsense. A glance at his Facebook page confirms that he is a member of the English Defence League (its Kingston-upon-Thames division, as he now lives in Reading) and his list of "likes" includes virtually every far-right organisation in existence, from the British National Party to the National Front.

Following the EDL's Luton demonstration in May this year, Stanbury commented that he was "fed up with peaceful protest". As support for the EDL's street protests continues to shrink, it can be anticipated that more disgruntled members like Stanbury will turn to direct acts of violence against the Muslim community.

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ENGAGE draws our attention to a short notice that appeared in Sunday's Observer:

Our coverage last week of Faith in the Public Square, a forthcoming book by the archbishop of Canterbury (News), contained this quote, supplied to us by the publishers: "To suggest that the Muslim owes an overriding loyalty to the international Muslim community (the Umma) is extremely worrying. Muslims must make clear that their loyalty is straightforward modern political loyalty to the nation state." This is a representation of a view that the archbishop does not hold. It was drawn from a lecture he gave in October 2004 in which he went on to deconstruct the argument, maintaining that religious loyalty and political loyalty should not be seen as being in direct competition.

As we noted at the time, this wasn't the only error in the Observer report. It also claimed that Rowan Williams had argued that "the Labour party was wrong in 2006 to make incitement to religious hatred a criminal offence" and that "disproportionate attention was being given to a hyper-sensitive minority". In fact the archbishop broadly supported the Racial and Religious Hatred Act and the quote that included the phrase about "a hyper-sensitive minority" was a reference to criticisms made by opponents of the legislation – it certainly didn't represent Williams' own view.

The Observer also quoted Williams as stating: "Some anti-Muslim images or words (foolish and insulting as they may be) may well exhibit courage in a world where terrorist violence reaches across every national boundary." But this sentence appears as a qualifying comment at the end of a passage in which Williams makes the opposite case, namely that Western critics who abuse and insult a minority faith like Islam are not (as they like to portray themselves) a brave and persecuted minority engaged a heroic Voltairean struggle against a powerful enemy. Williams cites as an example the controversy over the Jyllands-Posten anti-Islam cartoons, noting that "the Muslim community in Denmark is neither large nor militant, yet the cartoon issue was framed as if these products were a sign of courageous defiance towards a hegemonic power".

In fact the authors of the report – the Observer's political editor Toby Helm and its assisant news editor Julian Coman – hardly got anything right. Even the main claim in their story, that Williams had launched a new and unprecedentedly harsh attack on David Cameron's "big society" policy, was wrong – the criticisms they quoted were from a lecture Williams gave back in March 2011. However, you suspect it was hardly accidental that the aspects of Rowan Williams' thinking that were systematically misrepresented in the article all related to his views on Muslims.

The Observer's correction to the report is therefore still only partial. Furthermore, to quote ENGAGE: "Given that the original article was front page news and a full page spread in last week’s paper, does the paragraph printed on the Observer's Letters page suffice both in prominence and content by way of a retraction and apology?"

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Netpol has published a critical report into the policing of the EDL and Counter demonstrations of February 4th in Leicester. The report is a collation of the evidence and observations obtained by a team of community-based legal observers who spent the day monitoring the policing of both EDL and counter-demonstrations. The legal observers deployed were local volunteers trained by Netpol with support from The Race Equality Centre (TREC) and Highfields Centre.

The report criticises police handling of the demonstration, particularly the effort and resources the police and local authorities devoted to persuading the local community, particularly young people in the local community, not to attend counter demonstrations against the EDL. It also raises questions about the use of force, particularly the use of dog units against Muslim youth, and the restrictions on movement placed on the Muslim population, effectively making Leicester a 'no-go' area.

Val Swain of Netpol stated, "The decision by Leicestershire constabulary to persuade local communities, voluntary and faith groups and particularly young people to stay away from counter demonstrations was utterly wrong. It really cannot be the role of the police to decide who is able to demonstrate and who is not. As well as being an interference with fundamental rights to protest, it led to a policing strategy that prioritised police control of the local community, especially Muslim youth. This raised tensions, heightened anger, and in my view made conflict more, rather than less likely."

Network for Police Monitoring, 13 June 2012

See also Saqib Deshmukh, "Business as usual", Institute of Race Relations, 15 June 2012

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A review by the state Attorney General into the New York Police Department's secret surveillance operation targeting Muslim businesses and mosques in New Jersey found the NYPD did nothing wrong.

The three-month probe, ordered by Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa, concluded there was no evidence to show the NYPD's activities in the state violated New Jersey's civil or criminal laws.

"Based on what we saw, their conduct was permissible," said one of the officials involved with the review who was not at liberty to discuss the report publicly. "There was no evidence of illegal wiretaps or search and seizures. We're not seeing any seeing violations of law."

Members of the Muslim community – summoned to Trenton today to be briefed on the review – reacted to the findings with anger and disappointment.

Star-Ledger, 24 May 2012

See also "NJ Muslims angry over NYPD surveillance findings", Associated Press, 25 May 2012

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Thick bigot: Stephen Tweed of the BFPITV Anglia News has covered the controversy over the proposed conversion of a disused pub in King's Lynn into an Islamic community centre. They interview Stephen Tweed of the British Freedom Party who has been campaigning against the centre.

I'm generally against the media giving a platform to the far right – particularly to a man like Tweed who openly describes Muslims as "bearded scum" and whose profile picture on his Facebook page is a photograph of a burning mosque. However, he comes over as such a thick bigot – particularly in comparison with the personable and articulate Jahangir Azam of the West Norfolk Islamic Association – that in Tweed's case providing him with publicity almost seems justifiable.

The ITV report also features a few vox pops with local residents, who are entirely relaxed about the prospect of an Islamic community centre in the town.

(BBC Norfolk also has a report.)

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