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The bangle at the centre of Sarika Watkins-Singh's case may be smaller than a
watchstrap, but head teachers will fear confrontations over much more
ostentatious religious symbols.
Organisations that applied for funding, such as Action 4 Youth,
Buckinghamshire New University and Wycombe Race Equality Council, were
asked to take into account four different themes. These included working with children and young people between five
and 15 years old, strengthening participation and leadership in the
community, developing inter-community and inter-faith co-operation, and
working with vulnerable groups such as short term offenders.
On the surface, the proceedings unfolding inside a makeshift courthouse
on a hill here resemble an American trial. A judge wearing a black robe
presides. There is a public gallery and a witness stand. Prosecutors
present witnesses, and defense lawyers cross-examine them. Objections
are made and ruled upon.
Aids activists in South Africa have dismissed as unconstitutional a
call for all Muslim couples to have a compulsory HIV test before
marriage.
At 18, newly graduated from high school, Yasmine knew the drill all too well.
A few years earlier, an immigration officer had demanded she present a visa to
board a flight from Canada to her home in Arizona.
It was as if, because she had dark skin and a Pakistani surname and was
Muslim, she, an American citizen, still needed permission to enter her
own country.
In continued engagement with the highest levels of the U.S. Government, SALDEF
met with FBI Director Robert Mueller to discuss issues affecting the Sikh American
community.
The Sikh community continues to feel misunderstood, noting a belief
among some non-Sikhs that Sikhs are terrorists. Two years ago, another
Sikh student from Queens was called "Osama" and teased. Others have had their
hair cut off by angry classmates.
Right-wing British-Muslim groups have accused the government of
interfering in the community’s religious affairs and trying to create a
“state-sponsored” version of Islam by planning to set up a board of
leading Islamic theologians to advise Muslims on issues like wearing
the veil.
With the prospect of the U.S. Department of Justice passing new
guidelines for targeting suspects based partly on ethnicity looming,
Arab community leaders are concerned about the possibility of unfair
treatment.
A galaxy of eminent Sikh men and women were honored for their
contribution to society in general and the Sikh community in particular
by the Sikh Council on Religion and Education (SCORE), a U.S-based NGO
for the promotion and preservation of Sikh culture, here on July 6.
Muslim- and Arab-Americans represent 4 percent of the vote
in Michigan, a battleground in this year's election. Yet Obama,
who has held 13 events in the state during the presidential
campaign, hasn't visited a
mosque or met with Muslim leaders.
In the latest clash between religion and secular tradition in France, a
court has denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman on the grounds that
she practices a radical form of Islam that prevented her from
assimilating French culture.
Sikhs organised a successful lobby in the UK Parliament titled: Proud to be Sikh
– Make the Sikh voice heard.
Mayor of Philadelphia adds diversity to the city's Human Rights Commission, including
the first Muslim-American commissioner.
A Sikh worker is headed home to the United Kingdom after he was ordered
off a job site in Alberta for refusing to shave his beard.
The prosecution dropped charges against Sachdev Singh, 47-year-old
truck driver, for wearing kirpan (a blade that is carried by the Sikhs
as an article of faith), after meeting him with UNITED SIKHS attorney
Jaspreet Singh, at the State of Connecticut Superior Court, Stamford,
CT, USA on Monday.
A local landowner who wants to sell property to a Muslim group is taking legal
action against the town, claiming religious discrimination and civil rights violations
in denying him the right to sell to the Muslim group.
Two retired generals were jailed Sunday in connection with a suspected
plot to topple Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government, the state-run
Anatolia news agency reported.
Chandigarh (PTI): Singer Rabi Shergill and environmentalist Balbir Singh Seechewal
were among those honoured on Sunday by a US-based Sikh organisation for creating
positive image of the Sikh community and being role models.
After the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, New York taxi drivers —
most of them immigrants, many from predominantly Muslim countries —
flew American flags in numbers not seen before or since.
The Sikh Religious Society of Chicago hosted an open house on June 14 for the
Palatine neighborhood non-Sikh community.
Protesting two recent attacks against Sikh public school students, hundreds of
Sikhs, in an action organized by the Sikh Coalition and the victims’ parents,
marched through Richmond Hill, the heart of the Sikh community in New York
Britain’s most senior Muslim and Asian police officer will sue the force for
racial discrimination and victimization.
When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from
California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a
long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and
diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he
has not returned their embrace.
A decision by Barack Obama's campaign to ban two Muslim women in headscarves
from appearing behind him in photographs and on TV has taken the shine off his
promise to transcend racial politics and embrace multicultural America.
A teenage girl who was banned from school after wearing a steel bangle
that she says is pivotal to her Sikh faith has taken her case to the
high court today.
The government's human rights watchdog last night served notice that it will
immediately launch a legal challenge to the government's plan to extend the pre-charge
detention limit to 42 days if it reaches the statute book.
A victim's forgiveness and a defendant's remorse led a King County
Superior Court judge to be lenient Friday when she sentenced a
construction worker who attacked a Sikh taxi driver last year.
American Muslims wait to see if the pope will reach out to them.
One key community - the nearly 500,000 Arab Americans (or 5 percent
of the total population) estimated by the Arab American Institute to
live in Michigan - has been virtually ignored, exacerbating feelings of
alienation and frustration.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) 11th annual report, titled
"Presumption of Guilt," on the status of Muslim civil rights in the United
States.
A new federal policy that subjects travelers who wear any type of head
covering to possible additional screening at airport checkpoints has
prompted vociferous protests from Sikh organizations, who say they are
being singled out for ethnic profiling.
Unlike Muslim minorities in many European countries, U.S. Muslims are
highly assimilated, close to parity with other Americans in income and
overwhelmingly opposed to Islamic extremism, according to the first
major, nationwide random survey of Muslims.
A teenager was charged with felony hate crimes yesterday, a day after
he forced a 15-year-old Sikh schoolmate into a boys’ bathroom in
Queens, tore off his turban and sheared his hair, the authorities said.
Internal rivalries echoing those that beset the Arab world, along with
the general electorate’s lingering unease about Muslims, combined to
derail what many here had hoped would be the chance to prove that
Arab-Americans had arrived politically — at least in Dearborn, their
unofficial capital in this country.
On Monday, September 18, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) held
a news conference in the nation's capital to release its 11th annual report, titled
"The Struggle for Equality," on the status of Muslim civil rights in the United
States.
After Londonistan, New York Times Magazine, 6/25/06
"Behold!" reads an official police notice on the waiting-room wall at the Bethnal
Green police station, in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets. "Fear from
people should not prevent one from saying the truth if he knows it." It is a hadith
saying of the Prophet Muhammad, stuck amid a row of posters urging Britons to
do their civic duty and report any crimes they might get wind of...
Canadian Muslims urged to keep eye on extremism, USA Today, 6/16/2006
Some Canadian Muslim leaders are urging a crackdown on extremists within their
community two weeks after 17 males, including five teenagers, were arrested in
suburban Toronto on terrorism-related charges.
Citizens, The New Yorker, 6/5/06
In a world amply populated with angry young Muslims, it is question of some interest
why a small number choose to become suicide bombers.
Juror claims she was pressured to convict Lodi terror suspect, Associated Press, 4/28/06
Defense attorneys for a Lodi, California man convicted on terrorism-related charges
this week are asking for a new trial after one of the jurors in the case gave
a sworn statement saying she was pressured into finding him guilty. In a motion
filed in federal court late Thursday, attorney Wazhma Mojaddidi argued for that
Hamid Hayat should be retried based on the affidavit of Arcelia Lopez. "I was
under so much stress and pressure (from the other jurors) that I agreed to change
my vote," Lopez, of Sacramento, said in her statement. "I never once throughout
the deliberation process and the reading of the verdict believed Hamid Hayat to
be guilty."
FBI asked to look into vandalism at Muslim home as hate crime, Associated Press, 4/28/06
A national Islamic civil-rights group is asking the FBI to investigate vandalism
at a Muslim home in suburban Atlanta as a hate crime.The Douglas County family's
van was burned and the words "Killers go home" spray-painted on the side of their
house on April 8. The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington said
local authorities had been slow to investigate the crime.But Douglas County Chief
Deputy Stan Copeland said evidence from the scene has been submitted to the state
crime lab and that police patrols in the neighborhood have been stepped up as
investigators seek new leads.
Dr. Wafa Sultan, a relatively unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist, has attracted
international attention by rattling the cages of Islamic fundamentalism in a February
21 interview that aired in Arabic on Al-Jezeera TV. The essays on Annaged prompted Arab-language Al-Jezeera TV to invite Sultan to
a live debate with Egyptian cleric Ibrahim Al-Khouli last July. In that encounter,
Sultan condemned the religious teachings that encourage young Muslims to commit
suicide in the name of God. Sultan has drawn praise from Islamic reformers for
expressing out loud, and to a wide audience, opinions that many Muslims fear to
express even in private, reports Broder.
US Student Editor Fired for Anti-Muslim Cartoons, The Associated Press, 3/17/06
The editor who chose to publish in a student-run university newspaper six of
the cartoons that caused violence in the Islamic world has been fired, the publisher
of the newspaper announced. Acton H. Gorton and his opinions page editor, Chuck
Prochaska, were suspended from The Daily Illini at the University of Illinois
with pay days after the Feb. 9 publication of the cartoons, which first appeared
in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Daily Illini publishers said at the time
that the action was taken not for publishing the cartoons but for failing to discuss
it with others in the newsroom first.
"Muslim scholars from the United States and Canada have issued a 'fatwa' against
terrorism. While many American Muslim groups have repeatedly condemned acts of
religious extremism, the new edict carries the weight of an official judicial
ruling. The fatwa comes from the 18-member Fiqh Council of North America, the
group of Islamic scholars that decides judicial issues for Muslims." The edict
says all acts of terrorism targeting civilians are forbidden; that Muslims are
forbidden to cooperate with any individual or group involved in terrorism or violence;
and that Muslims have a duty to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to
protect the public.
ACLU Sues to Let Muslim Scholar Enter U.S., Washington Post, 1/26/06
Tariq Ramadan, a leading Muslim scholar who opposes the war in Iraq, has filed
a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government. He claims that "officials used
anti-terrorism laws to stop him from accepting speaking invitations from organizations." According to Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU staff attorney, Mr. Ramadan's visa was revoked
in August 2004 under the Patriot Act, and he was thereby blocked from accepting
a tenured position at the University of Notre Dame. Other plaintiffs include
the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors
and the PEN American Center, organizations which had invited Ramadan to speak
in the U.S.
F.B.I. Tries to Dispel Surveillance Concerns, Gadsden Times, 1/12/06
"F.B.I. officials met with Muslim and Arab-American leaders on Wednesday, in
an effort to dispel anger and concern over the bureau's secret monitoring of radiation
levels at Muslim sites around the country... Leaders of Muslim and Arab-American groups requested the meeting after the program
was disclosed last month by U.S. News & World Report. The nationwide surveillance
program included air monitoring of more than 100 private properties in the Washington
area. The controversy over the surveillance program comes after the F.B.I. cancelled
financing for a bureau-wide training initiative intended to improve outreach to
Muslim and Arab Americans. Group leaders say the news about the radiation monitoring
makes such a program all the more crucial."
During Friday prayers soon after the 9/11 attacks, Imam Mohamed Magid told his
congregation at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society: "There's no way you can be
a quarter-citizen in this country. You have to be a full citizen and defend it." TIME
spent two weeks following Virginia-based Magid, as "he raced from prayer to prayer,
meeting to meeting, in the strange new world of American Muslim ministry." TIME
explored the precarious "balancing act" of Magid, who serves as "an intermediary"
between congregants, the FBI and law enforcement, while remaining receptive to
the concerns of his community.
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