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Source: The Scoop Blog – May 27, 2016

By James Ragland

Something remarkable is happening in Irving, a city that, for the better part of a year, clumsily became a tinderbox for anti-Muslim madness.

This is the town where Ahmed Mohamed, the “clock boy,” gained notoriety last fall for bringing a homemade project to school.

Time flies when you’re facing cultural bias and religious persecution.

Over the past 15 months, since Mayor Beth Van Duyne began stoking fears that Muslims were setting up a Shariah law court at an Irving mosque, the Muslim community hasn’t just turned the other cheek — it has rolled up its sleeves and gone to work.

We noted last year that Muslims, who have generally refrained from city politics, had begun organizing get-out-the-vote drives and showing up in record numbers at the polls.

But then, in what seems like a script straight out of Hollywood, an Irving City Council race that hung in the balance this month was settled by a single vote — a provisional ballot cast by a Muslim voter.

Allan Meagher, the Place 2 incumbent who has stood against the town’s foolish, anti-Muslim fervor, found himself with exactly 50 percent of the vote against two challengers.

He needed only one more vote to avoid a June runoff that would have cost the city $70,000 and forced him to dig deeper into his campaign chest.

One man — a disabled Muslim in his 20s who’d gotten his mother to drive him to the polls on Election Day — made the difference. When he got to the polls, he was told that his ID had expired, so he cast what’s called a provisional ballot.

That means the only way he could secure his vote was by returning within days of the election with a valid ID. After hearing on the news that Meagher needed one more vote, the man’s family drove him to the courthouse to put the finishing touch on the race.

“It changed the election,” said Meagher, a UPS manager. “I did hear that the provisional vote was a Muslim voter and I’d like to meet him.”

But here’s the rub: What would rightfully be a gleeful moment for any other voter is one the young man — and Muslim community leaders — are hesitant to gloat about for fear of a backlash.

“It’s definitely a pride for the community,” said Yasir Arafat, a 32-year-old electrical engineer and leader of the Good Citizen Committee that has organized voter registration drives.

“But we care not just about our community, we care about the whole community of Irving,” he said.

More pointedly, what the Muslim community doesn’t want is to be further isolated or stigmatized by flexing its political muscle.

Which is why celebrating this milestone — and the record number of Muslim voters — gets tricky.

Arafat said he’d rather focus attention on the idea that everybody’s vote counts, and that this one particular vote saved taxpayers at least $70,000 — which, he pointed out, could be used to build a road, pay for a police officer or provide medical services.

He said he wants the Muslim community to get more engaged in civic affairs, including voting, to help Irving grow and prosper.

“This is how we can make this city an international city,” he said. “We have so many religions, nationalities and cultures in our city. We can work together and learn to respect each other and our differences. That’s something I believe in.”

For a religious community that has faced so much open hostility — including bomb threats at its mosques and Islamic Center, which houses a school of several hundred children — you can’t ask for a more graceful, democratic response.

“It’s a great testament to the community that it responded the way it did,” said former Irving Mayor Herbert Gears. “We do have a really diverse population out here, and the politicians must learn that they’ve got to treat people respectfully or there will be a consequence at the ballot box.”

Those who keep tabs on voter rolls say the number of Muslim voters has jumped from about 150 two years ago to over 800 in the May 7 election. Of the city’s 92,000 registered voters, about 3,800 — slightly more than 4 percent — identify as Muslims.

But they made up nearly 18 percent of the ballots cast in an election where the turnout was low.

“Seeing this is an amazing improvement for the community,” Arafat said. “Muslims are a democratic people, and we just want to make sure we are engaged in the political process.”

Anthony Bond, a longtime community activist, said he sees what happened in the last election as a sign that “the tide has turned in Irving.”

“There are people here fearful of Muslims because they don’t know any,” he said. “But we’re all in this boat together, and that boat is called America. We’re all going to float or sink together; that’s the whole issue. We can’t let our disagreements sink the boat.”

Source: The Bridge Initiative – May 24, 2016

Amid rising hate crimes and prejudicial political rhetoric, religious leaders are speaking out against Islamophobia. But these calls to reject anti-Muslim bias aren’t just coming from the Muslim community. Jews, Christians, atheists, and others are taking concrete steps to raise awareness and challenge prejudice in their own communities and around the country.

SPEAKING OUT AND STANDING TOGETHER

In recent months across the country, it has become increasingly common to see a hodgepodge of yarmulkes, priestly collars, and flowing robes huddled around a podium and doused in the light of news cameras. Many of these displays of solidarity with American Muslims in Washington, D.C. have been organized by Shoulder-to-Shoulder, a coalition of religious denominations and groups wants people of faith to see Islamophobia as a “religious freedom” issue. In October 2015, they urged religious leaders and ordinary Americans to sign a pledge to “defend the freedom of conscience and religion of all individuals by rejecting and speaking out, without reservation, against bigotry…”

Shoulder to Shoulder is just one of many religious groups going public about Islamophobia. Sojourners, the Christian organization and magazine, has used its platform to draw attention to the problem of anti-Muslim prejudice (and howChristians can do something about it.) Both Sojourners and Shoulder to Shoulder were behind anti-Islamophobia ad campaigns, too — back when Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s group, AFDI, put up their own Islamophobic signs in subways across the U.S.

Interfaith Action for Human Rights, a D.C.-based organization led by Rabbi Chuck Feinberg, sells banners that congregations can display outside their houses of worship. They read “Honor God — say no to anti-Muslim bigotry” and “We stand with our Muslim neighbors.” In Austin, Texas, several churches and synagogues have put these signs up as a visible sign of solidarity.

During the Jewish observant of Hanukkah in 2015—which fell during a surge in anti-Muslim violence in the U.S.—Jewish Voice for Peace launched an anti-Islamophobia initiative and hosted vigils and demonstrations in U.S. cities.

Other shows of support have had a distinctly local flavor. In Nashville, Tennessee, Rev. Josh Graves, the lead pastor at Otter Creek Church, has used his megachurch’s venue to educate his congregation and provide an opportunity for church-goers to meet Muslims. After Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims in December 2015, the interfaith group in St. Louis sent letters of support to every area mosque.

SUPPORTING LEGISLATION AND PUSHING POLITICIANS

Given that Islamophobia has become a wedge issue in elections — particularly in the 2016 presidential campaign — these interfaith efforts have also gotten political. In 2016, Shoulder to Shoulder called on both the Democratic and Republican National Committees to reject Islamophobia in their party platforms. And in response to Donald Trump’s Muslim ban idea, a broader coalition of faith and non-faith groups pushed for a bill that would make that kind of religious test for immigrants illegal.

Religious leaders — like Archbishop Joseph Tobin of Indianapolis — have also defied the orders of state governors, who in late 2015 didn’t want their states to resettle Syrian and Muslim refugees. Religious congregations around the country have supported Syrian Muslim families who have fled violence to the U.S.

SHARING MEALS

Another way religious people are combating Islamophobia is through the stomach. Houses of worship and private citizens will hold hundreds of iftars — or fast breaking meals — for Muslims around the country during the Islamic month of Ramadan (this year in June and July.) One platform for organizing these dinners — Se7en Fast — urges participants to also undertake the fast and donate money to charity. Some communities, like one in Nashville, host interfaith meals throughout the year. In a recent interview with Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, Pastor Josh Graves said of these meals:

“The stereotypes lose their power because they’re replaced by true, authentic relationships. It’s very hard for people to care about people they don’t know.”

Source: KTIC – June 4, 2016

By ABC News Radio

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was the first of the presidential candidates to express his condolences over the death of boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

“Muhammad Ali is dead at 74! A truly great champion and a wonderful guy. He will be missed by all!” Trump tweeted shortly after the news broke.

But just a few months before his death, Ali, who was Muslim, had some pointed words in response to Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States if he were elected president this November.

In a statement titled, “Presidential Candidates Proposing to Ban Muslim Immigration to the United States” that Ali issued last December after Trump first floated the proposal, the boxing great never mentioned Trump by name – but his message was clear.

“Our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam,” Ali wrote, “and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.”

The “murderers” he was referring to where the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and other incidents carried out by violent Islamic extremists.

Last month, Trump asserted that the proposed Muslim ban was “just a suggestion.”

Ali received praise on Saturday from leaders with The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group.

“Muhammad Ali, a man who stood by his principles despite criticism and hardship, exemplified a true patriot and a true Muslim,” the organization’s National Board Chair Roula Allouch said in a statement. “His strength, courage and love of humanity has been, and will continue to be, an inspiration to people of all faiths and backgrounds in America and worldwide.”

Here is Ali’s full statement from last December:

“I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.

“We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. They have alienated many from learning about Islam. True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody.

“Speaking as someone who has never been accused of political correctness, I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.”

Source: Anadolu Agency – May 31, 2016

By Esra Kaymak Avci

American Muslims are involved in this year’s presidential elections in greater numbers than in years past because of heightened Islamophobic rhetoric, the head of a voter education and advocacy group told Anadolu Agency.

“Definitely this year we are very, very active,” Naji Almontaser, who runs the York Muslim Voter and Information Club, said during the Convention of the Islamic Circle of North America-Muslim American Society, that was held in Baltimore, Maryland.

“If you take the last 10 years, I would say this year would accumulate the other 10. Everyone is on board.”

Much of the anti-Islamic language is being fueled by real estate developer Donald Trump — the sole remaining Republican candidate in the race.

He has called for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., claimed that Islam has “tremendous hatred” for the West and accused American Muslims of celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.

“This year we are more active, because you have people like Trump who are talking negative about everybody,” Almontaser said.

“At the end of the day we want people to recognize that they have the power to vote one person in or to vote one person out.”

With a population of about 3.3 million Muslims in the country, an umbrella group — the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations — has launched a One America Campaign to empower Muslims and it seeks to get 1 million Muslims to the polls.

“We really want to make a change because for many years the Muslim ummah, or Muslim community, of America has been very silent about voting and not very pro-active,” Almontaser said.

Muslims groups in the U.S. have launched voter registration drives in an effort to ensure Islamophobia is rejected at the polls.

According to a recent survey by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — the country’s largest Islamic civil rights group — 73 percent of registered Muslim voters in six states said they would vote in primary elections.

In congressional election two years ago, 69 percent of Muslim voters in California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas and Virginia said they would vote, according to a CAIR survey.

The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations has found growing Islamophobia to be the most important issue for Muslim voters in 2016. It was listed as third in the group’s 2014 survey.