arsalan.

Two groups are seeking answers to what they say is a growing practice of Muslim and Arab-American groups having their bank accounts closed without cause or explanation. […]

“We see a type of pattern taking place in the Muslim/Arab community,” Dawud Walid, executive director of CAIR–MI, said Wednesday. “Bank accounts are being closed with no real justification … so it appears on the surface that there could be some sort of bias involved.”

One of the latest reported incidents, according to CAIR–MI, involved Alif Arabic, a business described as teaching Arabic to American citizens online. Officials there were notified May 30 by JPMorgan Chase their bank account would be terminated within 10 days. JPMorgan Chase officials did not detail why, according to the letter.

When an Alif Arabic employee asked the bank for clarification, they were told an analytical tool “alerted them that Alif’s account could pose a possible risk,” the letter read.

Walid said such a move could suggest discrimination based on religion and ethnicity. “We need answers and the bank is not giving answers,” he said.

"Plainly, air travel safety is not what any of this is about. It is about inventing ways to punish US Muslims and deprive them of the most basic rights without so much as providing any notice, let alone any due process that would enable the secret, unknown accusations to be discovered and rebutted. And it is a very common weapon."

US Air Force veteran, finally allowed to fly into US, is now banned from flying back home

Some of you probably remember this story from November. Saadiq Long, an American citizen, had been living with his wife and two children for several years in Qatar teaching English. Despite never having been charged with a crime, Long was barred from reentering his own country when attempting to visit his seriously ill mother. After a several-month-long battle, he was removed from the no-fly list without explanation. 

His lawyers informed the FBI of when Long planned to fly back to Qatar to ensure there would be no problems, but sure enough, he was still denied a boarding pass on the day of his departure. The airline and the FBI are refusing to comment, once again leaving him with no way to know why he is on the list or how he can work towards getting back to Qatar, his job, and his family. Full story over here.

In the latest sign that President Obama’s targeted killing program may be forever shrouded in secrecy, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon has denied a Freedom of Information Request from the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times over the death of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old American-born son of former Al-Queda heavy Anwar al-Awlaki who was killed by a drone strike.

Well I, for one, am shocked.

Read the full article from The Atlantic Wire. More on the judge’s rationale at the The New York TImes.

NEW YORK — A woman who told police she shoved a man to his death off a subway platform into the path of a train because she has hated Muslims since Sept. 11 and thought he was one was charged Saturday with murder as a hate crime, prosecutors said.

Erika Menendez was charged in the death of Sunando Sen, who was crushed by a 7 train in Queens on Thursday night, the second time this month a commuter has died in such a nightmarish fashion.

WASHINGTON — Congress stripped a provision Tuesday from a defense bill that aimed to shield Americans from the possibility of being imprisoned indefinitely without trial by the military. The provision was replaced with a passage that appears to give citizens little protection from indefinite detention.

The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 was added by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), but there was no similar language in the version of the bill that passed the House, and it was dumped from the final bill released Tuesday after a conference committee from both chambers worked out a unified measure.

They were wrapped up in peaceful prayer when the man walked into the mosque and claimed he had a gun. The imam leading the prayer at the Ibrahim Khalilullah Islamic Center in Fremont told police that the Caucasian man, believed to be in his 30s, shouted that he was going to kill the four people inside.
 
It happened just before 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Islamic Center on the 43,000 block of Osgood Road, just a couple blocks away from the Fremont Fry’s location. When the imam approached the man, he reportedly drove away in a gray, 90s model Camry.

A study published by a sociologist has revealed that fear-mongering non-governmental anti-Muslim organisations have been heavily influencing US media since 9/11, their messages seeping into news articles and television reporting and drawing their ethos from the fringes, straight into the mainstream. What’s perhaps most troubling about the results is how these minor groups, which would ordinarily receive little or no air time, have gained an element of respect that has led to them receiving more funding and coupling with influential bodies. Their influence is such that they have even been able to paint mainstream Muslim organisations as radical, says the study.

“The vast majority of organisations competing to shape public discourse about Islam after the September 11 attacks delivered pro-Muslim messages, yet my study shows that journalists were so captivated by a small group of fringe organisations that they came to be perceived as mainstream,” the paper’s author, University of North Carolina assistant professor of sociology Christopher Bail, told Wired.co.uk.

“Anti-Muslim fringe organisations dominated the mass media via displays of fear and anger. Institutional amplification of this emotional energy, I argue, created a gravitational pull or ‘fringe effect’ that realigned inter-organisational networks and altered the contours of mainstream discourse itself.” […]

“We learned the American media almost completely ignored public condemnations of terrorist events by prominent Muslim organisations in the United States,” Bail told Wired.co.uk. “Inattention to these condemnations, combined with the emotional warnings of anti-fringe organisations, has created a very distorted representation of the community of advocacy organisations, think tanks, and religious groups competing to shape the representation of Islam in the American public sphere.”

There’s a good amount of other interesting information in the article; read the rest here. Bail’s study adds to a long line of research on the subject coming out of the University of North Carolina. For more on Islamophobia and its effects on homeland security and the perception of American Muslims post-9/11, see the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Last year, Walmart reportedly decided against aiding factory upgrades that could have stopped fires like last month’s blaze at a Bangladesh garment factory.

Bangladeshi suppliers of Walmart clothes wanted to upgrade their facilities to make them more fire-proof, and other retailers approved the plan, according to Bloomberg. The plan only fell through after Walmart and the Gap said they would not pay higher prices to make such upgrades feasible.

Walmart declined to comment on the Bloomberg report when reached by The Huffington Post, but told Bloomberg that the company works to make sure “proactive measures are in place to reduce the chance of factory fires.”

The Bangladeshi garment factory fire last month, the worst in Bangladesh’s history, killed 112 people. Walmart did not confirm for more than a day after the fire whether the factory was making clothes for the company. The retailer ultimately admitted that a Walmart supplier hired the factory without Walmart’s knowledge, adding that Walmart ended its relationship with the supplier as a result.

More than 700 garment workers have died in Bangladesh since 2005, according to the International Labor Rights Forum. Sridevi Kalavakolanu, a Wal-Mart director of ethical sourcing, quoted in the Bloomberg report:

“Specifically to the issue of any corrections on electrical and fire safety, we are talking about 4,500 factories, and in most cases very extensive and costly modifications would need to be undertaken to some factories,” they said in the document. “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”

"It is obvious what Judge Mawla is doing is a ‘jihad’ against men in general and fathers specifically … Therefore, as a fathers’ rights group we intend to initiate a ‘crusade’ to remove this vermin from the bench."

Bruce Eden, civil rights director of the state chapter of Dads Against Discrimination, commenting on a New Jersey case in which a Pennsylvania resident remains in jail after being unable to pay his ex-wife $8,000 monthly payments ordered by Mawla. Eden is an advocate of alimony reform in New Jersey, claiming that it is sexist towards men, and he is accusing Judge Hany Mawla of imposing Sharia law on a family Court. Hawla was the first Muslim appointed to a State Superior Court in 2010.

Seems you just can’t win as an American Muslim in the public/political sphere. Misogynist? due to sharia or jihad. “Misandrist?” Due to Sharia or jihad.

"We will never end poverty if we don’t tackle climate change. It is one of the single biggest challenges to social justice today."

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim

(Reuters) - All nations will suffer the effects of a warmer world, but it is the world’s poorest countries that will be hit hardest by food shortages, rising sea levels, cyclones and drought, the World Bank said in a report on climate change.

This is one of the most uncomfortable interviews I’ve seen in a long time.

EL CAJON — The eight-month investigation into the beating death of an Iraqi woman in her El Cajon dining room has led to the arrest of her husband, police announced Friday, putting to rest any notion that the mother of five was the victim of a hate crime.

Glamor Magazine’s Woman of the Year: Zaha Hadid

She’s called “The Z” and “The Lady Gaga of Architecture.” But more accurately she’s Dame Zaha Hadid, 62, the very first female winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize (the Nobel of her field) and one of the most accomplished architects on earth.

“I always wanted to be an architect,” says Hadid. She grew up in Baghdad, a city filled back then with modern buildings. “My house was like Auntie Mame’s, with my mother redecorating every season,” Hadid recalls. After studying math in Beirut, she enrolled in London’s Architectural Association school. Her final portfolio, with paintings of geometric forms careening out of the Thames River, got her noticed by critics worldwide. But for years her work remained more copied than constructed.

Part of the problem? She was a woman in a man’s job—Hadid still thinks that’s a reason she lost out on early commissions. But she kept her studio alive with teaching, interiors projects, and furniture design. In 1993 she got her break: She was commissioned to build a fire station in Germany. Then an art center in Cincinnati. And finally more and more buildings in capital cities all over the world, including this year’s aquatic center for the London Olympics, lauded for its epic, sweeping design and deemed by one critic to be the 2012 Games’ “most majestic space.”

What sets her structures apart is their grace. Her inspiration: “Rivers, dunes,” she says, “the fluid landscape of the Middle East.” Her friend and 2007 Woman of the Year Donna Karan, for whom she designed a perfume bottle, says, “Whatever the medium, Zaha imparts lyricism and sensuality.”

The tireless (and kitchenless—she tore hers out because she didn’t need it) Hadid is working on 43 buildings with her 360-person studio. “What haven’t I done yet?” Hadid asks. “A skyscraper in New York and,” she adds, not kidding at all, “a house of my own!”

Not at all a fan of her work, but the fact that an Iraqi WoC has become a household name, or at least prominent enough within a male-dominated field to be recognized by Glamour, that’s pretty cool.

"What makes this most ironic is that the US loves to sermonize to the world about the need for open ideas and political debate. In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lectured the planet on how ‘those societies that believe they can be closed to change, to ideas, cultures, and beliefs that are different from theirs, will find quickly that in our internet world they will be left behind.’
That she is part of the same government that seeks to punish and exclude filmmakers, students, lawyers, activists and politicians for the crime of opposing US policy is noticed and remarked upon everywhere in the world other than in the US. That demonstrates the success of these efforts: they are designed, above all else, to ensure that the American citizenry does not become exposed to effective critics of what the US is doing in the world."

Glenn Greenwald: US detention of Imran Khan part of trend to harass anti-drone advocates

Greenwald writes in response to the detention of Pakistani politician and anti-drone activist Imran Khan last Saturday, when he was pulled off a plane for interrogation by US officials.

There are several obvious points raised by this episode. Strictly on pragmatic grounds, it seems quite ill-advised to subject the most popular leader in Pakistan - the potential next Prime Minister - to trivial, vindictive humiliations of this sort. It is also a breach of the most basic diplomatic protocol: just imagine the outrage if a US politician were removed from a plane by Pakistani officials in order to be questioned about their publicly expressed political views. And harassing prominent critics of US policy is hardly likely to dilute anti-US animosity; the exact opposite is far more likely to occur.

But the most important point here is that Khan’s detention is part of a clear trend by the Obama administration to harass and intimidate critics of its drone attacks. As Marcy Wheeler notes, “this is at least the third time this year that the US has delayed or denied entry to the US for Pakistani drone critics.”

Read the full article.

NEW YORK — A paid informant for the New York Police Department’s intelligence unit was under orders to “bait” Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bengali descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called “create and capture.” He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

“We need you to pretend to be one of them,” Rahman recalled the police telling him. “It’s street theater.” […]

Rahman, who was born in Queens, said he never witnessed any criminal activity or saw anybody do anything wrong.

He said he sometimes intentionally misinterpreted what people had said. For example, Rahman said he would ask people what they thought about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, knowing the subject was inflammatory. It was easy to take statements out of context, he said. He said wanted to please his NYPD handler, whom he trusted and liked.

“I was trying to get money,” Rahman said. “I was playing the game.”

Every time another one of these stories comes out, it creeps me the fuck out. The article outlines some of the tactics regularly used by informants, most of which have already been seen before in other cases. Here, the NYPD sent three informants to ISNA in 2008 (a yearly Islamic conference widely attend by Muslims), kept watch on the Muslim American Society, and regularly attended Muslim Student Association meetings. At one event, the informant took pictures of a sign-up sheet for a class at a mosque and sent people’s cell phone numbers to the NYPD.

All it takes is for you to maintain any sort of contact with Muslim groups at your university, and there’s a good chance you’re under surveillance.