c. 2006 Religion News Service
Muslim and Arab Groups Say Uproar Over Ports Amounts to Profiling
(RNS) Arab and Muslim-American leaders say the uproar over a White House deal that would turn over operations of several major U.S. ports to an Arab-owned company could leave many in the Islamic world thinking Americans hate them.
“This is sending a dangerous message not only to Arab and Muslim citizens of this country about how we in America see Arabs and Muslims, but also to the Muslim world, where we’re trying to win hearts and minds,” said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based advocacy group. “It’s almost as if it’s a race to see who can be more anti-Arab.”
Citing security concerns, politicians and commentators from both sides of the aisle have fiercely criticized a $6.8 billion acquisition by Dubai Ports World, owned by one of the United Arab Emirates, of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. The British company had been managing shipping terminals in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee _ a legislator CAIR has in the past accused of Islamophobia, said he would help draft emergency legislation to kill the deal. The deal was approved by the White House, and President Bush said he would veto any bill against it.
Mary Rose Oakar, president of the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination said her group “is strongly opposed to the rhetoric and bias surrounding the company solely because it is Arab owned. Those who purport that ports can be securely run by a British company, but not an Arab one, are engaging in racial profiling on the corporate level.”
Some industry analysts have said turning the ports over to DPW would not affect security, which would still be done by American workers.
Hazami Barmada, an Arab-American senior at Rhodes College in Tennessee where she is president of the Muslim Students Association, says the episode demonstrates an increasing tendency in America to automatically link everything that is Arab or Muslim with terrorism.
“There’s always this theme of the Arab threat. The American media ha(ve) allowed a few terrorists to hijack the Arab image,” Barmadi, 22, said. “Arab-bashing is fashionable.”
_ Omar Sacirbey
Watchdog Groups Calls U.S. Church Leaders’ Apology a Political Ploy
(RNS) A conservative watchdog group is calling an apology by U.S. church leaders attending an assembly in South America a “blatant political abuse of the Christian rite of confession.”
The apology, issued by U.S. church leaders attending the World Council of Churches assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was a written lament for not preventing a U.S war in Iraq that has brought “terror” to the vulnerable while enlisting God in a way that is “nothing short of idolatrous.”
The statement was issued Saturday (Feb. 18) by the assembly’s U.S. conference, representing 34 Protestant and Orthodox denominations that make up the National Council of Churches. Denominations include the Episcopal Church, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the Presbyterian Church (USA).
“These church leaders are not confessing their own sins; they are trying to confess the sins of George W. Bush, who never asked them to perform that service for him,” said a statement by the watchdog group, the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). “Nor did the members of their own churches ask them to make this kind of statement on their behalf.”
Alan Wisdom, the IRD’s interim president, said that a number of leaders have made similar statements in the past and were ignored because, he claimed, “they lacked the support of most active church members.”
“It is not clear why U.S. denominational officials believe that another, still shriller denunciation, in this latest letter to the WCC, will make them any more effective in swaying the president or their own church members.”
The IRD has long been a critic of the WCC and the National Council of Churches (NCC), saying the global and national ecumenical organizations advocate a liberal political agenda.
Leonid Kishkovsky, the chief ecumenical officer of the Orthodox Church in America and the moderator of the U.S. Conference of the WCC, acknowledged that the statement by the church leaders would prove controversial, saying there are divisions within the U.S. about the war in Iraq.
He said he and other church leaders were not speaking “authoritatively for any church, but we are responsible leaders elected by our churches and we feel compelled to speak.”
The assembly of the 348-member WCC began Feb. 14 and concludes Thursday (Feb. 23).
_ Chris Herlinger
Three From Ohio Face Terror Charges After Toledo Muslims Tip Off FBI
(RNS) The trio of Muslim men thought no one would notice.
They had been shooting at targets, learning to build suicide-bomber vests and seeking chemical explosives for months, federal officials charge.
So as Toledo, Ohio, geared up to celebrate July Fourth last year, investigators said, the men figured it was the perfect time to test their explosives in the city’s shadows. Surely their neighbors wouldn’t notice a few extra kabooms amid the fireworks.
The men were wrong.
Muslims in Toledo had tipped off the FBI even before July 4. A federal indictment unsealed Tuesday (Feb. 21) charged the men _ Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi and Wassim I. Mazloum _ with conspiracy and other crimes, accusing them of secretly plotting to aid and to join the insurgency battling U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.
“We believe this investigation is an important part of the ongoing effort to prevent terrorist activities here in Ohio and protect our troops overseas,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Morford said Tuesday during a news conference at the FBI’s Cleveland headquarters. “While the targets were overseas, they held meetings, did their training, recruiting and financing efforts here, in our own back yard.”
Federal officials said the men are part of a tiny splinter group of Muslims who broke off from a conservative mosque in Toledo and formed one of their own. How they met is unclear, but the indictment paints a vivid picture of a trio from the country’s industrial heartland secretly training for a violent mission more than 6,000 miles away.
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Amawi, 26, was arrested over the weekend in Jordan, where he had been living since August and according to authorities was trying to cross the border into Iraq. In addition to facing the conspiracy counts, he was charged with making threats against President Bush. He is accused of twice saying that he wanted to kill or harm the president.
El-Hindi, 42, and Mazloum, 24, a student at the University of Toledo, were both arrested in Toledo on Sunday, the same day federal officials shut down KindHearts, a Toledo-based Muslim charity, in a separate operation.
Four-year-old KindHearts had quickly become one of the largest Muslim nonprofit groups in the United States, taking in $5 million a year. No one has been arrested in that case, but the U.S. Treasury Department on Sunday ordered banks to freeze KindHearts’ assets, accusing the charity of supporting Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.
The investigations of the Toledo men and of KindHearts were unrelated, but the actions against them were coordinated because federal officials said they worried attention on one might jeopardize the investigation into the other.
_ Amanda Garrett, Mike Tobin, Christopher Evans and Stephen Koff
Holocaust Denier Renounces View, But Still Sentenced in Austria
(RNS) Right-wing British historian David Irving’s fate is in the hands of the Austrian Supreme Court after a Vienna court sentenced him Monday (Feb. 20) to three years imprisonment for denying the Holocaust ever happened.
When Irving was arrested Nov. 11, court watchers expected a long, drawn-out trial for a man who has become a standard-bearer for many in the radical right. Instead, Irving came to the trial Monday declaring that, after reading testimony from Adolf Eichmann and the head of the Auschwitz death camp, he no longer questioned the Holocaust. He argued that he had made a methodological failure in his research.
The about-face came as a shock to some supporters in the audience who shouted out “Stay strong, David!” during the hearing, according to the Berliner Zeitung (Berlin Newspaper). But the jury was unmoved, sentencing Irving to three years.
The sentence is already under appeal from all sides. Irving’s attorney has argued that the sentence is too severe for a 67-year-old man who poses no threat to Austria. But the day after the trial, the state’s attorney also appealed the jury’s decision, meaning the high court could also decide to sentence Irving to the 10-year maximum for his crime.
The court is not set to reconvene until the second half of 2006. Irving will remain in custody until the court can render its decision.
Irving was charged in 1989 for making statements in Austria denying the Holocaust, a crime there since 1945. He fled the country after the initial charges, but returned in November to address a group of university students, despite the outstanding warrant for his arrest.
Irving first made a name for himself with books suggesting the Allies committed war crimes with their firebomb campaigns against Germany during World War II. A few years later he began actively questioning the Holocaust.
_ Niels Sorrells
Anti-Semitism Suspected in Murder of Cell Phone Salesman Outside Paris
PARIS (RNS) The murder of a cell phone salesman outside Paris has gripped the country’s Jewish community, amid mounting evidence he was tortured and killed partly because of his faith.
For the first time, several top French ministers have suggested that anti-Semitism could have played a role in the death of salesman Ilan Halimi outside Paris, and vowed to shed full light on the affair. Justice Minister Pascal Clement suggested Halimi was attacked because he was Jewish, and the perpetrators assumed he therefore was rich.
“This affair touches the fundamental values of our country, and calls of protest must emanate not only from Jews, but from the entire French population,” Roger Cukierman, head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, told France 3 television Tuesday (Feb. 21).
Halimi had been kidnapped and tortured for more than three weeks before being found riddled with stab wounds and burns Feb. 13, near a railway line outside Paris. He died on the way to the hospital.
Police suspect a local gang, calling themselves “The Barbarians,” was behind his death. Six suspects are being questioned by a French judge on suspicion of “kidnapping and detention” among other acts. Two French police were also reportedly dispatched Tuesday to Ivory Coast to hunt down the gang leader, known as Youssouf F.
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Anti-Semitism has long been a sensitive subject in France, home to Western Europe’s largest Jewish community. The number of anti-Semitic attacks soared a few years ago _ prompting Israeli deputy foreign minister Michael Melchior to accuse France in 2003 of being the most anti-Semitic country in the west.
But Israeli officials and Jewish leaders here have subsequently praised France’s center-right government for cracking down on anti-Semitism _ and the registered number of anti-Jewish attacks has declined markedly in recent years.
_ Elizabeth Bryant
British Archbishop Says U.S. Breaking Law at Guantanamo Bay
LONDON (RNS) The U.S. administration’s refusal to shut down its detention center at Guantanamo Bay has come under fierce criticism from an archbishop with the Church of England.
The Archbishop of York John Sentamu says the situation reflects “a society that is heading towards George Orwell’s Animal Farm” _ a reference to the British author’s 1945 satire on Soviet Communism.
In an interview with The Independent, a London daily newspaper, Sentamu _ who was a high court judge in Uganda before he was forced to flee the country under the dictatorship of Idi Amin _ cited a Feb. 16 report by five U.N. inspectors. It advised that Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay be shut immediately because prisoners there were being tortured.
He urged the U.N. Human Rights Commission to take legal action against the United States _ either through U.S. courts or through the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands _ if it should fail to respond to this report. The commission should seek a writ of habeas corpus to compel the U.S.to bring the detainees to court to establish whether they were being imprisoned lawfully and if they should be released.
“The American government is breaking international law,” he told The Independent. “The main building block of a democratic society is that everyone is equal before the law, innocent until proved otherwise, and has the right to legal representation.
“If the guilt of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is beyond doubt, why are the Americans afraid to bring them to trial? Transparency and accountability are the other side of the coin of freedom and responsibility. We are all accountable for our actions in spite of circumstances. The events of 9-11 cannot erase the rule of law and international obligations.”
“The U.S. should try all 500 detainees at Guantanamo _ who still include eight British residents _ or free them without further delay. To hold someone for up to four years without charge clearly indicates a society that is heading towards George Orwell’s `Animal Farm.”’
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Dallas Pastor Tony Evans
(RNS) “We have a generation of men who are not in the home. They are like the abominable snowman _ their footprints are all around, but they can’t be found.”
_ Dallas pastor Tony Evans, who leads Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship and the Urban Alternative, an organization that aims to bring spiritual renewal to urban America. He was quoted by the Battle Creek Enquirer in Battle Creek, Mich., after a recent speech in that city.
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