Worldwide Religious News (http://wwrn.org)
(1) CAIR-Michigan sues FBI, Customs over alleged 'invasive religious questioning', 13 April 2012
Oralandar Brand-Williams ("The Detroit News," April 13, 2012)
Detroit, USA - The local Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Michigan) has filed a lawsuit against the FBI and the Customs Border Patrol agencies for alleged "invasive religious questioning" and "prolonged detention" of Muslims at the U.S.-Canada border.
The line of questioning of Muslims reportedly included how many times a day they pray and who else prays in their mosques, according to CAIR-Michigan officials.
"Invasive religious questioning of American citizens without evidence of criminal activity is not only an affront to the Constitution but is also a waste of taxpayers' dollars," said CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid.
At a news conference Friday in front of the U.S. Eastern District courthouse on West Lafayette Boulevard downtown, Walid was joined by two plaintiffs in the case and other Muslim civil rights attorneys and an immigration activist.
"Since (Sept. 11), we have seen a steady invasion of the civil liberties of Muslims," Walid said.
The lawsuit is being filed on behalf of four American citizens who complained that Customs and Border Patrol and the FBI violated their First Amendment rights by "detaining and handcuffing them without any evidence of wrongdoing and questioning them about their religious beliefs and worship habits," said CAIR-Michigan officials.
Lena Masri, attorney for CAIR-Michigan, said the organization filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security but, to date, no action has been taken.
Imam Ali Suleiman Ali, a Wayne County resident and a native of Ghana, said he was detained for five hours when returning to the U.S. from Toronto. He said he also was detained and handcuffed at a border stop in Port Huron last year.
"I was very shocked," said Ali on Friday. "I asked 'Why are you handcuffing me. I'm not a criminal'."
Another local man, Wissam Charafeddine, a 35-year-old Dearborn resident, said he has had to stop visiting family members in Montreal because of "being treated like a criminal" when he comes back across the border from Canada.
"It has caused me psychological torture," Charafeddine said Friday at the news conference.
Both men said they were asked questions about their religion and worship habits.
Civil rights attorney Shereef Akeel, co-counsel on the lawsuit, said targeting a specific religion for questioning is against the law.
"You cross the line when you start to probe religious practices that have nothing to do with national security," said Akeel.
"When Customs and Border Protection harasses Michiganders simply because of their religion, they are undermining both our religious liberties and our security. This agency needs to get their priorities straight; we need them to focus on good intelligence and police work, not discrimination," said Ryan Bates, of the Alliance for Immigrants Rights.
・Disclaimer: WWRN does not endorse or adhere to views or opinions expressed in the articles posted. This is purely an information site, to inform interested parties of religious trends.
(2) Islam has made London a more conservative place than it was 50 years ago, 13 April 2012
by Ed West ("The Telegraph," April 13, 2012)
London, England - One of the most common mistakes people make about cultural and politics is suggesting that history is inevitably heading in one direction. We hear it most commonly in the argument made that "we can't turn the clock back" to the 1950s, as if anyone is planning to ban garlic bread or continental lager. (I don't see why achieving 1950s levels of crime would be either undesirable or impossible).
History does not work like that, and in a strange way London today is even more conservative than it was in the 1950s – thanks to liberals.
This week London Metropolitan University’s vice-chancellor suggested that parts of the campus be made alcohol-free because some Muslim students believe it is "evil" and "immoral".
This paper reports:
Prof Malcolm Gillies of London Metropolitan University said he wants to create alcohol free areas on campus out of “cultural sensitivity”. About a fifth of students at the university come from Muslim families – many of them young women from traditional homes. For many of them, the drinking culture among students marred rather than heightened their student experience, he said.
In principle there’s nothing wrong with this. If one university wants to make itself more attractive to teetotal students, then heavy-drinking students (ie 99 per cent of them) can go to the many colleges where cheap beer flows abundantly. That’s the free market. Muslims aside, many people would prefer a less boozy environment. But I can’t help but feel that this new puritanism is not what the young people who once shouted “disembowel Enoch Powell” in opposition to immigration restrictions had in mind.
The new conservatism of London has already had profound effects, as demographic changes gather pace.
Stonewall’s bus adverts, for example, would be better concentrated in Tower Hamlets, where there were 47 anti-gay attacks in 2008, rather than being wasted on the rest of us. Young gay men in the provinces no longer need to run away to London, one of the most religiously conservative places in England now (and not just among Muslims – African Christians too).
More generally public displays of sexuality have had to be restricted where they offend conservative sensibilities. In Old Street, central London, a huge billboard advertising condoms asks "LOVE SEX?" Half a mile away in Spitalfields even mildly racy adverts for swimwear are routinely vandalised. As for public criticism and mockery of religion – surely no one can deny that the clock has well and truly been turned back? Seven years ago the Tate Gallery refused to exhibit John Latham’s conceptual piece God is Great, originally made in 1991, which featured a six-foot high plate of glass with a Talmud, Bible and Koran. It said it would not be "appropriate" following the London bombings. Latham was in the avant garde of 1960s art, where freedom to criticise and mock religion went without saying; 50 years later London is a very different place in many, many ways.
Old Street was the epicentre of Methodism in London, and is still home to two great Wesleyan churches and the Nonconformist Bunhill Fields graveyard. Methodism was part of a wider reaction to the licence, corruption and sin of 18th century which resulted in more conservative social mores. Today Methodism is a spent force – but it seems that societies without native social conservatives tend to end up importing them.
London, as Ken Livingstone appreciates and future London mayors will very much have to, is a much more socially conservative city than it was when the 60s swang.
・Disclaimer: WWRN does not endorse or adhere to views or opinions expressed in the articles posted. This is purely an information site, to inform interested parties of religious trends.
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