Posted on 09/03/2006 8:23:21 PM PDT by Alouette
DEARBORN, United States (AFP) - Discrimination and harassment by law enforcement have come to plague American Muslims in the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11.
There have been suspicious looks, slurs, physical attacks, extra screening at airports and arrests on groundless charges.
And it seems to be getting worse.
A recent Gallup poll showed that 39 percent of Americans admit to being prejudiced against Muslims and that nearly a quarter say they would not want a Muslim for a neighbor.
"Most Americans don't know Muslims except for those they work with in an urban environment so all the information they get is through the media," said Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.
After having shown some restraint in his rhetoric after 19 Muslim men affiliated with Al-Qaeda flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush has of late been using far more inflammatory language such as 'Islamofacists,' Walid said.
"When the religious and political leaders use polarizing language these are the unfortunate side effects. It stretches from the likes of (Christian Coalition leader) Pat Robinson all the way up to President Bush."
CAIR has seen a steady increase in the number of complaints of harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment over the past five years. In 2004, complaints rose 49 percent to 1,522, of which 141 were reports of actual and potentially violent hate crimes.
It appears that those numbers will continue to rise in 2005 and 2006, Walid said.
Osama Abulhassan, 20, registered one after he spent a week in jail on terrorism charges last month. He was arrested for buying pre-paid cell phones in a small town in the midwestern state of Ohio with his friend Ali Houssaiky. Both were born in the United States to Lebanese immigrants.
"I couldn't believe they would charge us for something like that," he said over a Halal chicken sandwich. "For a week straight we were asking what are we doing here and realizing it could happen to anybody."
Dressed in an Air Jordan T-shirt and Puma baseball cap, Abulhassan looks like any other college student. But his name has evoked gasps when he is called onto the basketball court for a game and he has grown used to suspicious looks as he walks down the street.
He never expected to be sitting in a jail cell and seeing his mug shot on the national news interspersed with images of bombings in Iraq.
"This didn't need to happen. It was all very unwarranted," he said of the charges that were eventually dropped.
"We're still proud to be Americans and of our heritage, but you experience something like that it's going to change the way you see things," he explained. "It makes us feel, not hatred... I've lost confidence in the justice system in general and the way things are done here."
At the Islamic Center of America, Imam Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini sorts through his hate mail. After five years, the virulence still shocks him.
"I hope all you and your swine people die. Go home towel head," one reads.
"After seeing the sinister rise of Islamofascism over the last several years I am now dedicating my life as a Christian to do whatever it takes to cleanse the world of islam (sic) and hopefully convert its sad and misguided followers," reads another.
But more disturbing than the e-mails are the actions of the Bush administration and law enforcement.
"I see that the United States is slipping into being a police state, at least to us Muslims," he said as he recounts incident after incident that have affected the members Dearborn's large Muslim and Arab communities.
The cell phone arrests. The mosque board member who was handcuffed by border guards. His own six-hour detention after he took a wrong turn and ended up on the bridge to Canada.
"There is a saying, those who sacrifice liberty for the sake of security -- they deserve neither one," he said. "If a moderate Muslim leader speaks with so much disappointment and dismay and is giving up on American ideals, this tells you what other American Muslims feel."
Amen to that.
I'd also like to hear an apology for the actions of the "bad Muslims" over the years, especially for 9-11.
After all, they lump all Americans together for the actions of those idiots at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
I am so SICK of their constant whining!
Too bad, so sad. If they don't like it here, they can leave.
I shopped at a Dearborn supermarket last week on my way home from work. My husband, a "stereotypical" Hasidic Jew with beard, black suit, hat, etc. parked the car while I went in to the store. He parked next to a lady wearing a hijab who was loading up the station wagon with her groceries. She took one look at him, freaked out, shoved her kids into the car and burned rubber getting out of that parking lot!
I am sure that she spent the rest of the afternoon electrifying her friends and relatives about her narrow escape from the eeville Zionist who had the audacity to park next to her at a Dearborn supermarket parking lot!
If a Jew acted that way in front of a Muslim, CAIR would report it as a hate crime.
Precisely.
Come on, Dawud, cough up a few of them to show us you're sincere.
Yeah, that happens in my neighborhood all the time.
How about you?
She actually LOOKED at him? Wow. All the muslims I encounter in stores, don't even do that. They avoid you like they're walking around an endcap or some kind of display blocking the aisle. No acknowledgemnet of your existance as a human being at all.
You should have heard STL's CAIR rep getting interviewed on KMOX a few Sundays back. I was driving back from Atlanta and when I got into range of KMOX, about two hours out, I was able to catch the whole interview. After regurgitating the CAIR-DEM talking points, he castigated Americans and their ignorance of Islam, and encouraged us all to join him for a service at one of his mosques. Then he took calls. The first one got cut immediately when a caller said "we dont need to learn about Islam, we learned it on 9-11!" The last call was from a U-city moms basement dwelling 40 year old saying it was George Bush that caused all the hatred of Islam and he knows many peaceful muslims who love America. After a long drive, I was in no mood to hear muslim apologists, but to KMOX's credit, the interviewer asked some tough questions, most of which the CAIR rep blamed on America's ignorance of Islam. I was glad to get home to my family..
I believe these phones were to be used by terrorist for one time use and toss (untraceable) and to set off explosives.
Nope. Can't do it.
Hey all you poor oppressed moozies. Get the f*** out.
L
More Middle Eastern men were caught buying large quantities of Tracphones:
From WNEM in Michigan:
Around 1:00am August 11th the three men purchased cell phones from the Wal-Mart store on M-81 near the corner of M-24 in Caro. Wal-Mart places a limit on the number of cell phones that can be purchased at once, that number is three. The three men allegedly bought 80 by purchasing them three at time so that an alert wouldn't be triggered by the cash register. They also paid cash.
The three men are described as being of Palestinian descent but live in Texas. Police say the three, ages 19, 22, and 23 appear to be naturalized citizens.
One man was driving while the other two were in the back opening the phone packages with box cutters throwing the phones in one box, batteries in another and the packaging and phone charger in another container. The suspects had 1000 other cell phones in the van. There was also a bag of receipts showing that someone was in Wisconsin the day before.
The phones were Nokia TracFones selling for $20 at Wal-Mart. For your twenty dollars you receive a phone charger and 40 minutes of airtime. The phones do not have to be registered with a name. Also discovered was a laptop with store addresses and store logos.
Tim Nausler with the Michigan State Police bomb squad says this has all the tell tale signs of using cell phones to detonate bombs. He says you need two phones to detonate a bomb one to be with the explosive and the other to make the call to that phone. In some instances he says you can detonate with one phone using the alarm clock function.
and
From WBOY in West Virginia:
Last week, the Grafton police pulled over 24-year-old Hashem Sayed for a routine traffic stop. But what they found in his car was far from routine. Patrolman Daniel Laymon recalls the scene, "There were multiple cell phones, roughly 150 to 200 cell phones from multiple retailers," he said.
Buying that many pre-paid phones is not a crime, but the police say it is unusual.
Less than a week later, the authorities in Marietta, Ohio, arrested 20-year-old Osma Sabhi Abulhassan and 20-year-old Ali Houssaiky. Washington County Sheriffs deputies seized several pre-paid cell phones and thousands of dollars in cash. Because of the incidents, Grafton police believe the events are connected.
"The department feels that there are a lot of similar circumstances and there are a lot of similarities between the activity there and the activity experienced here," said Patrolman Laymon.
The activity seems to be more than just a coincidence. All three men are from Dearborn, Michigan and all three gave similar reasons for buying the phones. Sayed said he was buying them to ship to California to sell for a profit. But Washington County's sheriff says that may not be the whole truth. "They are digital for detonating car bombs and they have a particular digital frequency and that's what they're using them for," said Sheriff Larry Mincks.
Mincks says the men also had instructions on how to obtain private flights and airplane passenger information.
"It also had some information concerning airport security and check points."
Interesting how they're going to small towns to make their purchases. Perhaps they think they're less likely to be caught, but in reality, they're more likely to stand out.
And if so, then what possible use, other than command detonating IEDs would anyone have for hundreds of these phones? Well I suppose another use is in bypassing the NSA surveillance techniques as printed in the NYT.
Yep ed, I think you are right. These guys were dumb enough to think the infidels at WalMart were dumb enough not to notice that they kept coming in over and over to buy three phones at a time.
So my guess is these guys would have been dumb enough to have used registered phones if there wasn’t such a big stink about it in the media.
And the lefties were cheering the NYTs on and are now clamoring to put them in charge of national security.
Posted by: Jumpinjoe at August 12, 2006 11:58 AM
Those cell phone stories disappeared as fast as they appeared, didnt they? And what about the peaceful muslims who had plans to blow up the Sault-Saint Marie bridge?
It's all a pack of lies and you know it.
Is that so? Has the US sent suicide plane hijackers into an Islamic nation, to kill 3000 innocents lately? How about ever?
Yeah, I guess you are right. Join me for evening prayer call?
The rest of the last post:
Tappe said a bomb-sniffing dog from the Westmoreland County Sheriff's Office searched the van.
"It was a 2006 van, but it was all gutted out," Tappe said. "No seats or paneling on the walls. For all intents and purposes, it was the kind of vehicle that could be used for explosive devices."
The dog found nothing, Tappe said.
Most of the money, $3,400, belonged to Maisuradze and was found in an envelope in the van. The remaining $800 was in Zakutashvili's possession.
The men had visited the Eckerd store to purchase batteries, Tappe said. They told police they were en route to Philadelphia.
Tappe said the federal agent who investigated, Richard Nicoloff, did not ask Murrysville police to confiscate any of the items from the van.
"They didn't want the laptops or the cell phones," Tappe said. "That surprised me ... Just with the activities, and what they were doing, I'm surprised they let Zurabi go without questioning him."
Nicoloff did not return a phone call Sunday seeking comment.
The Republic of Georgia is a country in western Asia. It is bordered by Russia, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Black Sea.
Liz Zemba can be reached at lzemba@tribweb.com or (724) 836-6646.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/search/s_465047.html
Amazing.
Nothing suspicious here. Just your average 20 year-old college kids behavior. Don't they all buy 600 TracPhones in rural Ohio which they sell to a buyer in Dearborn Michigan? Happens all the time right?
Cram it Abdul.
I gotta find two things first:
1) A rug
and
2) which way Mecca is
and I'll be right there.
Hopefully, they let him go to follow him..
600 TracFones at $20 bucks a pop.
I guess he saved that from his paper route.
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