9/11/01 Has Been Called ‘The New Pearl Harbor’ for Today’s Generations of Americans, But Nearly Forgotten is the Wave of Anti-Japanese Bigotry That Swept the U.S. After 12/7/41, Leading to the Forced Removal and Internment of Upwards of 120,000 Japanese-Americans — Will America’s 1.3 Million Muslims Face the Same Fate?

Copies of a 1942 edition of the San Francisco Examiner announce with a screaming — and highly derogatory — banner headline the impending removal of thousands of Japanese-Americans from their homes and businesses in California and relocation to internment camps located in remote areas across the western U.S. As many as 120,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly relocated amid a wave of anti-Japanese bigotry that swept the country following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 have often been called “The New Pearl Harbor” for today’s generations of Americans. But a mounting controversy over plans to construct an Islamic center near Ground Zero has unleashed a wave of anti-Muslim passions across the country of a magnitude that, if it continues unchecked, could match the ill will toward Japanese-Americans during World War II. (Photo courtesy National Archives)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, August 31, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
– George Santayana

* * *

As controversy continues to build over the planned construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks away from New York’s Ground Zero, there has been a dramatic spike in incidents of anti-Muslim bigotry in recent weeks, indicative of a wave of Islamophobia that is sweeping across the United States.

Opposition to new mosques isn’t limited to New York. There have been demonstrations and acts of violence against existing and proposed Muslim houses of worship from coast to coast — including a suspected arson fire Friday night at the site of a new Islamic center in suburban Nashville.

A spokesman for the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Department said that the blaze, which destroyed construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, has been ruled as arson. Gasoline was poured over the equipment and ignited.

The Sheriff’s Department and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — as well as the FBI — are jointly investigating the fire as a possible hate crime, according to Andy Anderson, special agent for the BATF.

MUSLIM TAXI DRIVER IN NEW YORK ATTACKED

Acts of violence against individual Muslims have also risen sharply — the most notorious such incident so far being an attack on a Muslim taxi driver last Tuesday night in New York. The driver, an immigrant from Bangladesh, was slashed by his knife-wielding passenger after he acknowledged being a Muslim.

Police arrested Michael Enright, 21, who had just returned from filming U.S. Mariens serving in Afghanistan and charged him with felony attempted murder motivated by religious bias in the attack on 43-year-old taxi driver Ahmed Sharif. Police said Sharif was slashed across the face, arm and hand.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg condemned the attack, telling reporters at a hurriedly-called City Hall news conference that it was “clearly motivated by anti-Muslim bias. . .This attack runs counter to everything that New Yorkers believe, no matter what God we pray to.”

ANTI-MUSLIM PASSIONS RAGING ACROSS THE COUNTRY

Much of the anti-Muslim passion is being fanned by conservative politicians and hard-line right-wing Christian evangelicals who consider Islam an “evil” religion and an “enemy of the Judeo-Christian way of life.”

Long before the controversy over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” escalated into a major headline-grabbing battle over the right of Muslims in America to freedom of worship under the First Amendment, there has been a steady uptick in anti-Muslim sentiment across the country:

# Several Christian ministers in Sheboygan, Wisconsin led a noisy protest in May against a proposal to build a local mosque in a former health food store purchased by a Muslim doctor.

# Members of the right-wing Tea Party movement in late July insultingly brought dogs — much beloved by Westerners but considered unclean animals by Muslims — to picket Friday prayers at a mosque in Temecula, California, whose leaders want to build a new house of worship on a vacant lot nearby.

# Also in late July, trustees of a Roman Catholic church in the New York City borough of Staten Island rejected a proposal to sell a former convent owned by the parish to a Muslim group that wanted to convert it into a mosque, after word of the proposed sale was made public, sparking loud anti-Muslim protests by local residents.

# Muslim leaders in Bridgeport, Connecticut asked for police protection on August 6 after members of a right-wing Christian-supremacist group staged an angry protest outside a local mosque during Friday prayers, shouting hateful anti-Muslim invectives at the worshippers, and accusing their children of being “murderers” as they left the mosque. The protesters were members of the Texas-based Operation Save America — an offshoot of anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry’s Operation Rescue.

# And just last Tuesday, a zoning board in Mayfield, Kentucky reversed its decision to allow a group of Muslim refugees to use a local building as a mosque. The owner of a flower shop located next door to the building, a self-described evangelical Christian, said it might have been different if the building was to be used as a Baptist church.

AT HEART OF ISLAMOPHOBIC WAVE: 9/11, THE ‘NEW PEARL HARBOR’

By now, the source of the current wave of anti-Muslim bigotry sweeping the country should be obvious: The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, damaged the Defense Department’s headquarters at the Pentagon in Washington and killed more than 3,500 people.

The attacks, committed by 19 al-Qaida terrorists, was almost immediately considered an act of war against the United States by a foreign force on U.S. soil — the first such act of war since the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, which plunged this country into World War II.

Even this columnist, a New York City native whose stepfather was a member of the construction crews who built the twin towers when I was a kid, regarded the events of September 11, 2001 as a repeat of December 7, 1941 — the new Pearl Harbor for the present generations of Americans alive today — as I watched the full horror of the 9/11 attacks unfold on live television.

I even remember writing on a chalkboard in a now-defunct juice bar in my adopted hometown of Burlington, Vermont, the following message as I watched the destruction of the twin towers:

“Days of Infamy: December 7, 1941 — September 11, 2001.”

September 11, 2001 would, for my generation and for every generation of Americans alive today, forever live as a day of infamy, much as December 7, 1941 would live as a day of infamy for the World War II-era GI Generation — whom retired NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw dubbed “The Greatest Generation” — most of whom are no longer with us and the shrinking number of them who remain are now well into their 80s and 90s.

AN EERIE ECHO OF AN UGLY CHAPTER IN U.S. HISTORY RIGHT AFTER PEARL HARBOR

It truly is unfortunate that there are fewer and fewer Americans of the GI Generation still living, for lost with their passing is the collective memory of one of the ugliest chapters of American history — one that the current wave of Islamophobia threatens to repeat.

That chapter is the even more virulent wave of bigotry against Japanese-Americans that swept the country in the months following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor — bigotry so intense and widespread that it ultimately resulted in tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans forcibly removed by the federal government from their homes and businesses and sent to internment camps located in remote area across the western U.S.

The discrimination and hostility that German-Americans experienced during World War I was nothing compared to what Japanese-Americans would endure after Pearl Harbor. The Germans were white and European; the Japanese were neither. What happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II was — most historians today agree — one of the most blatantly racist episodes in the nation’s history.

And it was directed by none other than the man considered America’s greatest president of the 20th Century — Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

That the treatment of Japanese-Americans was motivated by anti-Asian racism was made clear by the uncovering of FBI documents from that era. From 1939 to 1941, the FBI compiled what the bureau called the Custodial Detention Index on U.S. citizens, “enemy” aliens and foreign nationals which might be dangerous. Interestingly, the so-called “enemy races” identified in the FBI’s files specifically excluded those of German and Italian descent.

ANTI-JAPANESE SENTIMENT RAN HIGHEST IN CALIFORNIA, HAWAII

Nowhere did anti-Japanese bigotry run higher than in California and Hawaii, where Japanese-Americans were most heavily concentrated. Unlike German-Americans and Italian-Americans, who numbered in the millions and were spread across the country, there were fewer than a half-million Japanese-Americans. The attack on Pearl Harbor led to fears that Japan was preparing a full-scale attack on the U.S. west coast, making Japanese-Americans — particularly the American-born, second-generation nisei — a convenient target for discrimination.

Japan’s rapid military conquest of much of Asia made their war machine appear to some Americans frighteningly unstoppable. Civilian and military officials had concerns about the loyalty of Japanese-Americans and considered them to be a security risk.

Upon examination of historical record, however, it became clear that these concerns often grew more out of anti-Asian racial hatred than any actual security risk, particularly since no such alarm was raised about German-Americans and Italian-Americans.

Nor was the racist sentiment one-sided. Japanese propaganda films captured after the war revealed an equally racist attitude by Japan against the mostly-white Americans — making it clear that each side saw the other as less than human.

Nonetheless, American attitudes toward the Japanese and Japanese-Americans in World War II stood in stark contrast to their attitudes toward Americans of German and Italian ancestry — even when compared to the prejudice toward German-Americans during World War I. Then-President Woodrow Wilson never issued an executive order for the detention of Americans of German or Austro-Hungarian ancestry during that war.

FDR ORDERS INTERNMENT OF UP TO 120,000 JAPANESE-AMERICANS

Thus, on February 20, 1942, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, ordering the forcible relocation of approximately 112,000 to 120,000 ethnic Japanese — 62 percent of whom were U.S. citizens — from their homes to hastily-constructed “war relocation camps” located primarily in remote regions, far from the country’s major urban centers.

Roosevelt’s order authorized U.S. military commanders to designate “military areas” at their discretion, “from which any or all persons may be excluded.” These “exclusion zones,” unlike the “alien enemy” roundups, were applicable to anyone that an authorized military commander might choose, whether citizen or non-citizen.

Eventually such areas would include both the east and west coasts, and about a third of the country’s interior — and were applied almost exclusively to all of those of Japanese ancestry, although there were many instances of Chinese-Americans also getting caught up in the internment. Indeed, the internments in California brought back memories of violent attacks on Chinese nationals and Chinese-Americans by white mobs in San Francisco in the late 1800s.

INTERNMENT PROVED IMPRACTICAL IN HAWAII

The internment order proved, however, to be impractical to enforce in Hawaii — despite the fact that Japanese-Americans there were closer to essential military facilities than most of their compatriots on the U.S. mainland. This was because Japanese-Americans were over a third of Hawaii’s population — and were too vital to the islands’ economy.

Instead, the whole of Hawaii — which, although a U.S. territory, was not yet the nation’s 50th state — was placed under martial law. The Army imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the entire population of Hawaii except those on official business and compiled intelligence dossiers on nearly half a million Hawaiians.

Today, Hawaii is the only state in the U.S. that has a majority-Asian population. Slightly more than 50 percent of Hawaii’s residents today are of Japanese ancestry — including U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye — a highly-decorated World War II veteran — and U.S. Representative Mazie Hirono.

In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation stated that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” Over $1.6 billion in reparations were later disbursed by the U.S. government to Japanese-Americans who had either suffered internment or were heirs of those who had suffered internment.

WILL HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF WITH AMERICA’S 1.3 MILLION MUSLIMS?

With the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II all but faded from the collective American memory, there is a real danger that this dark chapter of American history, as the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana warns in his famous aphorism quoted at the beginning of this column, could be repeated — this time against America’s estimated 1.3 million Muslims.

The open hatred that the 9/11 attacks have generated against Muslims ignores the fact that, of the more than 3,500 people who were slaughtered at the hands of the 19 al-Qaida terrorists, there were dozens of victims who were themselves Muslims — including Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old New York City police cadet who was also a part-time ambulance driver and a medical student; and Mohammed Jawarta, who worked for MAS, a private security firm.

Let’s not forget that among the nation’s 1.3 million Muslims include a significant number of celebrities, including three-time heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali; basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; the reigning Miss USA, Rima Fakiah — even though she has herself come out against the proposed Cordoba House Islamic Center; actor/comedian Dave Chappelle; Aasif Mandvi, of the faux-news comedy “Daily Show;” and composer A. R. Rahman, a frequent visitor to the U.S. from India who’s best known for scoring the music of the Golden Globe and Oscar-winning film, “Slumdog Millionaire.”

WAVE OF ISLAMOPHOBIA A DANGEROUS PRECURSOR TO OUTRIGHT FASCISM

The strong, passionate feelings expressed by the loved ones of the more than 3,500 people murdered by the 9/11 terrorists are something that has to be taken seriously. But the voices of the relatives of the 9/11 victims have, unfortunately, been joined by an ugly chorus of anti-Muslim bigots and extremely arrogant WASP evangelicals who believe that all non-Christian people of faith are condemned to go to hell for praying to a “false god.”

That this chorus is disregarding the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion to ALL Americans — including the nation’s Muslims — is an obscene affront to the very foundations upon which this country was built — and to which I, as a member of a faith minority myself (I’m a Wiccan) — must raise my voice in protest.

It is also a dangerous descent into an ideology that this country sent up to 12 million of its bravest to fight against in World War II.

That ideology is fascism — the belief that one race or one religion or one ethnicity or one nationality is superior to all others and/or that all others are evil. What some Americans are saying about Muslims today is little different from what Hitler and his Nazis said about Jews in Germany more than 70 years ago.

Even Japanese-American survivors of the World War II-era internment see dangerous parallels between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, with some survivors warning within days of the 9/11 attacks that what happened to them could happen to American Muslims.

Santayana is right. Those who cannot remember the past truly are condemned to repeat it.

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

President Striking a Delicate Political Balancing Act, Reassuring Military Commanders That His 2011 Deadline for U.S. Troop Pullout From Iraq ‘Isn’t Set in Stone’ While Seeking to Assuage the Democratic Party’s Anti-War Hardliners

As the last U.S. combat brigade in Iraq prepared to leave the country and cross the border into neighboring Kuwait early Monday — seven years after the U.S.-led invasion to topple dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime and 20 years after Saddam sent his army to invade Kuwait — some 50,000 American troops are to remain Iraq until the end of 2011 to advise Iraqi forces and protect American interests. But there is some doubt that President Obama will keep his self-imposed deadline and American forces could remain in Iraq indefinitely. (Photo: Reuters)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. PDT Tuesday, August 24, 2010)

===============
SPECIAL REPORT
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By GARETH PORTER
Inter-Press Service
(Published under a Creative Commons license)

When the Obama administration unveiled its plan last week for an improvised State Department-controlled army of contractors to replace all U.S. combat troops in Iraq by the end of 2011, critics associated with the U.S. command attacked the transition plan, insisting that the United States must continue to assume that U.S. combat forces should and can remain in Iraq indefinitely.

But the differences between the administration and its critics over the issue of a long-term U.S. presence may be more apparent than real.

All indications are that the administration expects to renegotiate the security agreement with the Iraqi government to allow a post-2011 combat presence of up to 10,000 troops, once a new government is formed in Baghdad.

OBAMA WALKING A POLITICAL TIGHTROPE AS MIDTERM ELECTIONS LOOM

But Obama, fearing a backlash from anti-war voters in the Democratic Party, who have already become disenchanted with him over Afghanistan, is trying to play down that possibility. Instead, the White House is trying to reassure its anti-war base that the U.S. military role in Iraq is coming to an end.

An unnamed administration official who favors a longer-term presence in Iraq suggested to The New York Times last week that the administration’s refusal to openly refer to plans for such a U.S. combat force in Iraq beyond 2011 hinges on its concern about the coming midterm congressional elections and wariness about the continuing Iraqi negotiations on a new government.

Vice President Joe Biden said in an address prepared for delivery Monday that it would take a “complete failure” of Iraqi security forces to prompt the United States to resume combat.

Obama referred to what he called “a transitional force” in his speech on August 2 — ironically, the 20th anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait — pledging that it would remain “until we remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of the next year.”

He also declared an end to the U.S. “combat mission” in Iraq as of August 31. But an official acknowledged that combat would continue and would not necessarily be confined to defending against attacks on U.S. personnel.

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: TRANSITION PLAN STILL BEING WORKED OUT

The administration decided on the transition from military to civilian responsibility for security at an inter-agency meeting the week of July 19. It made the broad outlines of the plan public at an August 16 State Department news briefing and another briefing the following day, even though crucial details had not been worked out.

Colin Kahl, the deputy assistant defense secretary of for Middle Eastern affairs and Michael Corbin, Kahl’s counterpart at the State Department, presented the administration’s plan for what they called a “transition from a military to civilian relationship” with Iraq.

PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTORS TO TAKE OVER FROM U.S. TROOPS

The plan involves replacing the official U.S. military presence in Iraq with a much smaller State Department-run force of private security contractors. Press reports have indicated that the force will number several thousand, and that it is seeking 29 helicopters; 60 personnel carriers that are resistant to improvised explosive devices; and a fleet of 1,320 armored vehicles.

The contractor force would also operate radars so it can call in airstrikes and fly reconnaissance drones, according to an August 21 report in The New York Times.

Kahl argued that the transition is justified by security trends in Iraq. He said al-Qaida is “weaker than it’s ever been,” that the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army has been “largely disbanded” and that there is no strategic threat to the Iraqi government.

CRITICS NOT CONVINCED IRAQIS READY TO TAKE CHARGE OF THEIR OWN SECURITY

That provoked predictable criticism from those whose careers have become linked to the fate of the U.S. military in Iraq and who continue to view the United States as having enormous power to decide the fate of the country.

Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, a frequent visitor to Iraq at the invitation of General David Petraeus, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and General Ray Odierno, Petraeus’ successor, dismissed the idea of giving the former U.S. military role in Iraq to the State Department and Kahl’s assessment of security trends as far too optimistic.

Some officials were talking “as if we’re on the five-yard line,” Pollack told the Christian Science Monitor. “We’re on more like the 40 –- and it’s probably our 40.”

Pollack argued that the U.S. has great influence in Iraq, which it must use for “persuading” Iraqi leaders to do various things. If the U.S. troop presence ends in 2011, he argued, that U.S. power would suffer.

CONCERN OVER IRAQ’S STILL-UNRESOLVED POLITICAL CRISIS

Other variants of that argument were offered by Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, both of whom have been frequent guests of the U.S. command in Iraq and have generally hewed to the military view of Iraq policy.

Ryan Crocker, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who shared the media spotlight and adulation of Congress with Petraeus from 2007 to 2009 before retiring from the Foreign Service, opined that the military needs to keep enough presence in Iraq to encourage Iraq’s generals to stay out of politics.

The real position of the administration over the issue is not much different from that of its critics, however. In answer to a question after a briefing August 17, Kahl said, “We’re not going to abandon them. We’re in this for the long term.”

Then Kahl observed, “Iraq is not going to need tens of thousands of [American] forces.” That is consistent with the figure of 5,000 to 10,000 being called for by the military, according to the administration official quoted by The New York Times on August 18.

‘WE HAVE TO SEE WHAT BAGHDAD DOES NEXT’

At another point, Kahl said, “We’ll just have to see what the Iraqi government will do,” adding that the “vast majority of political actors in Iraq want a long-term partnership with the United States.”

It is been generally assumed among U.S. officers and diplomats and the Iraqi officials with whom they talk that once a new Iraqi government is agreed on, it will begin talks on a longer-term U.S. troop presence, as former National Security Council official Brett H. McGurk told the Times last month.

At a Pentagon press conference in February, General Odierno referred to the purchase by the Iraqi government of “significant amounts of military materiel from the United States,” including M1A1 tanks and helicopters.

Odierno said he expected it would require a “small contingent” of U.S. personnel to “train and advise” the Iraqis. That formula implicitly anticipated a continuation of the U.S. combat presence in the guise of “advisory and assistance” units.

COMMANDERS TOLD: DON’T STRAY FROM WHITE HOUSE MESSAGE

But the administration apparently made it clear to Odierno and to others that they were not to contradict the administration’s public posture that U.S. troops were being withdrawn by the end of 2011.

During the interagency meeting that adopted the administration’s transition plan, Odierno told reporters at a breakfast meeting July 21 he expected U.S. troops in Iraq to be down to zero by the end of 2011.

Meanwhile, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is not admitting publicly that it would consider such an extension of the U.S. troop presence. The spokesman for al-Maliki said on August 12 there are alternatives to keeping U.S. troops in the country, such as signing “non-aggression and non-interference pacts” with its neighbors.

# # #

Special Report Copyright 2010, Inter-Press Service. Republished under a Creative Commons License.
The ‘Skeeter Bites Report Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. all rights reserved.

It’s on Private Property Owned by Muslims; They Have Every Right Under the First Amendment’s Guarantee of Freedom of Religion to Build a House of Worship on Their Property — Lawsuit to Stop Proposed Mosque Filed By Conservative Group Founded By Christian Evangelist Pat Robertson Should Be Thrown Out

Controversy continued to build over construction of a proposed mosque on this New York City block near Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center towers that were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Opponents of the mosque have become more vocal — including Republicans who have vowed to make it a campaign issue in the fall. Lawyers with ties to Christian evangelist Pat Robertson have sued to block construction of the mosque, but are unlikely to be successful — and could provoke a First Amendment freedom-of-religion countersuit by the Muslim owners of the property.  (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, August 17, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

It’s a controversy that’s been building for months and now threatens to explode into a major First Amendment battle over Muslims’ constitutional right to freedom of worship.

It also threatens to further roil an already volatile midterm election campaign.

“It” is proposed mosque to be built on private, Muslim-owned property in New York near Ground Zero, the site of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when 19 al-Qaida extremists hijacked four California-bound airliners shortly after takeoff. Two of them, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were slammed into the World Trade Center, destroying the landmark twin towers and killing more than 3,000 people.

Lawyers from a conservative group founded by Christian evangelist Pat Robertson have filed a lawsuit to block the mosque. But the lawsuit by Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice is very likely to fail — and could even provoke a First Amendment freedom-of-religion countersuit by the Muslim owners of the property.

PLANS FOR MOSQUE HAVE BEEN CONTROVERSIAL SINCE MAY

Plans to build the mosque on a private, Muslim-owned property located on Park Place, just two blocks from Ground Zero, had been controversial from the day they were announced in May. The planned 13-story mosque and cultural center would replace a building that formerly housed a clothing store and has stood unused since the 9/11 attacks, its interiors heavily damaged by debris from the fallen twin towers. The project includes a 500-seat theater and athletic center.

Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who helped found the Cordoba Initiative following the 9/11 attacks and whose organization is spearheading the project, along with the American Society for Muslim Advancement, said the proposed Islamic center is intended to foster better relations between the West and Muslims and that it would be open to the general public.

Rauf, the imam, or spiritual leader, of the nearby Al-Farah Mosque on West Broadway, purchased the property last December for $4.85 million, according to official city records. The 29-year-old, 175-member Al-Farah congregation is made up primarily of Sufi Muslims who practice a more spiritually-focused, mystical tradition of Islam, according to NY Resident magazine.

Plans call for the mosque to be completed in time for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in 2011. When completed, the mosque could house as many as 2,000 people for Friday prayers.

RAUF A LONGTIME ADVOCATE OF CLOSER TIES BETWEEN THE MUSLIM WORLD AND THE WEST . . .

Rauf is an author and longtime activist who’s made it his personal mission since the 9/11 attacks to improve relations between the Muslim world and the West. He has been imam of the al-Farah Mosque since 1983. The 62-year-old native of Kuwait, who has lived in the United States since 1965 and has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since 1977, said in an interview with NY Resident magazine, that the American system of government, with its principles of tolerance, is a paragon of Islamic ideals — even if the country sometimes falls short of those values.

He is the author of three books on Islam and its place in contemporary Western society, including What’s Right with Islam. In a September 30, 2001 interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Rauf condemned the 9/11 attacks as un-Islamic. “Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam.” he said. “That’s just as absurd as associating Hitler with Christianity, or David Koresh with Christianity. There are always people who will do peculiar things, and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion. But the Koran is… God says in the Koran that they think that they are doing right, but they are doing wrong.”

. . . WHILE ALSO A CRITIC OF U.S. POLICY IN MIDDLE EAST

But in that same interview, Rauf said that the attacks were, in part, “a reaction against the U.S. government politically, where we espouse principles of democracy and human rights, [but] where we ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries.”

And in a 2004 comment made while on a visit to Australia that drew criticism back home, Rauf compared the 9/11 attacks to the Western allies’ firebombing of the German city of Dresden and nuclear bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II. “The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians,” he said. “But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.”

Rauf also called on the U.S. government to reduce the threat of terrorism by altering its policies in the Middle East, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ironically, the State Department announced last week that it was sending Rauf on a religious outreach trip to the Persian Gulf states of Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to talk about Muslim life in America and to promote religious tolerance — a move that drew sharp criticism from conservatives.

FAMILIES OF 9/11 VICTIMS FIERCELY OPPOSE MOSQUE . . .

The two Muslim organizations in charge of the project say that the $100 million complex will create a venue for mainstream Islam and a counterbalance to the extremism that motivated the 9/11 hijackers. But from the beginning, the planned mosque has been under fire from relatives of 9/11 victims, who say they are deeply offended by the mosque being built so close to where their loved ones were killed.

That many families of 9/11 victims oppose the mosque being located so close to Ground Zero is understandable, given the tremendous emotional trauma they suffered.
Nancy Nee of Long Island, whose brother, George Cain, a New York City firefighter, was killed when the twin towers collapsed, told AOL News on August 4 that she wanted Muslims to be able to build a community center — but somewhere farther away from Ground Zero.

“We’re upset,” Nee said. “Not at the fact that Muslims have a right to practice their religion here … we’re not like that. But I feel that it’s a slap in the face to put it close to Ground Zero.”

“I think it’s an insult, an in-your-face insult, to the families of the victims of 9/11,” said Leonard Castrianno, Sr. of Amherst, N.Y., who lost his son, Leonard, Jr., in the attack. “What makes it more insulting is that they want to [finish the] building on [the tenth anniversary of the attacks] on 9/11/11,” he told the Buffalo News.

. . . BUT SO ALSO DO ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTS AND CHRISTIAN SUPREMACISTS

Unfortunately, the opposition also includes a passel of anti-Muslim bigots and Christian supremacists — including a controversial right-wing Christian evangelist, Bill Keller, who announced in July that he would counter the mosque with a nearby Christian center.

“How do you battle the darkness? With the light!” the fundamentalist Keller declared on his 9/11 Christian Center at Ground Zero Web site, which is laced with vicious anti-Muslim invectives. Keller says he wants to take “an ongoing stand” against the mosque and “combat this new evil being constructed near Ground Zero” and “bring people the Truth of God’s Word and the love and hope of Jesus Christ!”

Mark Williams, the former chairman of the Tea Party Express, touched off a firestorm of controversy in June, when, in a blog post on his Web site, MarkTalk.com, he denounced the proposed mosque as “a monument to the 9/11 terrorists” and a place “for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god,” according to the New York Daily News. Williams resigned as chairman of Tea Party Express to devote full-time to fighting against the mosque.

In late June, thousands staged a protest against the proposed mosque, a demonstration that was virtually ignored by the mainstream media — including the conservative-leaning Fox News Channel and the New York Post — but which received heavy coverage on numerous right-wing Web sites, including that of Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.

FUROR OVER MOSQUE BECOMES A CAMPAIGN ISSUE

The furor over the proposed mosque became a campaign issue in the upcoming midterm congressional elections Friday when President Obama spoke out in support of the project during a White House dinner marking the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“Let me be clear,” the president said. “As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.

“This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable,” Obama added.

The president’s remarks drew almost immediate criticism from Republicans, with some promising to make the mosque a campaign issue. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday” that the president’s remarks “demonstrate that Washington, the White House, the administration, the president himself seems to be disconnected from the mainstream of America.”

Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, promptly fired back. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Van Hollen said that the president “stating the principle that under our great constitution, we do not discriminate against people based on their religion.” Van Hollen added that “it would be wrong to politicize the issue” and that New Yorkers should be left to discuss it.

GROUP WITH TIES TO ROBERTSON SUES TO BLOCK MOSQUE

Meanwhile, a conservative group founded by Robertson filed suit in New York state court, seeking to overturn the unanimous vote of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to deny landmark status for the damaged former Burlington Coat Factory building, paving the way for its demolition to make way for the mosque.

The lawsuit charges that the city violated its own policies and procedures in rejecting landmark status and exhibited “an arbitrary and capricious abuse of discretion and contrary to decades of administrative precedent.”

It is highly unlikely that the ACLJ’s lawsuit will succeed — or even if it will be heard. Not only is the suit likely to be dismissed on the grounds that the Muslim owners of the property have every right under the First Amendment to a build a house of worship on their Park Place property, but as lawyers for an organization founded by a Christian evangelist with a long record of making highly controversial statements — including a slam at Islam last November as a “violent political system” — they might not have legal standing to bring suit to stop the mosque in the first place.

In any case, Robertson’s group is skating on dangerously thin legal ice. The Muslim owners of the property could file a countersuit accusing Robertson’s group of seeking to force the city to deny them the right to build their mosque, which would clearly violate their First Amendment right to freedom of worship on their own property.

The fact is, the Muslims who purchased the Park Place property did so in full compliance with the law. They own it. They have every right under the First Amendment to build a house of worship on it, if that is want they want to do.

Neither the 9/11 families, nor all the politicians, Islamophobic bigots and Christian supremacists who oppose the mosque have any constitutional right to stop it. Period. End of story.

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

With Two Federal Courts on Opposite Coasts Declaring That the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 Both Violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Foes of Marriage for Gay and Lesbian Couples Fall Into Siege Mentality as a Final Ruling by the Supreme Court Is Now All But Inevitable

It’s now a virtual certainty that the Supreme Court will have the final say on whether gay and lesbian couples have the same freedom to marry under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that interracial and interfaith couples have. With federal courts in Massachusetts and California having ruled, respectively, that the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 and California’s voter-approved Proposition 8 both violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause, some opponents of extending marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples already are reacting with outbursts of paranoid hysteria. (Photo courtesy U.S. Supreme Court Web site)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Wednesday, August 11, 2010)
(Updated 11:00 a.m. EDT Friday, August 13, 2010)

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NOTE TO READERS:This week’s column — my first since returning from a two-week vacation — is being published a day later than usual, due to unexpected travel delays that resulted in my returning home too late for my Monday-night deadline. I apologize for the delay. Next week’s column will appear as usual on Tuesday, August 16.

By SKEETER SANDERS

Time appears to be running out for opponents of marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

Within the space of a month, two federal courts — one in Massachusetts, the other in California — have ruled that laws that prohibit same-gender couples from marrying or deny federal recognition to such marriages are unconstitutional under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In San Francisco, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled last Wednesday that Proposition 8, a voter-approved measure that bars gay and lesbian couples from marrying, “fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license” and, in fact, “does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.”

Judge Walker’s ruling came just weeks after another U.S. District Court judge in Boston struck down the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act. Judge Joseph Tauro ruled May 8 that DOMA, as the law is commonly known, unconstitutionally denies federal spousal benefits to married gay and lesbian couples in Massachusetts — where same-gender marriage has been legal since 2004 — in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and intrudes upon the state’s exclusive authority over marriage under the Tenth Amendment.

With a final decision by the U.S. Supreme Court now all but inevitable — and which potentially could produce at least a 5-4 majority to uphold the lower court rulings — some foes of same-gender marriage already are reacting with paroxysms of paranoid hysteria, with a niece of civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. going so far as calling such marriages “genocide.”

ANTI-GAY PARANOIA ON FULL DISPLAY AT RALLY IN ATLANTA

Speaking at a sparsely-attended rally in Atlanta called by the right-wing National Organization for Marriage, Alveda King denounced same-gender marriage. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to be extinct, and none of us wants to be,” she said. “So we don’t want genocide! We don’t want to destroy the sacred institution of marriage!”

King insisted that “It is statistically proven that the strongest institution that guarantees procreation and continuity of the generations is marriage between one man and one woman” — ignoring the fact that advances in medical technology have made it possible since the late 1970s for gay and lesbian couples to procreate through in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination.

Alveda King’s opposition stands in stark contrast to that of her late aunt, Coretta Scott King, who spoke out in 2004 in support of same-gender marriage and against a proposed federal constitutional amendment to ban it.

“Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union,” she told USA Today. “A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.”

The NOM rally drew only about 35 participants, who were outnumbered by more than 300 counter-demonstrators, who voiced their approval of Walker’s decision.

RIGHT-WING PUNDITS GO BERSERK, ATTACK JUDGE WALKER

Predictably, right-wing pundits went berserk, attacking Judge Walker for alleged “judicial activism” and “judicial tyranny,” in the words of the Heritage Foundation’s Chuck Donovan. Donovan called the ruling “an affront to the millions of California voters who approved Proposition 8 in 2008 after months of vigorous public debate.”

Robert Knight, a senior writer and correspondent for the right-wing Coral Ridge Ministries, went farther: He accused Judge Walker of having “embraced the false premise that homosexuality is morally irrelevant or even something to be promoted through public policy” and denounced his ruling on Prop. 8 as a display of “contempt for the rule of law” and even part of “the criminalization of not only Christianity but of the foundational values of civilization itself.”

Meanwhile Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas) sought unsuccessfully to push for a resolution in the House during its one-day session on Monday condemning Judge Walker’s ruling. He attacked Walker personally, pointing out the fact that Walker is gay. “For one openly homosexual judge to toss aside seven million voters (and 45 state laws on marriage if this case advances) is the height of government arrogance.” he said. “And it’s certainly not good public policy. A society without accountability or moral boundaries is a society that will not long survive.”

But Judge Walker is no liberal. A conservative jurist who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, Walker’s nomination was stalled for two years by Senate Democrats who objected to his membership in an all-male private club and to his having been the attorney representing the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee in its 1982 copyright-infringement lawsuit against the organizers of the first Gay Games in San Francisco, originally dubbed the “Gay Olympics.”

Two dozen House Democrats, led by now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), whose district includes San Francisco, opposed Walker’s nomination because of his alleged “insensitivity” to gays while representing the IOC and USOC. Walker was renominated in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush and elevated to Chief Judge of the U.S District Court for Northern California in 2004 by President George W. Bush.

IT’S THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, STUPID!

Of course, Donovan, Knight, Smith and other right-wingers conveniently ignore the fact that those seven million Californians who voted for Prop. 8 did so in direct defiance of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which states quite explicitly that “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As former Solicitor General Ted Olson, the conservative half of the legal team that brought suit against Prop. 8, said in an August 8 interview on “Fox News Sunday,” the U.S. Supreme Court has fourteen times since 1888 — most famously with its landmark 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision that struck down laws that banned interracial marriages — “articulated that the right to marriage is a fundamental right. We’re not talking about a new right here.”

When reminded by host Chris Wallace that seven million Californians voted in favor of Prop. 8, Olson shot back that six million Californians voted in the 1960s “to change their constitution to say that you could discriminate on the basis of race in the sale of your home. The United States Supreme Court struck that down” as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“We do not put the Bill of Rights to a vote,” he said.

Olson noted that the high court has repeatedly defined marriage “as the most fundamental relationship we have in this country,” one that cannot be denied to certain individuals because of their race, nationality, religion or creed. Nor, Olson argued, should it be denied to certain individuals because of their gender.

HOW WILL THE SUPREME COURT RULE?

While both sides in the same-gender marriage fight now concede that the issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, no one can predict how long it will take before the justices will finally take up the case. Nor can anyone predict which case the justices will take up first: The Prop. 8 case, known officially as Perry v. Schwarzenegger, or the Massachusetts case against the federal Defense of Marriage Act, known officially as Massachusetts v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Although both U.S. District Court judges — Walker in San Francisco and Tauro in Boston — invoked the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause, the Massachusetts case differs substantially from the California case in that whereas Prop. 8 barred gay and lesbian couples in California from marrying, DOMA denied federal spousal benefits to already-married gay and lesbian couples in the Bay State, where same-gender marriage has been legal for six years.

Judge Tauro ruled that DOMA also violates the Tenth Amendment, “by forcing the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts] to engage in invidious discrimination against its own citizens in order to receive and retain federal funds in connection with two joint federal-state programs.”

IT’S UP TO JUSTICE KENNEDY WHICH WAY THE HIGH COURT WILL GO

No one expects the Supreme Court’s four conservatives — Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts — to be sympathetic to the notion that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry. Likewise, no one expects the court’s three liberals — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor — nor its newest justice, Elena Kagan, to favor denying full marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples, either.

That leaves it up the court’s ninth justice, moderate-conservative Anthony Kennedy, to be the pivotal fifth justice. And given the fact that Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in two previous cases that gays won (Romer v. Evans in 1996 and Lawrence v. Texas in 2003) as well as a separate opinion concurring with the majority in a third ruling in June seen as a victory for gays (Christian Legal Society v. Martinez), the odds are very good that if the justices agree to take up the Prop. 8 case, the court will split at least 5-4 in favor of affirming Judge Walker’s ruling.

Is it any wonder, then, that some opponents of same-gender marriage are plunging headlong into paranoia? They know that the votes aren’t there in Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-gender marriage — that’s already been tried in 2005 when the Republicans controlled Congress and it failed to garner anywhere near the two-thirds majorities in both houses required for passage.

So as the battle over same-gender marriage heads inexorably toward the final showdown in the Supreme Court, expect even more extreme rhetoric from the far right, as their paranoid homophobia become more and more transparent.

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. all rights reserved.