Wilfredo Amr Ruiz: ‘We Are Not at War With Islam' - Ad Criticizing Muslims

12 May 2012

By Juan Cole

Former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama have persistently affirmed: "We are not at war with Islam," trying to assure 1.7 billion Muslims that the military actions of the so-called "war against terrorism" do not constitute belligerence against Islam or Muslims.

This incessant message of denial is hard to swallow by many sectors of our society, and the world at large, since the United States has engaged in multiple wars of occupation in Muslim countries including Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, it conducts routine military incursions and bombardment campaigns on Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and other Muslim countries. Furthermore, thousands of Muslim citizens around the world are subjected to arrest without formal accusations or due process of law. Incarcerations and even torture takes place at a network of international secret prisons and "black hole" locations operated or accessed by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Unfortunately, in the American political arena there is also the perception that the government security and intelligence agencies and military apparatus are at war with Islam and Muslims. They substantiate this notion with continuous discriminatory and prejudiced policies affecting American Muslims and their institutions. Let us take, for example, the harsh experience New York Muslims are undergoing with the NYPD. They are subject to widespread and ongoing espionage policies from their own police department, which include the opening of dossiers based on ethnic and religious profiling. This openly unconstitutional practice is not based on suspiciousness of them committing crimes or being engaged in an ongoing criminal enterprise. Rather, the information recorded documents the restaurants they frequent, the books they check out, and even the times and places where they conduct their daily prayers.

Evidently, the constant Islamophobic discourses have resonated to the military branches, resulting in the offering of multiple training courses with discriminatory, bigoted and offensive materials. Some of these academic materials recently discovered are taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., in which mainstream Muslim persons and organizations are characterized as radical, violent extremists. The course even calls for treating the Muslim civilian population the way the Japanese were dealt with at Hiroshima, with nuclear attacks on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and wiping out civilians. It promotes a total war on Islam affirming that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. The military training course participants are encouraged to think of themselves as a "resistance movement to Islam." Other various training courses with xenophobic and bigoted content offered to the FBI have also been exposed. These are not isolated and unique classes, but multiple trainings held at numerous venues to hundreds of military officers and intelligence agents that are responsible for the safety and security of our nation. Notwithstanding the military and FBI's promises to review their courses and purge the training curriculums of Islamophobic materials, we need ask ourselves: How many other courses (most of them classified as "Secret") have been offered and, perhaps, are still being offered in these highly secured and secret agencies without public exposure?

The sad reality is that our nation has institutionalized vigilance based on stereotypical ethnic and religious profiling. Let us just examine for a moment the recent incident at Fort Lauderdale International Airport, where an 18-month-old toddler, a daughter of American parents of Middle Eastern descent, was ordered off a plane by Jet Blue Airline's officials who claimed she was on the TSA's "no fly" list: a list obviously fed with the names of people selected based on ethnic and religious profiling. The toddler case is not the only one of its kind, as another 500 American citizens are also in these puzzling and sinister lists in the absence of due process. The lists are not only ineffective, but openly unconstitutional because individuals are included without notification or being told why they are on the list and without the chance to rebut the basis of their inclusion.

What will our political leaders do to try to erase the idea that the Nation is engaged in a war against Islam and Muslims? The major challenge they confront in this task is that the more time elapses, the more discrimination, oppression, persecution and injustices cements against American Muslims and their institutions.

President Obama still has the option and opportunity to rise to the occasion and confront this most delicate situation at the level it merits. He might, perhaps, start cleaning and straightening the Executive Branch from head to toe. The president should take steps that truly guarantee the elimination of racial and religious profiling exercised by law enforcement agencies and should swiftly end all the futile wars on Muslim countries once and for all. Perhaps, he should follow the Executive Order he signed back on Jan. 22, 2009, mandating the "Closure of Detention Facilities at Guantanamo" and the "Immediate Review of All Guantanamo Detentions." Only such decisive actions will sustain the hollowed presidential words: "We are not at war with Islam."

Ad Criticizing Muslim Chaplain At WFU Draws Fire

An alumnus from Wake Forest University who took out an advertisement in Monday's Winston-Salem Journal criticizing Imam Khalid Griggs, a university chaplain, said he did so as a way of pushing his alma mater into playing host to a debate on Shariah law.

In the ad, which ran the day of Wake Forest's graduation, Donald Woodsmall claims that Griggs is a "Shariah supremacist who believes that everyone should live under Islamic Shariah law, with Islamic law replacing all man-made laws, including the U.S. Constitution."

Griggs did not return emails and a phone call. Brett Eaton, a spokesman for Wake Forest, said the university would not comment on the ad.

Woodsmall, a 1977 graduate of Wake Forest, is a businessman who lives near Charlottesville, Va. He has criticized the university's decision in 2010 to hire Griggs. Griggs is also the imam of the Community Mosque on Waughtown Street.

For the past several months, Woodsmall has tried to get President Nathan Hatch to consent to a symposium on Shariah law, the moral code and religious law of Islam. Woodsmall believes Muslims who adhere to Shariah are a threat to national security.

His correspondences with Hatch have also included accusations that Griggs is following the ideology of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center.

Hatch has declined the requests for a symposium.

Woodsmall said Tuesday that he doesn't want to get Griggs fired.

"If Wake Forest believes I'm wrong, then let's have a symposium or debate. My goal is to educate as many people as possible, at Wake Forest and beyond, what Shariah law is and why it's a threat to America," Woodsmall said. "I think it's of national importance, not just to Wake Forest but to a nation."

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group based in Washington, called the ad a "bizarro, anti-Shariah diatribe," of the type becoming more common since the controversy over Park 51, the so-called ground zero mosque, in New York.

Hooper criticized the Journal for running the ad.

"This is the kind of language reserved for Internet hate sites," Hooper said. "It's a big concern that a reputable newspaper would publish that kind of unanswered hate without giving the person targeted some kind of opportunity to respond or challenge whether it should even be published. They hope that if they throw enough mud against the wall, some of it will stick, and Muslims deal with that tactic everyday in America."

Jeffrey Green, the Journal's president and publisher, said: "We treated this ad the same way we do political advertising. The ad was the opinion of the individual that bought the space. He paid for it and signed his name to it."

Woodsmall has started a Facebook page titled Alumni for a Shariah-Free Wake Forest. As of late Monday night, it had 44 "likes."

 

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