Islamic Takeover In The US?



European Court Upholds France's Burqa Ban – NPR
by KRISHNADEV CALAMUR
July 01, 2014

The European Court of Human Rights has upheld France's ban on face-covering veils, in a closely watched case that was brought by a Muslim woman who said the law violated her freedom of religion.

The French-born woman, who is in her mid-20s, was not named. She said she wore the burqa and niqab in accordance with her faith and convictions. And, she said, she was not pressured by her family to dress in this way. The woman said that the French ban on the veils was discriminatory, and violated her privacy and freedom of religion and expression. She lodged her complaint with the Strasbourg, France-based court in 2011, soon after the French law went into effect.

But on Tuesday the court ruled that France's ban was legitimate because it was "proportionate to the aim pursued, namely the preservation of the conditions of 'living together' " of all French citizens.

The French law is controversial (partly because the country has Europe's largest Muslim population), and Tuesday's decision is likely to be no less so. As Eleanor Beardsley reported on All Things Considered last year, the law has sparked protests and violence.

Under the law, women wearing the face-covering veil can be fined up to 150 euros (about $200) and/or be made to attend a class on citizenship. Critics say the ban targets Muslims and Islam.




An unnamed Islamic French-born woman complained to the European Court On Human Rights that a new law banning the Burqa in France restricted her religious freedom and privacy. “But on Tuesday the court ruled that France's ban was legitimate because it was 'proportionate to the aim pursued, namely the preservation of the conditions of 'living
together' of all French citizens.”

Yesterday, by coincidence, I happened to receive an email which purported to be a letter by a Christian woman from an Islamic background that portrayed modern Islam's repression of women and other things under the Sharia Law. It included the fear that Islamic people want to move to Western countries in large enough numbers, along with having children there, with the goal of becoming a majority in all countries and politically taking over the governments, substituting Sharia Law for Western.

It was an attempt to pass along the fear that some people have of having Islamic people within their borders, and was quite inflamatory. The fact that some Islamic people in France have tried to overthrow a French law that is, I'm sure, aimed at prohibiting the infiltration of Sharia Law into France, shows that they are indeed trying to resist merging with the larger French culture. What has frightened me about Islamic groups in Western countries is the occurrence of at least two news reports of “honor killings” by Islamic immigrant men within the US, and in France within the last ten years or so there have been riots in Islamic immigrant neighborhoods there. I sympathize with France in this instance, because I do think that the anti-feminist traditions and strong opposition to other religions which exist currently in so many Islamic nations are poisonous to freedom in general, such as our religious freedoms, and women's rights in particular, wherever they are allowed to take hold.

I didn't pass that email on to my mailing list because I think we already have enough cultural prejudices in this country, and the development of witch hunts over religion is one of the greatest evils on earth wherever it has occurred. After 9/11 a non-Muslim Sikh was shot in the street in an American city for wearing a turban. Europe was full of such things in the 1600s and 1700s, and that's why so many people left Europe at that time for America. The state of Pennsylvania in particular offered complete freedom of religion before we were a nation, and then it was written as a basic precept into the Constitution of the new United States. Freedom from a state religion of any kind is one of our most important liberties in this country. Indeed the lack of freedom even to think my own thoughts would be abhorrent. Nothing stops intellectual progress like a closed-minded viewpoint.

People with a mindset to overturn this principle and put something as hideous as Sharia Law into its place are a basic danger if they should become too populous, too controlling or refuse to adapt to Western ways, but those very groups are allowed to maintain their beliefs here under our constitution. That is as it should be, because the rule of freedom is more important. Any group, however, that becomes a threat, such as fostering jihadism within our very borders, will certainly be combated strongly by our Homeland Security and FBI. Freedom of religion does not include the right to overthrow the US government. That will especially be true now that ISIS (now called the Islamic State) has openly threatened the US and Western targets abroad. I'm not against Islam, per se, because many Islamic people are peaceful; but all radical and politically motivated religious groups are by their nature enemies of the US, and a genuine threat to peace. I'm waiting with some tension to see what happens in Iraq and that target area of ISIS expansionism. Just as a case in point, please see this conservative description of Hamtramck, MI, a city that according to this article has been taken over by radical Islamists. Then see the Wikipedia articles for balance.


http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/zieve/070111
January 11, 2007
Michigan: the Islamic capital of the US
By Sher Zieve

As of 2005, Michigan held the largest and still growing Muslim population in the United States and the second largest Arab population outside of the Middle East. Outside of Muslim-run countries, Paris — which still experiences nightly vehicle torchings and mayhem in its Islamic neighborhoods — has the largest. It is estimated that eight million Muslims now live in the US and their numbers are continuing to grow. Islam is now the second-largest religious body in the United States and is said to be its fastest growing religious movement.

Although hundreds of long-time residents of Hamtramck, MI protested the city allowing the five-times-per-day Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast over Hamtramck's loudspeakers, the city council voted unanimously in April 2004 to allow it. Prior to the city council making its decision, public input from any citizens (except Muslims) had not been allowed. This continues today. Hamtramck resident Bob Golen was outraged by the city council's actions and said: "So they had made up their mind before any public meeting and it's been five-nothing ever since. This is only the beginning. They're going to use Hamtramck as a precedent. This is coming to your town, to the town down the road, and to the [next] town down the road." Golen added that, after the city council voted to allow the calls to prayer, one of the city councilmen said that he was "proud to set a precedent in this country."
Note: The most dangerous element of this "precedent" appears to be a US city council making a unilateral decision. No input from non-Muslim US citizen-residents was required — or permitted. Sound a bit like Shari'a law (which requires only Islamic clerics to make decisions) to you? It should. Only one-third of Hamtramck's population is Muslim. However, it is the group that appears to now wield the proverbial sword when and where its religious practices are involved. Hamtramck's Christians and Jews need not waste their time protesting, as this pro-Muslim (to the exclusion of other religions?) city council now firmly appears to be in control of matters relating to Islam.

Zieve, acknowledges that he is a conservative Republican, who do tend to have an opposition to all religions except Christianity, but if this article is factually correct, it does appear to be a case of Muslims moving into a small US town and taking over politically rather than “blending in.” Zieve is quoted here: “It has been said before and I'll say it again: Certainly, not all Muslims are terrorists. But, easily, 90+% of all current terrorists are Muslims. The bed has been made and the only decision that currently appears available is if we choose to lie in it.”


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamtramck,_Michigan

Over the past thirty years, a large number of immigrants from the Middle East (especially Yemen) and South Asia (especially Bangladesh) have moved to the city. As of the 2010 American Community Survey, the city's foreign born population stood at 41.1%,[9] making it Michigan's most internationally diverse city (see more at Demographics below). The population was 43,355 in the 1950 Census, and 18,372 in 1990.
In 1997, the Utne Reader named Hamtramck one of "the 15 hippest neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada" in part for its punk and alternative music scene, its Buddhist temple, its cultural diversity, and its laid back blue-collar neighborhoods.[19]And in May 2003, Maxim Blender selected Hamtramck as the second "Most Rock N' Roll City" in the U.S., behindWilliamsburg in Brooklyn, New York City. Hamtramck is home of several of Michigan's most distinguished music venues.
In January 2004, members of the Al-Islah Islamic Center requested permission to use loudspeakers for the purpose of broadcasting the Islamic call to prayer. This request set off a contentious debate in the city, about the noise that would be caused by the call to prayer, eventually garnering national attention.[20] Ultimately, Hamtramck amended its noise ordinance in July 2004 regulating all religious sounds.[21]
From the 1990 Census to the 2000 Census the city's population increased by 25%. Sally Howell, author of "Competing for Muslims: New Strategies for Urban Renewal in Detroit", wrote that this was "overwhelmingly" due to immigration from majority Muslim countries.[35]
From 1990 to 2000, of all of the municipalities in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties, Hamtramck had the highest percentage growth in the Asian population. It had 222 Asians according to the 1990 U.S. Census and 2,382 according to the 2000 U.S. Census, an increase by 973%.[36]
In the 2000s a Bengali mosque named the Al-Islah Jamee Masjid wanted permission to broadcast the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, from loudspeakers outside of the mosque and requested this permission from the city government. It was one of the newer mosques in Hamtramck. Sally Howell, author of "Competing for Muslims: New Strategies for Urban Renewal in Detroit", wrote that the request "brought to a head simmering Islamophobic sentiments" in Hamtramck.[47] Muslims and interfaith activists supported the mosque. Some anti-Muslim activists, including some from other states including Kentucky and Ohio, participated in the controversy.[47] Howell added that the controversy, through an "international media storm", gave "a cathartic test of the "freedoms" we were said to be "fighting for" in Afghanistan and Iraq" to the remainder of the United States.[47] In 2004 the city council voted unanimously to allow mosques to broadcast the adhan on public streets, making it one of the few U.S. cities to allow this to occur. Some individuals had strongly objected to the allowing of the adhan.[51]


Dearborn, Michigan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 98,153.[5.... Dearborn residents are primarily of European or Middle Eastern heritage. German, Polish, Irish and Italian are the primary European ethnicities. Middle Eastern ancestries make up the largest ethnic grouping with Lebanese, Yemeni, Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian groups present. The Arab American National Museum (AANM) opened in Dearborn in 2005, the first museum in the world devoted to Arab-American history and culture. Most of the Arab-Americans in Dearborn and the Detroit area are ethnic Lebanese, who immigrated in the early twentieth century to work in the auto industry, like many immigrants to the area. They have been joined by more recent Arab immigrants from other nations. The city's population includes 40,000 Arab Americans.[18] Ethnic Arabs own many shops and businesses, offering services in both English and Arabic.[19] In the 2010 census, Arab Americans comprised 40% of Dearborn's population; many have been in the city for several generations. The city has the largest proportion of Arab Americans in the United States.[20] As of 2006 Dearborn also has the largestLebanese American population in the United States.[21]
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit previously operated the St. Alphonsus Elementary School in Dearborn. In 2005 the archdiocese announced that the school would close.[31]
Free speech controversy
Four members of the Christian group "Acts 17 Apologetics" were arrested and prosecuted for breach of the peace in 2010 because they were walking around the annual Arab-American Festival talking to people at the festival about Christianity.[38]All the charges, except one of failure to obey a police order, were thrown out by a jury.[39] During the festival, four other people from Apologetics were blocked from handing out Arabic-English copies of the Gospel of John on a public street. Police ordered them to stop filming the incident, to provide identification, and to move at least five blocks from the border of the fair.[40]
A Tea Party Senatorial candidate in Nevada, Sharron Angle, suggested that Dearborn was contributing to a non-widespread "militant terrorist situation,"[38][41] and said that the city was enforcing Islamic law.[38] Angle was sharply criticized by the Mayor Jack O'Reilly, who called her comments "shameful."[38] "He said they were based on distorted Tea Party accounts of the arrest of members of an anti-Islam group at an Arab festival."[38] Angle was defeated in the election by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Preacher Terry Jones planned a protest in 2011 outside the Islamic Center of America. Local authorities required him either to post a $45,000 "peace bond" to cover Dearborn's cost if Jones was attacked by extremists or to go to trial. Jones contested that requirement, and the jury voted on April 22 to require the posting of a $1 "peace bond", but Jones and his co-pastor Wayne Sapp continued to refuse to pay. They were held briefly in jail, while claiming violation of First Amendmentrights. That night Jones was released by the court.[42] The ACLU had filed an amicus brief in support of Jones's protest plans.[43]
Terry Jones led a rally at City Hall and then planned to speak at the annual Festival on June 18, 2011, but on his way there he was blocked by protesters, six of whom were arrested. Police said they did not have enough officers present to maintain safety.[48] Christian missionaries accompanied Jones with their own signs of protest; they were alleged by festivalgoers and protesters to have yelled insults at Arabs, Muslims, Islam, and Catholics.[49]
On April 7, 2012 Terry Jones led a protest in front of the Islamic Center of America, Dearborn, speaking about Islam and Free Speech. The mosque was placed on lock down. 30 police cars were there to block traffic and prevent a counter protest.[50]



These conflicts in Michigan over America allowing local changes in response to the Islamic religion seems to be coming mainly from the very conservative elements of the population. In neither city were there anti-american riots or threats. It's more about cultural blending and ethnic enclaves. I think it's not really a new process in the US. If these people became threatening in any way, I would feel differently, but in this case it doesn't look frightening to me.