Investors.com
Politics: This Justice Department's social activism knows no bounds. First it meddled in a border state's right to protect itself. Now it's trying to rewrite school policy to pander to Muslim law.
On Monday, Justice sued an Illinois school district for rejecting a Muslim teacher's request to take a three-week leave of absence to travel to Mecca. The suit claims that the Berkeley School District discriminated against middle-school instructor Safoorah Khan, whose religion "required" her to perform the hajj, and is seeking damages for this so-called victim. But it's not stopping there. It seeks an order mandating school officials adopt policies accommodating all Muslim customs, no matter how unreasonable.
Attorney General Eric Holder is fulfilling a promise to pander to the special interests of Muslims. In June 2009, he pledged "a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim community" that includes "robust enforcement" of "religious freedoms."
"We are committed to using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans" in the workplace, housing market and schools, he said, adding that he was making it "a top priority."
Earlier this month, Holder spoke in San Francisco at the annual dinner of an anti-FBI group called the Muslim Advocates, whom he described as "partners in our work to promote tolerance."
He told Muslims gathered there that all 94 U.S. attorney's offices were partnering with the department's Civil Rights Division to act as "force multipliers" in helping to protect the Muslim community. He informed them that he'd brought a third of the nation's U.S. attorneys to Washington for an unprecedented meeting to work on being more "sensitive" toward Muslims.
"Last year," moreover, "I established an Arab-American and Muslim Engagement Advisory Group to help identify more effective ways for the Justice Department to foster greater communication and collaboration — as well as a new level of respect and understanding — between law enforcement and Muslim and Arab-American communities," Holder said.
This attorney general's many speeches reveal an agenda more radical than even his mentor Janet Reno's. It's plain that he's an activist, not an impartial enforcer of the nation's laws.
His audiences are a who's who of progressive causes — all sharing a common goal of obtaining "social justice" and "economic justice," as opposed to just plain equal justice under the law. They include activists not just for Muslim and Arab rights, but also black civil rights, gay rights, transgender rights, Indian tribal rights, housing rights, and on and on. It's a multicultural panderfest.
Here's just a sampling of his speaking engagements over the past two years:
• National Indian Nations Conference.
• African Union Summit.
• Metropolitan Black Bar Association Annual Dinner.
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month Program.
• American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee 30th Annual National Convention.
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) 50th Annual Conference.
• Legal Services Corp.
• Federal Bar Association's Advancement of Social Justice.
• National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.
• Hispanic National Bar Association Annual Conference.
• National Black Prosecutors Association.
• NAACP.
• Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice & Congressional Black Caucus Symposium on Rethinking Federal Sentencing Policy.
Divide-and-pander groupism is the new normal at Justice. At Justice's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month Program last June, Holder announced — in addition to enforcement of special new rights for gays — a new "Diversity Management Plan" that includes the creation of a new department position: Deputy Associate Attorney General for Diversity.
Holder's obsession with race was laid bare in his 2009 Black History Month speech in which he called Americans "cowards" for not doing more to speak out against racism. The disconnect of bad-mouthing America as racist in the wake of its electing a black president (and his own appointment as the first black attorney general) was lost on him.
Still, he slammed "socially segregated" whites who live in "electronically padlocked suburbs" and schools that are "too willing to segregate the study of black history."
"We must endeavor to integrate black history into our culture and into our curriculums in ways in which it has never occurred before," he lectured, giving it equal weight with "so-called 'real' American history."
Such demagoguery explains why, over the past 22 months, Justice has "reinvigorated" its civil rights enforcement activities. When it comes to combating hate crimes, however, it's still a one-way street.
"Our message is simple: If you engage in violence fueled by bigotry — no matter the object or nature of your hate — we will bring you to justice," Holder claims. Unless, of course you're club-wielding New Black Panthers and the object of your hate is white voters. Then you get a pass.
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http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/12/08/the_islamophobia_myth/
Jeff Jacoby
The ‘Islamophobia’ myth
By Jeff Jacoby
December 8, 2010
‘IS AMERICA Islamophobic?’’
When that provocative question appeared on the cover of Time in August, the accompanying story strained to imply, on the basis of some anecdotal evidence, that the answer might be yes. The FBI’s latest compendium of US hate-crimes data suggests far more plausibly that the answer is no.
“Where ordinary Americans meet Islam, there is evidence that suspicion and hostility are growing,’’ the Time article said. “To be a Muslim in America now is to endure slings and arrows against your faith — not just in the schoolyard and the office but also outside your place of worship and in the public square, where some of the country’s most powerful mainstream religious and political leaders unthinkingly (or worse, deliberately) conflate Islam with terrorism and savagery.’’
Time published that article amid the tumult over plans to build a Muslim mosque and cultural center near Ground Zero in New York, and not long after a fringe pastor in Gainesville had announced that he intended to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The piece noted that a handful of other mosque projects nationwide have run into “bitter opposition,’’ and it cited a Duke University professor’s claim that such resistance is “part of a pattern of intolerance’’ against American Muslims. Yet the story conceded frankly that “there’s no sign that violence against Muslims is on the rise’’ and that “Islamophobia in the US doesn’t approach levels seen in other countries.’’
In fact, as Time pointed out, while there may be the occasional confrontation over a Muslim construction project, “there are now 1,900 mosques in the US, up from about 1,200 in 2001.’’ Even after 9/11, in other words, and even as radical Islamists continue to target Americans, places of worship for Muslims in the United States have proliferated. And whenever naked anti-Islamic bigotry has appeared, “it has been denounced by many Christian, Jewish, and secular groups.’’
America is many things, but “Islamophobic’’ plainly isn’t one of them. As Time itself acknowledged: “Polls have shown that most Muslims feel safer and freer in the US than anywhere else in the Western world.’’ That sentiment is powerfully buttressed by the FBI’s newly released statistics on hate crimes in the United States.
In 2009, according to data gathered from more than 14,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, there were 1,376 hate crimes motivated by religious bias. Of those, just 9.3 percent — fewer than 1 in 10 — were committed against Muslims. By contrast, 70.1 percent were committed against Jews, 6.9 percent were aimed at Catholics or Protestants, and 8.6 percent targeted other religions. Hate crimes driven by anti-Muslim bigotry were outnumbered nearly 8 to 1 by anti-Semitic crimes.
Year after year, American Jews are far more likely to be the victims of religious hate crime than members of any other group. That was true even in 2001, by far the worst year for anti-Muslim incidents, when 481 were reported — less than half of the 1,042 anti-Jewish crimes tabulated by the FBI the same year.
Does all this mean that America is in reality a hotbed of anti-Semitism? Would Time’s cover have been closer to the mark if it had asked: “Is America Judeophobic?’’
Of course not. Even one hate crime is one too many, but in a nation of 300 million, all of the religious-based hate crimes added together amount to less than a drop in the bucket. This is not to minimize the 964 hate crimes perpetrated against Jews last year, or those carried out against Muslims (128), Catholics (55), or Protestants (40). Some of those attacks were especially shocking or destructive; all of them should be punished. But surely the most obvious takeaway from the FBI’s statistics is not that anti-religious hate crimes are so frequent in America. It is that they are so rare.
In a column a few years back, I wrote that America has been for the Jews “a safe harbor virtually without parallel.’’ It has proved much the same for Muslims. Of course there is tension and hostility sometimes. How could there not be, when America is at war with violent jihadists who have done so much harm in the name of Islam? But for American Muslims as for American Jews, the tension and hostility are the exception. America’s exemplary tolerance is the rule.
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