In terms of creating a safer, more unified society, banning veils will do more harm than good. The most important lesson I learned from my trip is that we're not that different. What separates the Muslim and Western worlds is our cultural and religious beliefs. If we, as Americans, decide to impose our values on Muslim immigrants in the name of assimilation or safety, it will only deepen the divide.

Banning the veil would be a direct and offensive attack on Islam. While Americans may see the veil as simply a headscarf or modest covering, it holds much greater significance for Muslims. The veil is a highly contentious issue in the Muslim world, and should be debated by those directly affected. Whether women wear veils has no bearing on public safety in the United States. Banning them will do nothing to alleviate problems with Muslims living here.

The tensions between Muslims and Westerners need to be addressed, but the veil is not the issue. We are in the middle of a war with no end in sight, and the threat of terrorism is something we are reminded about by the media and our government on a daily basis. Future generations of Americans will face a host of growing problems unless attempts are made to understand Muslim beliefs.

We need to take the first step toward acceptance. Although there are many facets of Islam that may be deemed intolerant, we will not solve any problems by reacting with greater intolerance. By promoting a message of acceptance, we may finally regain the world's respect.[Link]

Whether the motive is robbery or hate, Sikh taxi drivers at a safety forum in El Sobrante on Sunday reiterated long-standing complaints that they are frequent targets of crime in the greater Richmond area.

Officials -- whom drivers and their longtime advocate, Harpreet Sandhu of the Richmond Human Relations Commission, have accused of indifference -- said they are listening and ready to act, although their proposals still require approval and financing....

Sunday's forum came two weeks after Musharaf Poswal, 48, of Rodeo was shot and killed in Richmond, but Sandhu and the drivers have been vocal about safety since two earlier crimes in Richmond.

On July 2, 2003, Gurpreet Singh, 23, of Hercules was shot dead in his cab near 21st Street and Carlson Boulevard. On July 5, 2003, Inderjit Singh, 29, of El Sobrante was shot in the jaw on Roosevelt Avenue near 13th Street, where a dispatcher had sent him to pick up a fare.

Gurpreet Singh, no relation to Inderjit Singh, had money, jewelry and a laptop computer when he was found. Sandhu said he believes Gurpreet Singh was the victim of a hate crime.

Inderjit Singh's assailants never asked him for money, his brother said in 2003.

"They will shoot you if you have money and they will shoot you if you don't have money," said Harjit Bains, owner of a Richmond cab company.

Drivers at Sunday's forum said their job is risky because they carry cash and work alone at all hours and in high-crime areas. But Sikh drivers, as well as non-Sikhs who look South Asian or Middle Eastern, also get attacked because of their appearance -- even more so, they said, since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.[Link]

A Danish court ruled Tuesday that it was illegal for a Sikh man to carry the 'kirpan' ceremonial knife that he traditionally gets at baptism.

The Eastern High Court said that although Indian national Ripudaman Singh wore the blunt knife as a 'religious symbol,' it was still a violation of a ban on bearing weapons, including knives, except for carrying out a trade, hunting, fishing or other recreational activities....

The six-panel court also ruled that the 18-centimetre knife should remain confiscated, although one of three lay judges wanted to hand the knife back to the defendant.

[Link]

Rather than seeking to address the larger alienation of mainstream Muslims, European leaders often appear to do the opposite -- by challenging the culture of Muslims and defending gratuitous insults of Islam.

One recent but hardly isolated example came from Britain's House of Commons leader, Jack Straw, who criticized Muslim women for wearing veils and said he asked those who visited his office to remove them, on the grounds that they impede "communication." It's hard to believe that veils are the biggest obstacle to communication between British politicians and the country's Muslims; and it's even harder to imagine Mr. Straw raising similar objections about Sikh turbans or Orthodox Jewish dress. True, the Labor Party MP was reflecting -- or maybe pandering to -- the concern of many in Britain about the self-segregation of some Muslims. But veils -- which are also under government attack in France and Italy -- are not the cause of that segregation, much less of terrorism. Attacks on Muslim custom by public officials are more likely to reinforce than to ease the community's alienation.

Mr. Straw and other European politicians could contribute far more to combating radical Islam if they focused on those who actually foment intolerance among European Muslims -- as well as those in the mainstream community who promote prejudice against Arabs and South Asians and their descendants. Muslims in Europe should be invited to embrace the countries where they live on their own terms. They should be expected to respect laws and freedoms. But politicians would do better to work on dismantling the barriers Muslims face in getting educations and jobs rather than those that distinguish Islam from the secular majority.

[Link]

Quite a long time ago, having briefly joined the herd of 20-something backpackers that eternally roams Southeast Asia, I found myself in Bali. Like all of the other 20-somethings, I carefully read the Lonely Planet backpacker's guide to Indonesia and learned, among other things, that it was considered improper for women to wear shorts or trousers when entering Balinese temples. I dutifully purchased a Balinese sarong and, looking awkward and foreign, wore it while visiting temples. I didn't want to cause offense....

Just as it is considered rude to enter a Balinese temple wearing shorts, so, too, is it considered rude, in a Western country, to hide one's face. We wear masks when we want to frighten, when we are in mourning or when we want to conceal our identities. To a Western child -- or even an adult -- a woman clad from head to toe in black looks like a ghost. Thieves and actors hide their faces in the West; honest people look you straight in the eye.

Given that polite behavior is required in other facets of their jobs, it doesn't seem to me in the least offensive to require schoolteachers or civil servants to show their faces when dealing with children or the public. If Western tourists can wear sarongs in Balinese temples to show respect for the locals, so too can religious Muslim women show respect for the children they teach and the customers they serve by leaving their head scarves on, but removing their full-faced veils.

It would, of course, be outrageous if Tony Blair or the French government were to ban veils altogether -- just as it is outrageous that Saudi Arabia bans churches and even forbids priests from entering the country. But just because authorities persecute Christians and Jews in some parts of the Muslim world, that doesn't mean we need to emulate them. In their private lives, Muslim women living in the West should be free to use veils or head scarves as they wish. But freedom to practice religion in the West shouldn't imply freedom to hold jobs that impinge on that practice. An Orthodox Jew should not have an absolute right to work in a restaurant that is open only on Saturdays. A Quaker cannot join the Army and then state that his religion prohibits him from fighting. By the same token, a Muslim woman who wants to cover her face has no absolute right to work in a school or an office where face-to-face conversations are part of the job.

It isn't religious discrimination or anti-Muslim bias to tell her that she must be polite to the natives, respect the local customs, try to speak some of the local patois -- and uncover her face.

[Link]

Ginnnah Muhammad of Detroit was looking for her day in court.

Instead, she said she felt as if a judge forced her to choose between her case and her religion in a small-claims dispute in Hamtramck District Court.

A devout Muslim, she wore a niqab -- a scarf and veil to cover her face and head except for her eyes -- Oct. 11 as she contested a rental car company's charging her $2,750 to repair a vehicle after thieves broke into it.

Judge Paul Paruk said he needed to see her face to judge her truthfulness and gave Muhammad, 42, a choice: take off the veil when testifying or the case would be dismissed. She kept the veil on.

[Link]

The FBI is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in what investigators are calling a hate crime.

Someone set fire to the Sikh flag known as The Khanda, which is the emblem of the Sikh faith and belief at the Dasmesh Darbar Sikh Temple, 860 Oakhill Avenue SE in south Salem around 6:30 AM July 27th.

The suspect(s) also ripped out flowers, a tree caught fire, the temple was damaged, and a bike was thrown onto the opposite side of the property.

Anyone with information on this case is urged to contact the FBI at (503) 362-6601 or Salem police at (503) 588-TIPS.

[Link]

Racist fire bomber Mark Bulman has pleaded guilty to trying to start a blaze at the Broad Street mosque.

The 22-year-old pleaded guilty to attempted arson at the Muslim place of worship as well as two counts of religiously aggravated criminal damage.

As well as admitting the race hate offences he also admitted arson when he set light to a wooden gate on Broad Street during the same night.

Bulman threw a petrol bomb through a window of the mosque during the early hours of Thursday August 17 but it failed to ignite. [Link]

I used to look at veiled women as quiet, oppressed creatures -- until I was captured by the Taliban....

[My captors] called me a "bad" woman but let me go after I promised to read the Koran and study Islam....

Back home in London, I kept my word about studying Islam -- and was amazed by what I discovered. I'd been expecting Koran chapters on how to beat your wife and oppress your daughters; instead, I found passages promoting the liberation of women. Two-and-a-half years after my capture, I converted to Islam....

Now, it is with disgust and dismay that I watch here in Britain as former foreign secretary Jack Straw describes the Muslim nikab -- a face veil that reveals only the eyes -- as an unwelcome barrier to integration, with Prime Minister Tony Blair, writer Salman Rushdie and even Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi leaping to his defense....

When I converted to Islam and began wearing a headscarf, the repercussions were enormous. All I did was cover my head and hair -- but I instantly became a second-class citizen. I knew I'd hear from the odd Islamophobe, but I didn't expect so much open hostility from strangers. Cabs passed me by at night, their "for hire" lights glowing. One cabbie, after dropping off a white passenger right in front of me, glared at me when I rapped on his window, then drove off. Another said, "Don't leave a bomb in the back seat" and asked, "Where's bin Laden hiding?"[Link]

Imagine if a Canadian political leader was to advise devout Christians not to wear a cross if they wanted to be accepted by the rest of society.

Or a devout Jew not to wear a yarmulke. A devout Sikh not to wear a turban.

There would be outrage across the country, and rightly so. It wouldn't matter if this politician then said he wasn't suggesting anyone should be forced to remove the religious symbols of their faith. Just to do so in order to "fit in."

Most Canadians, we hope, and not just those who are devout Christians, Jews, Sikhs or Muslims, would be deeply concerned about such a fundamental attack on freedom of religion.

Imagine, then, the understandable unease of many Muslims, as a growing number of male politicians overseas have suddenly started advising religiously devout Muslim women against wearing a full veil over their face.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former foreign secretary Jack Straw and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, among others, have all come out in recent days arguing that if Muslim women want to fully adapt to their societies, they should ditch their veils. Our first question is why?

Most Muslim women don't wear these veils, which cover all but a small portion of the face around the eyes.

There are varying interpretations of whether the Koran actually requires it. Muslims hold different views on that issue, just as Christians, Sikhs, Jews and others disagree internally on the importance of wearing certain types of religious dress.

Save for a few specific situations where making a physical identification of someone is vital -- say, when applying for a passport or driver's licence, or when police need to confirm someone's identity by checking what they look like against their photo-ID -- no devout Muslim woman should ever be pressured by anyone to remove her veil against her will.

It's true that a Muslim woman who chooses to wear a full veil is choosing to set herself apart to some extent from the surrounding society -- but that's her right.

The rest of us should respect that choice, just as most of us would for a devout Christian, Jew, Sikh or anyone else. [Link]

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity (EEOC) issued a determination that National Wholesale Liquidators discriminated against a Sikh woman who was told to take off her turban and that Sikhs are “thieves and are nasty.” The Commission issued the finding after a year long investigation initiated when the victim in collaboration with the Sikh Coalition and a private attorney, Ravinder Singh (Bhalla),filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC.

The Sikh woman, Sukhvir Kaur, was ultimately fired from her job at a National Wholesale Liquidators store in Queens, New York. She had worked for National Wholesale Liquidators for over two years in the clothing department.

Ms. Kaur’s trouble began when her employer hired a new manager during the summer of 2004. The manager told her that he did not want Indians and Pakistanis working at the store, and that he preferred Guyanese and Spanish employees. He said that Indian and Pakistani employees were “dirty” and “nasty” and that Sikh employees are “thieves.”

In addition to speaking in derogatory terms about her religion and ethnicity, Ms. Kaur’s manager also told her to take off her turban because he liked women with long hair. He said also asked Ms. Kaur to wear western clothing it is tighter fitting and would look more attractive to him.

When Sukhvir Kaur refused her manager’s advances, he retaliated against her by requiring her to clean bathrooms. Her manager told her that if she ever complained to anyone about him, he would report to the police that she had been stealing from the store. Ms. Kaur was ultimately fired by her manager because she refused his advances during October 2004. [Email from the Sikh Coalition]

A civil rights group is suing to force the release of documents that plaintiffs say might prove federal agents illegally discriminated against Arab-Americans and Muslims during a massive immigration sweep in 2004.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee filed the suit in federal court on Tuesday against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Committee is demanding immediate disclosure of records detailing the national origin, ethnicity, race, religion and gender of 237 people detained by federal agents during the 2004 so-called "October Plan."

According to an ICE press release, the initiative was "designed to locate immigration status violators who may pose an elevated criminal or national security threat."

The Anti-Discrimination Committee argues that DHS and ICE may have illegally used the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) to detain suspects. NSEERS is an interrogation and data-gathering program created in 2002 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. It requires men from predominantly Muslim countries to submit to fingerprinting, photographing and questioning when entering the United States. [Link]

While the number of hate crimes in Maryland fell by about half in the last 10 years, according to FBI data, religiously-motivated crimes are on the rise as a percentage of reported incidents.

The numbers of total hate crime incidents slid 20.4 percent from 2004 to 2005 alone, following a decade-long trend, the data show. In 1995, Maryland agencies reported 353 hate crimes, the vast majority of them racially motivated. By the end of 2005, that number had dwindled to 195....

While Maryland's falling incidence rate outpaced a 6 percent decline nationally in hate crimes last year, the state's police agencies reported the 10th highest incidence of hate crimes among the 48 states that contributed to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

Maryland law enforcement officials said the overall decrease was evidence of the state's redoubled efforts to report and track hate crimes....

Maryland was included among nine states that accounted for 80 percent of all incidents of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment in the United States in 2005, according to a report released in September by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Those numbers -- Muslims living in Maryland reported 85 incidents -- were not clearly reflected in the FBI's data, which identified 52 hate crimes motivated by religion but did not break them down by faith. [Link]

Mewa Singh Bains, 82, and Shingara Singh Thandi, 79, died after they were beaten and robbed in separate incidents in Surrey's Bear Creek Park in the summer of 2005.

The violence horrified the local Sikh community, which feared that the savage assaults may have been racially motivated....

"I heard banging and screaming," Tyler Rankin, 18, testified during the first day of the trial of two youths charged with murder, assault and robbery in the deaths of two elderly Sikhs who were attacked on successive days.

Mr. Rankin said he could not understand the chilling words he heard. "They were in a different kind of language. It sounded East Indian."

He ran away but saw his two friends shortly afterward. They told him: "We did it."

He asked what happened. "We have money," they replied, according to his testimony....

Mr. Rankin told the court he had been hanging out with a group of friends in the park on July 18, 2005. They had the idea of going to fight with people "and jump [them] for money," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

The two youths in the prisoner's dock had gone into the park's washroom to look for someone to "jump," he continued, while he stayed outside. They did not tell him what happened inside, he stated....

A female friend of the two accused, when she asked why they attacked the old men, testified that one of them told her "we needed money." [Link]

A Muslim correctional officer at the federal jail in Brooklyn was harassed by other guards following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a federal lawsuit filed recently in federal court in Brooklyn.

The officer, Tarik Farag, claims his colleagues pelted him with insults, calling him "bin Laden" and accusing him of links to Al Qaeda, according to the legal complaint. The alleged harassment lasted through 2004.

Mr. Farag began working for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in 1998, serving both as a technician for the inmate telephone system and as a correctional officer, according to the lawsuit. He quit in February, citing a hostile work environment and the discrimination he faced, according to the complaint.

Mr. Farag, a Muslim man who was born in Egypt, found some of the correctional officer training to be demeaning because it suggested a link between Muslim ritual and terrorist violence. Mr. Farag was humiliated by a training scenario that involved Muslim prisoners taking hostages and using prayer rugs for body armor, according to the complaint.The complaint also alleges that one counterterrorism instructor told correction officers "that the Muslims to watch out for" are the ones who "rigorously" wash their hands and feet. [Link]

Tony Blair has agreed that Muslims wearing veils is a "mark of separation" in society.

In his first monthly press conference since Jack Straw sparked a row over the role of Muslims in the UK, the prime minister was repeatedly asked about veils, faith schools and extremism.

"I think we need to have this debate in a sensitive way but as well as being about people preserving their distinctive identity it also about how people integrate into British society.

"It is important that people who come to this country learn English, for example.

"It is about getting the balance right and we need to have the debate in a sensible and serious way and even though people would not have chosen for the debate to have been started in this way it is a debate we need to have".

Asked whether the veil was a barrier to integration, Blair said: "It is a mark of separation and that is why people from outside the Muslim community feel uncomfortable.

"No-one wants to say that people don't have the right to do it that would be taking it too far but we do need to confront this issue of how we fully integrate people into this society.

"All the evidence is that people who do integrate do achieve more.

"The debate about the veil is part of a broader question of how we make sure that the Muslim community integrates with British society in circumstances where the majority where of the Muslim community do." [Link]

It is two years since France banned headscarves, veils and other religious signs from state schools. There were mass protests by French Muslims and dire warnings the new law would radicalise Islamic opinion and deepen already volatile divisions within French society.

Some 120 schoolgirls initially defied the law and one 15-year-old beat the ban by shaving her head.

Today, the ban on veils - which crucially extends to large Christian crosses, Jewish skullcaps and Sikh turbans - is accepted and obeyed.

"We didn't have a single young girl showing up veiled this year for the rentree [start of the school year] which was very satisfying," government education spokesman Samira Bonvoisin told The First Post. "The only ongoing problem is with four Sikh schoolboys who still refuse to remove their turbans." [Link]

After the thwarted plot by a few British Muslims to blow up US-bound jets, which followed last year's more tragically successful bombing of the London subway, it's only a matter of time before a Muslim in the United States tries violence, right? Not necessarily, says Boston College political scientist Peter Skerry, who is writing a book about American Muslims....

Muslims in America are probably more religious, because it's likely Muslims, like most people, adapt to their environment, and America is a much more religious society than any European society that I can think of. The religiosity of American society elicits that kind of response from Muslims. Muslims here seem much more integrated into society and have fewer grievances that lead to the kinds of things we've seen in Europe. And I think that's because they revel in the religious liberty they experience in the United States. [Link]

Since Sept. 11, 2001, Sikhs living in the United States have experienced discrimination and harassment. Recently the local Sikh community purchased time on a billboard on Interstate 78 to let more people know who they are.

Unfortunately, with spray paint, that billboard was severely vandalized with very ugly messages.

An affront like this on a minority within our area is not only an affront upon the Sikh community. On a basic level it is an attack upon the whole idea of a multicultural society. [Link]

Lecturers and university staff across Britain are to be asked to spy on "Asian-looking" and Muslim students they suspect of involvement in Islamic extremism and supporting terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned.

They will be told to inform on students to special branch because the government believes campuses have become "fertile recruiting grounds" for extremists. [Link]

[HT: SM]

British Airways has asked a Christian member of staff to conceal her cross necklace because it contravenes the company's uniform policy....

Heathrow check-in worker Nadia Eweida is on unpaid leave after refusing to cover up her cross necklace.

"I believe that it is a very important issue on the matter of expressing Christianity and employees having their say in the way they express their faith," she said.

British Airways says all jewellery and religious symbols on chains must be worn under the uniform.

But it makes an exception for Sikh turbans and Muslim hijabs because they cannot be covered up.

The airline says: "British Airways does recognise that uniformed employees may wish to wear jewellery including religious symbols. These items can be worn, underneath the uniform." [Link]

Mohinder Singh, wearing a royal blue turban and long white beard, sits behind a desk piled high with colorful Punjabi-language newspapers. Along with four other Sikhs, Mr. Singh, 57, was elected to the Queens County Democratic Committee in last month’s primary. The victory represented the first time Sikhs have been elected to public office anywhere in the city.

The five have joined almost 3,000 other party committee members statewide; an executive committee of 77 makes most of the party’s nominating decisions and develops the party’s platform. In this bureaucracy, the power of the new recruits seems fairly diluted. Still, the election of these five men signifies the increasing engagement of the Sikh community in American politics....

But the only thing many Americans know about Sikhs, if they have heard of them at all, is that they look different. With their long beards and distinctive turbans, the men often resemble the images of Osama bin Laden that flash on television screens. Though Sikhs have no relation to fundamentalist Islam, their turbans and beards set off alarm bells about terrorism in the minds of many of their fellow Americans.

Some voters made that feeling clear when Mr. Singh and his fellow candidates came knocking on their doors to campaign over the summer. Although Mr. Singh, an insurance broker, has lived in Richmond Hill for 12 years, he is wary of people’s reaction to his appearance. So when he went door to door to nearly 200 homes, he took along his wife, his son and his two grown daughters. He also took along a staff member from the Grassroots Initiative, an advocacy organization that worked with the Sikh candidates on their campaigns. Even so, Mr. Singh said, some constituents greeted his appearance with the words, “Go back to your country!”

But their unusual appearance is one of the things that encourage Sikhs to get involved in politics. Instances of bias reported to the Sikh Coalition range from stabbings that occur outside the victims’ homes to the refusal by vendors to print T-shirts emblazoned with images of gurus and martyrs from Sikh history.

“Because we stand out, we’re targeted,” Mr. Bhalla said, “and because we’re targeted, we need a voice on the inside.”....

For years, he added, Sikhs have been trying to effect changes from the outside. “Now,” he said, “we want to sit among them with our turbans and make the change ourselves.” [Link]

How should a constitutional democracy deal with organized non-state terrorists?

[Professor John] Yoo's analysis went essentially as follows: The law of war does not, and should not, entitle people who deliberately blend in with and attack civilians to the privileges of lawful combatants. But the ordinary criminal justice system--utilizing civilian jurors and the full panoply of procedural rights--is ill-suited to deal with international terrorists. Accordingly, the President in proposing, and Congress in passing, the MCA were right to rely on military commissions.

Although Yoo asked the right question, he--and the politicians with whom he agrees--framed the debate as a false choice. For one thing, it is hardly obvious that the criminal justice system is, in fact, inadequate for trying accused terrorists. The Justice Department has a perfect record of convicting al Qaeda and affiliated terrorists, and before 9/11, it did not occur to anyone that the procedures developed by the courts for handling classified information and security risks were inadequate. Terrorists, such as those who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, had been tried, and convicted, in civilian federal courts before. Even after 9/11, the government obtained a conviction of and life sentence for Zacarias Moussaoui in civilian court.

To be sure, the federal courts undoubtedly lack the capacity to try everybody that the United States detains in every military conflict around the world, but no one has suggested that all such people would be tried. Even now, five years into the conflicts, the Administration has announced plans to try only a tiny handful of the people it has detained. The vast majority have either been released, or are being held indefinitely-- either pending the location of a suitable country for deportation, or while military conflict persists. No one has explained why the federal courts could not handle one or two dozen trials of those persons accused of offenses.

Moreover, even if one concludes that civilian courts are inappropriate for terrorism cases, it does not follow that one must rely on the sorts of special military commissions established by the MCA. As the Supreme Court explained in its June decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld trial by court martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) would certainly comply with international law and the Constitution....

The military commissions established by the MCA differ from courts martial in a number of key respects. Most conspicuously, the military commissions will use relaxed rules concerning the admission of evidence, including some otherwise excludable hearsay and evidence obtained by coercion, and except for a limited list of procedural guarantees, the MCA requires the military commissions to comply with the rules used by courts martial only to the extent that the Secretary of Defense considers such rules to be practicable and consistent with security considerations.

These are not mere technical matters. The procedural protections of courts martial that the military commissions discard play an important role in preventing and remedying erroneous convictions of innocent people. Yet here too, proponents of military commissions have offered no persuasive justification for abandoning courts martial.

The move from courts martial to military commissions imposes serious costs on the accused while yielding marginal if any benefits for society. As Justice Kennedy noted in his concurrence in Hamdan, courts martial are fully capable of trying cases involving terrorism suspects without compromising national security: After all, they have long-established procedures for handling the use of classified information, including admitting into evidence a declassified summary of the contents of the classified report.

In his majority opinion in Hamdan, Justice Stevens made plain that historically, military commissions were justified by necessity. Given the exigencies of war, it is not always possible to convene a civilian court or a full court martial. In the MCA, Congress has authorized military commissions without any good reason for concluding that civilian courts or courts martial could not do the job at no greater risk to national security....

Although torture and related maltreatment remain federal crimes under the MCA, alien victims of torture who are declared by the executive to be enemy combatants have no ability to bring their claims to court. Section 7 of the MCA eliminates the right of habeas corpus and the right to bring a petition challenging "any other action [by] the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial or conditions of confinement of" such persons.

Under the terms of the MCA, then, the government could declare a permanent resident alien--including someone who has been residing lawfully in the United States for decades--to be an enemy combatant, and lock him up, potentially forever. That alien--who could be your neighbor--would never have an opportunity to challenge his detention or treatment in a U.S. court.

To be sure, if the government provides someone declared to be an enemy combatant with a combatant status review tribunal (CSRT), then the DTA authorizes judicial review of that determination. And the MCA does amend the DTA for the better in one important respect: Whereas the DTA only authorized civilian judicial review of CSRT determinations for detainees at Guantanamo, under the MCA, a person held by the United States pursuant to a CSRT anywhere in the world can appeal the CSRT's ruling to a civilian federal court. But, there is no statutory requirement that the government ever utilize a CSRT-and absent a CSRT ruling, there is no access to civilian court.

Thus, under the terms of the DTA as amended by the MCA, there would be no access to a civilian court whatsoever, even if the detainee were held within the United States, so long as the government determined that he or she were an unlawful enemy combatant by some means other than using a CSRT. And at least to that extent, the MCA should be judged unconstitutional as a de facto suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Article I, Section 9 permits Congress to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Public safety may require that the writ be suspended in an active war zone where courts cannot function. But the DTA and MCA apply everywhere.

In the public debate surrounding the treatment of detainees, and in the email I receive from time to time from incensed readers, proponents of the Administration's position frequently question the application of norms of due process to terrorists who themselves engage in barbaric acts. Humane treatment for people who deliberately behead and blow up innocent civilians will not, they argue, lead to better treatment of our own personnel.

There is something to this argument but it ultimately misses three important points. First, we observe norms of humane treatment in part because of who we are. Just as we do not permit cruel and unusual punishment of domestic prisoners--even those who have committed sadistic crimes--so we should not commit similar acts against people from foreign lands.

Second, the reciprocity argument conceives our national interest far too narrowly. The reason to abide by the Geneva Conventions with respect to al Qaeda captives is not because we believe that al Qaeda will therefore reciprocate by treating our personnel well. The reason is that people who are not now our active enemies will be more likely to take up the jihadi cause against us if we confirm their view that the United States aims to persecute Muslims. Even where there is no hope for reciprocal treatment of Americans, disregard of international standards for treatment of detainees undermines our security by losing hearts and minds throughout the world. As the government's own recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate confirms, this is a very real phenomenon.

Third, due process rights are not rights for terrorists but for people accused of being terrorists. Despite Administration claims that Guantanamo detainees are "the worst of the worst," the government has already admitted that numerous people it formerly held in fact posed no great danger. Some of these--like Yaser Hamdi, the subject of the Supreme Court case Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, or the Tipton Three, the subject of the docudrama "The Road to Guantanamo"--have simply been sent back to their home countries, or other places abroad.

In the fog of war, mistakes are inevitable. But once the dust settles, the least we can do is utilize procedures designed to correct those mistakes. Unfortunately, the MCA would only exacerbate them. [Link]

Quebec is looking to improve the way religious, cultural and linguistic differences are integrated into its schools.

Education Minister Jean-Marc Fournier announced yesterday the creation of a committee to look into the principle of "reasonable accommodation," with a report due in June.

Bergman Fleury, an intercultural education consultant who worked for the Commission scolaire de Montreal, will head the panel of experts.

A key task will be to come up with a definition of "reasonable accommodation" that strikes a balance between personal convictions and the laws, values and traditions of Quebec.

"It's a matter of ensuring that all youth receive the education they are entitled to while respecting their convictions," Fournier told a news conference during a Liberal Party caucus meeting in Longueuil.

Part of the committee's mandate is to come up with guidelines and tools to help education officials meet increasingly complex demands without seeming insensitive or, worse, risk being hauled before the courts.

In one high-profile Montreal case, a Sikh boy went to the Supreme Court to win the right to carry a kirpan, or ceremonial dagger, at school. [Link]

The amicus brief is available here. Thanks to the Sikh Coalition for making this brief available.

Today, the civil rights groups Asian American Justice Center (AAJC) and Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), with educational and advocacy groups nationwide, filed amicus briefs in the United States Supreme Court in support of voluntary racial integration in the cases of Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, et al., and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1.

In both cases, locally elected school boards recognized that longstanding patterns of residential segregation, coupled with the withdrawal of court supervision over school desegregation, have produced schools artificially isolated by race that fail to reflect the diversity of their communities. In response, the school districts of Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky voluntarily adopted measures to take race—among other factors—into account in kindergarten to 12th-grade school assignments.

“These schools have chosen to take a proactive step in creating an integrated educational environment. Asian American students, just as all students, reap the benefit of an integrated education and become better prepared to enter an increasingly diverse world,” said Aimee Baldillo, AAJC’s director of programs. “The Seattle plan took into account the segregated populations of the city and chose to uphold the principles of integration and equality that came forth from Brown v. Board of Education. Schools should be able to take such things into account in trying to achieve equal access to education,” she stated.

AALDEF staff attorney Khin Mai Aung said, “In recent decades, Asian American student populations have grown tremendously—most rapidly in urban school districts with high minority enrollment. Asian American students and youth advocates believe that a racially diverse student body has irreplaceable benefits. We support school districts' efforts to battle segregation by using race, along with other factors, in public school assignments."

In its amicus brief, AAJC stated:

“Empirical evidence continues to prove the factual accuracy edict of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), that a separate education is not an equal one. While it should be equally clear that Caucasian American as well as [minority] children benefit from exposure to ethnic and racial diversity in the classroom,” Washington v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 458 U.S. 457, 472 (1982) the advantages of a racially integrated education are of particular importance to members of historically discriminated against groups. Those advantages help such groups combat discrimination and achieve equal status with each other and with Caucasian Americans.”

Asian Americans United in Philadelphia, Boston Asian Youth Essential Services, Detroit Asian Youth Project, Providence Youth Student Movement, Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in San Francisco, and other groups joined AALDEF in stating:

“Amici groups have found that integration can lead to meaningful reductions in school violence and harassment, which holds particular benefits for Asian American students…[A]ll Asian American children benefit from developing greater understanding and tolerance of other racial and ethnic groups at integrated schools and from these groups likewise gaining greater understanding and tolerance of them.”

Copies of the Amici Curiae are available for download at www.aaldef.org/docs/ and www.advancingequality.org/files/AAJC_AmicusBrief_10606[1].pdf.

Oral arguments for the cases are scheduled for December 4, 2006. [Press Release]

Terrorism, racism and violence pushed Rano Singh into politics.

The Democratic candidate for state treasurer said the shooting death of a fellow Sikh, gas-station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi of Mesa, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks "catapulted me into public service."

She joined the state attorney general's Hate Crimes Task Force that year, became president of the India Association of Phoenix and in 2002, was appointed by Gov. Janet Napolitano to the Citizens Finance Review Commission. In 2004, Singh ran for the state Legislature.

She said she wants to use her management skills to clean up the Treasurer's Office. [Link]

Following the July 2005 bombings in London undertaken by U.K. Muslims, attention has focused on how well U.S. Muslims are integrated into society. Assessing Muslim integration is important, both as a measure of whether the U.S. remains a hospitable place for immigrants and in order to measure the risk of "home-grown" terrorism.

Measured by educational and income levels, U.S. Muslims are far more integrated than their European counterparts. However, two trends are conspicuous. The U.S. Muslim population is concentrated at the higher and lower ends of the income and educational scales. Secondly, U.S. imams are less educated than both the overall U.S. Muslim population and their Jewish and Christian counterparts....

In Europe, the combination of extremist imams, pockets of social deprivation and impressionable male youths has proved deadly. However, while the U.S. Muslim population is largely young and male, it is also comparatively wealthy, well-educated and integrated into the general population. There are few signs of radicalization among U.S. first- and second-generation Muslim immigrants.

Overall, U.S. Muslim immigrants are better educated, earn more and are better integrated into society than similar populations in Europe. Two trends--income polarization and poor education among imams--are causes for concern. However, data suggests that for the moment the terrorist threat emanates from Islamic extremists trained and stationed abroad, rather than inside the U.S. [Link]

[HT: SM]

Walking in the terminal. Happy kids with their families. I'm a loner. People staring at me. Parents, grandparents afraid of what they are staring at. Concerned, they call security. For a moment, I thought about running. I was afraid.

"We need to search you, standard procedure." They searched me. I looked suspicious because I look different. I don't fit the "standards." I missed my flight. This always happens to me. I just want it to stop.

Hassan Souiri, 17
Clifton[, Virginia] [Link]

Cabinet Minister Jack Straw has said he would prefer Muslim women not to wear veils which cover the face.

The Commons leader said he did not want to be "prescriptive" but he believed that covering people's faces could make community relations more difficult.

Mr Straw has said he asks Muslim women at his Blackburn constituency surgeries if they would mind removing veils.

Some Muslim women called his remarks insulting, but other Muslims said they understood his concerns....

"Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers - people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said.

"That's made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That's just a fact of life.

"I understand the concerns but I hope, however, there can be a mature debate about this.

"I come to this out of a profound commitment to equal rights for Muslim communities and an equal concern about adverse development about parallel communities." [Link]

Some two weeks ago a copy of Quran from the Pace University was found in the toilet of the library bathroom. Tuesday students organized a forum to discuss the incidents, which they say are unheard of on the Pace campus.

“I thought at first it wasn't true,” said Zeina Berjaoui, a member of the Muslim Student’s Association at Pace. “I was like, no way, it’s a rumor, somebody did this to get us upset, let me just go and see what’s happening. So I immediately thought, let me go to security, let me get the real facts. And I found out indeed, the Quran was found in the men’s toilet of the library's bathroon.” [Link]

Complaints of discrimination, harassment and violence against Muslims jumped over 30 percent in 2005 from the previous year, according to a report released Sept. 18 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim organization.

A total of 1,972 such incidents were reported in 2005. That was the highest number since CAIR began reporting anti-Muslim incidents in 1995, the year that the bombing by right-wing extremists of the federal government building in Oklahoma City, blamed initially by the mass media on Arab radicals, set off a rash of anti-Muslim attacks.

CAIR said it had also received 153 reports of anti-Muslim hate crimes, an increase of nearly 10 percent over 2004, and more than 50 percent over the 93 reports received in 2003. [Link]

Despite educational outreach programs, sensitivity training and cross-cultural soul searching in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, a recent report has found anti-Muslim bias attacks are at an all-time high.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nationwide nonprofit Islamic civil liberties organization, showed a nearly 30 percent increase in anti-Muslim bias incidents between 2004 and 2005, the highest number of complaints since the group started compiling statistics more than a decade ago.

The report, released in late September, found 80 percent of the complaints concentrated in just eight states and the District of Columbia....

"The primary reason is there is still rising anti-Muslim sentiment, and Islamaphobia is becoming more institutionalized," [Arsalan Iftikhar, CAIR's national legal director,] said. "You hear a lot more anti-Muslim rhetoric in media outlets, and Muslim-bashing has sort of become the acceptable racism in this country now."

Amal Elrafei, who works at the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee in Clifton, said the recent CAIR findings reflected her own experience with racial profiling this summer.

Elrafei, an American citizen, was returning from her native Egypt with her three children in August when she said she was detained with more than 200 other passengers at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

The group was held for more than four hours, with no information as to why they were being detained and no access to phones to contact worried family members waiting outside, according to Elrafei. Elrafei said it was the offensive way she and others were treated by airport security officials who prompted her to file a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

"There were two components to my complaint," she said. "The first one is the actual regulations that would require us to be stopped and profiled, and the other is what those officers did with the power that they had. They were very disrespectful. They were insolent. They didn't even give us our basic rights as human beings." [Link]

A billboard designed to educate drivers on Interstate 78 about Sikhism, an Indian religion that Americans often confuse with Islam, has been removed after it was marred by profanity aimed at Muslims.

"Arabs go to hell," someone wrote across the billboard in black, along with "Jesus Saves," "Hell Yeah USA" and a four-letter expletive directed at "Alah." Muslims pray to Allah, which is Arabic for God.

The vandalism in Berks County came as midstate police were investigating threatening letters and e-mails sent to Muslims in the Harrisburg and York areas. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission said Friday there have been "at least seven" such messages in the past two months.

The billboard proclaimed, "Sikhism. Freedom, Equality, Justice. One God," alongside an image of a man in the broad turban that Sikh men use to wrap the hair they never cut. [Link]

Police have released horrifying images of brutal assault on a defenceless man whose only crime was being unlucky enough to be in their path.

No doubt fuelled by booze and angry after Englands defeat at the hands of Portugal during the World Cup the gang of men were clearly in the mood for trouble - and they found it.

Crossing the West Quay retail park in Southampton having watched the match at the Leisure World complex across the road, the group were heading towards the city centre.

It is there they happened to meet a 22-year-old Asian man who was also walking across the car park with his brother-in-law after watching the game themselves.

Possibly mistaking him for being Portuguese, the gang singled out the victim and after hurling racial abuse began chasing and attacking him.

Hopelessly outnumbered and now separated from his brother-in-law the 22-year-old was circled, beaten and kicked in the head several times before his body dropped to the ground, unconscious.

Lying there he was kicked twice more before having a lit cigarette thrown on to him and being spat on....

Investigating officer DC Stuart Pearson said: "Remarkably physically he wasnt too badly injured but mentally it is going to leave a scar on him."

Talking about the attack that is being treated as a racially motivated violent disorder DC Pearson said: "The victim was pleading with them that they were English and they were as upset as they were that England had lost.["] [Link]

Reports of workplace discrimination against people perceived to be Muslim or Arab soared after the Sept. 11 attacks and then declined, government statistics indicate. But some advocates say they've seen a resurgence in the last year that corresponds to global political events.

"Anytime there's anything in the news … that is related to the Middle East, you see a spike in hate-motivated and employment-related incidents," said Kareem Shora, director of the legal department of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

After 9/11, the EEOC introduced a category of employment discrimination against people who are or are perceived to be Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, South Asian or Sikh. Nationwide statistics from the EEOC indicate that such complaints — so far exceeding 1,000 — have decreased each year since 2002.

However, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations says it processed more civil-rights and workplace discrimination complaints in 2005 than ever before. The annual total jumped to 1,972 in 2005 from 1,522 in 2004. The discrepancy may indicate that victims fear reporting discrimination to the government. [Link]