SPLC apologizes, pays $3.3M to Islamic reformer it wrongly labeled ‘anti-Muslim extremist’
The Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Monday announced a settlement agreement with Islamic reformer Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation, for wrongly including them on a now-deleted list of “anti-Muslim extremists.” The list, A Journalist’s Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists, was published as a resource for journalists in 2016 to help identify “anti-Muslim extremists.” Nawaz, a current Muslim and a former Islamist, threatened to sue the SPLC for defamation for wrongly accusing him of being an extremist. Seeing has how they had no path to win in court, the SPLC admitted their error in inclusion and agreed to pay Nawaz and Quilliam $3.375 million “to fund their work to fight anti-Muslim bigotry and extremism.” “Since we published the Field Guide, we have taken the time to do more research and have consulted with human rights advocates we respect,” SPLC president Richard Cohen said in a statement. “We’ve found that Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have made valuable and important contributions to public discourse, including by promoting pluralism and condemning both anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism.” Cohen said the SPLC will look to their insurance carrier to cover the cost of the settlement. “It was the right thing to do in light of our mistake and the right thing to do in light of the growing prejudice against the Muslim community on both sides of the Atlantic,” he added. Watch Cohen’s video statement below:
How communities shaped by refugees became Donald Trump country
Richard Rodrigue stood in the back of a banquet hall, watching his blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter mingle among her high school classmates. These teenagers speak dozens of languages, and hail from a dozen African nations. They fled brutal civil war, famine, oppressive regimes to find themselves here, at an ordinary high school pre-prom fete in this once-dying New England mill town, revived by an influx of some 7,500 immigrants over the last 16 years. Rodrigue smiled and waved at his daughter, proud she is a part of it: “It will help her in life,” he said. “The world is not all white.” Rodrigue believes the refugees resuscitated his town — plugging the population drain that had threatened to cripple it, opening shops and restaurants in boarded-up storefronts. But he also agrees with Donald Trump that there should be no more of them, at least not now. America is struggling, he says, and needs to take care of its own before it takes care of anyone else. His working-class community, built along the banks of the Androscoggin River in the whitest state in America, is a place that some point to as proof that refugee integration can work. And yet for the first time in 30 years, voters in Androscoggin County chose a Republican for president, endorsing Trump’s nativist zeal against the very sort of immigrants who share their streets and their schools. Rodrigue knows he was born on the winning end of the American dream. His grandfather fled poverty in Quebec and moved to Maine to toil his whole life in the textile mills. He never learned English, faced hate and discrimination. Two generations later, Rodrigue owns a successful security company, lives in a tidy house in a quiet neighborhood and makes plans to send his daughter to college. Immigration worked for him. But it feels different today, as the county of 107,000 people tries to find its footing. The sprawling brick mills that line the river sit mostly shuttered. A quarter of children grow up poor. Taxpayers pick up the welfare tab. So Trump’s supporters here tie their embrace of his immigration clampdown to their economic anxieties, and their belief that the newcomers are taking more than they have earned. “There’s got to be a point in time when you have to say, ‘Whoa, let’s get the working people back up. Let’s bring the money in.’ But they keep coming, keep coming,” Rodrigue said. His community has been an experiment in immigration and all that comes with it — friendships, fear, triumphs, setbacks — and he knows that Trump’s presidency marks another chapter in that struggle for the American soul. “I guess it just boils down to: What’s enough? Is that wrong? Am I wrong? Am I bad? That’s how I feel.” ___ No one invited the Somali refugees to Lewiston. They fled bullets and warlords to eventually be chosen for resettlement in big American cities, where they were unnerved by the crime and drugs and noise. In early 2001, a few refugee families struggling to afford housing in Portland ventured 30 miles north and found a city in retreat. Empty downtown stores were ringed by sagging apartment buildings no longer needed to house workers because so few workers remained. The refugees saw possibility in Lewiston’s decay. Word spread quickly, and friends and families followed. The town morphed in a matter of months into a laboratory for what happens when culture suddenly shifts. Maine’s population is 94 percent white, and its citizens were abruptly confronted with hundreds of black Muslims, traumatized by war and barely able to speak English. Ardo Mohamed came to Lewiston in 2001. She fled Mogadishu in the 1990s, when militiamen burst into the home she shared with her parents and nine siblings, and started shooting. She watched her father die, as the rest of the family escaped into the woods. They wound up in overcrowded refugee camps, separated for years, then finally Atlanta, then Lewiston. Now she fries sambusas with her sister at a shop she owns downtown. “We wanted to be safe,” said the mother of five, “just like you do.” When the refugees began arriving, Tabitha Beauchesne was a student at Lewiston High School. Her new classmates were poor, but Beauchesne was poor, too. She grew up in a struggling family in housing projects downtown. It felt to her then, and it still feels to her now, that the refugees got more help than her family. “They just seemed to take over,” she said. She doesn’t consider herself racist, though acknowledges that race and religion likely play a role in her sense that the refugees overwhelmed her community. The African Muslims, many of whom wear hijabs, stand out far more than her French-Canadian ancestors did when they arrived generations ago, she said. That perception — one of being inundated by a culture so different from her own — ingrained in her a sense of injustice so deep it persists to this day. She’s now a stay-at-home mother of two, and she left Lewiston to move to another school district in the county because she believes the refugee students monopolize teachers’ attention. Once a Barack Obama supporter, Beauchesne turned to Trump — and she cheers his efforts to curb the flow of refugees into the United States. She wants Trump to design a tax system that funnels less of her money to aiding those from other countries. “I just don’t like giving money away that’s not benefiting me and, not to sound selfish, but then seeing it benefit other people,” she said. “As a business owner, my husband wouldn’t donate $500 to the Salvation Army if we couldn’t afford it. Our country needs to do the same thing.” Taxpayers do help refugee families. Maine offers a welfare program called General Assistance, a combination of state and city funds, which provides impoverished people with vouchers for rent, utilities and food. In 2002, at the beginning of the immigrant influx, the city handed out about $343,000
U.S. Muslims cringe at how both presidential nominees portray them
Many Muslim Americans cringe at the way they have been portrayed by candidates during the presidential campaign – either as potential terrorists or as eyes and ears who can help the government’s counterterrorism efforts. Those descriptions, offered by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, respectively, are troubling to Muslims who complain they are being pigeonholed and their concerns on other issues ignored. “I think that there is some level of dismissiveness about Arab-Americans and American Muslims that allows candidates to talk about us, not really to us,” said Omar Baddar, a political analyst and media producer based in Washington. Chaumtoli Huq, a lawyer from the New York City suburb of Yonkers, agreed. “We’re not able to talk about issues that impact us as citizens – education, jobs, things that any other voter would care about,” she said. “It’s a really demoralizing way to be seen to be part of this country.” One of the campaign’s more memorable moments for Muslim Americans unfolded at the Democratic National Convention in July, when a grieving Khizr Khan addressed delegates about his son, Humayun, an American soldier who was killed in Iraq. The GOP candidate soon pushed back against Khan’s anti-Trump comments, setting up an almost unprecedented episode in which a presidential nominee criticized a military family that lost a loved one in a war zone. Huq and others said Trump’s campaign has clearly been the more negative one, starting with his call to ban foreign Muslims from entering the United States as an anti-terrorism measure. In the second presidential debate in St. Louis, Trump answered a question about how to stop Islamophobia in America by saying American Muslims must report other Muslims who are engaging in dangerous behavior. He also repeated the false claim that neighbors of the San Bernardino, California, shooters saw bombs all over the floor in the shooters’ home last year but did not report it. That led to a widely retweeted comment from Brooklyn College professor Moustafa Bayoumi, who posted, “I’m a Muslim, and I would like to report a crazy man threatening a woman on a stage in Missouri.” By the time the debate ended, his retort had been retweeted more than 32,000 times and “liked” more than 43,000 times. Speaking to The Associated Press, Bayoumi said Muslim Americans “get exceptionalized to such a degree that their average Americanness disappears in the wind.” But Hillary Clinton did not escape censure from Muslim Americans, who said that the Democratic nominee’s public remarks have primarily revolved around recognizing them for what they could do to support counterterrorism efforts. At that second debate, in answering the same question as Trump, Clinton said: “We need American Muslims to be part of our eyes and ears on our front lines. I’ve worked with a lot of different Muslim groups around America. I’ve met with a lot of them, and I’ve heard how important it is for them to feel that they are wanted and included and part of our country, part of our homeland security, and that’s what I want to see.” Nour Eidy, a freshman at the University of Michigan, grew up in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, which is heavily Arab and Muslim. She was troubled by the call to root out radicals, mainly because she has not come across any. “I don’t know anything about terrorism. I don’t know their game plans, their strategies,” she said. “We’re just as victimized by them as anybody else.” Hussien Kazwini does not object to calls for Muslims to identify dangerous extremists. The college student in Toledo, Ohio, whose parents were born in Lebanon, said it’s what every U.S. citizen should do. “We, at the end of the day, are around more Muslims at a mosque or an event,” Kazwini said. “Maybe we do have an ability to more easily see if someone is going over to the extreme side.” Frustration with the race is enough to make Ramah Kudaimi want to skip voting altogether. “People are so shocked by what Trump is saying, that he’s – and he’s so openly racist – that they are giving Hillary Clinton a pass,” the Washington, D.C., organizer said. “The Democrats, frankly, have not necessarily done what is needed to also earn my vote as a Muslim American.” In New York, Ahsia Badi said the campaign rhetoric had also affected how non-Muslims interact with Muslims. “This sort of dialogue … is forcing people to sit there and see their friends who happen to be Muslim, to be their ‘Muslim friends.’” The 44-year-old health professional has two children, ages 10 and 8. Because of the constant linkage between Muslims and terrorism issues, she said, “I’m worried about how my children see their own opportunities and what their role is” as Americans. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Updates from the 1st presidential debate
The Latest on the first of three presidential debates between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump (all times EDT): 10:45 p.m. Both candidates concluded the first presidential debate by saying they will accept the outcome if the other wins. Hillary Clinton spoke directly to viewers and said, “It’s not about us, it’s about you.” Donald Trump initially dodged the same question, saying he would make a “seriously troubled” America “great again.” He added: “I’m going to be able to do it. I don’t believe Hillary Clinton will.” But Trump finished his answer by saying that if Clinton wins, “I will absolutely support her.” ___ 10:43 p.m. Hillary Clinton is punching back at Donald Trump’s assertions that she doesn’t have the “stamina” to be president. Trump has questioned whether Clinton has the physical fitness to be president and he repeated the criticism to her directly during the debate. Clinton’s response? Trump shouldn’t talk about stamina until he’s tried out the busy schedule she kept up as secretary of state. Trump didn’t answer moderator Lester Holt’s original question about his past comments that Clinton doesn’t have the “presidential look.” Clinton suggested the remarks were about gender, and she reminded the crowd of Trump’s past comments calling women “pigs” and other derogatory names. ___ 10:42 p.m. Donald Trump says NATO needs to “go into the Middle East with us” to combat the Islamic State group. And he is taking credit for NATO focusing resources on combating terrorism. In fact, the alliance agreed in July to contribute aircraft and conduct training in Iraq and has increased intelligence coordination there. And NATO set up an anti-terrorism program in 2004 — years before Trump criticized them as a presidential candidate. Earlier this year, Trump criticized NATO for not focusing on terrorism. He said that afterward, he saw an article reporting that NATO was opening a new, major anti-terrorism division. He said Tuesday that NATO’s action was “largely because of what I was saying, and my criticism of NATO.” ___ 10:40 p.m. Donald Trump is avoiding a specific declaration on how he would use nuclear weapons if he’s elected president. The Republican nominee said during the first presidential debate that he “would not do first strike” because “once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over.” That statement suggests he would not authorize a nuclear attack unless the U.S. was struck first. But in the same answer Trump said he “can’t take anything off the table.” He mentioned adversary nations such as North Korea and Iran. President Barack Obama has considered changing existing policy to state clearly that the United States would not deploy nuclear weapons without first being attacked by nuclear weapons. But he met resistance and has elected not to make such a shift. ___ 10:38 p.m. Hillary Clinton is accusing Donald Trump of being too easily provoked to keep the United States from going to war — perhaps even one involving nuclear weapons. Trump says: “I have much better judgment than she does. I have much better temperament.” That drew laughs from some in the debate crowd, and prompted Clinton to exclaim: “Woo! OK!” Clinton then pivoted to policy, defending the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Clinton said Iran was “weeks away” from a nuclear bomb when she became secretary of state — and says the Obama administration thwarted that progress. She continued that Trump didn’t have “good judgment or the right temperament” because he could take the country to war over small issues, like being mocked on Twitter. ___ 10:35 p.m. Donald Trump is continuing to insist he opposed the Iraq War before the U.S. invasion despite evidence to the contrary. Trump says during the debate that he “did not support the war in Iraq,” calling that charge “mainstream media nonsense.” But there is no evidence Trump expressed public opposition to the war before the U.S. invaded. Trump was asked in September 2002 whether he supported a potential Iraq invasion in an interview with Howard Stern. Trump briefly hesitated, then responded: “Yeah, I guess so.” Presented with the comment during the debate, Trump responds: “I said very lightly, I don’t know, maybe, who knows.” He’s also telling reporters to call Fox News host Sean Hannity to confirm private conversations he said they had about the war. Hannity is a top Trump supporter. Clinton voted in favor of the invasion in 2002 while she was a New York senator. She has since said it was a mistake. ___ 10:27 p.m. Donald Trump is interrupting the moderator of the first presidential debate to insist he has the best temperament for the office. Trump repeatedly made the assertion after clashing with moderator Lester Holt over his early support for the Iraq War. Then he segued to his temperament. “I think my strongest asset by far is my temperament,” Trump said. “I know how to win.” Clinton and her allies have repeatedly hit Trump over his temper and inability to take criticism. ___ 10:23 p.m. Hillary Clinton says one key to fighting terrorism in the United States is working closely with Muslims living here. Clinton says Donald Trump has “consistently insulted Muslims abroad, Muslims at home.” She says Muslim people can provide information that law enforcement may not be able to obtain anyplace else. Both candidates were asked to explain how they would combat terrorism in the U.S. Clinton says her plan includes an intelligence surge to obtain “every scrap of information” and to “do everything we can to vacuum up intelligence from Europe, from the Middle East.” ___ 10:20 p.m. Hillary Clinton says defeating the Islamic State group and taking out its leaders would be a top priority as president. Clinton says she’s hopeful the Islamic State group would be pushed out of Iraq by the end of the year. She says the U.S. could then help its allies “squeeze” the terrorist group in Syria. Clinton says she would do everything possible to take out the group’s leaders, and make that one of her administration’s organizing principles
Alabama KKK actively recruiting to ‘fight the spread of Islam’
Following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, residents in Alabama neighborhoods of Cullman and Decatur have reportedly found themselves being recruited by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) “to fight the spread of Islam in our country.” While the circumstances surrounding the distribution of the alleged KKK recruiting flyers have reportedly are not known, the Alabama chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization — has called on statewide officials to reject growing anti-Islam sentiments, according to a news release. According to the release, similar flyers were reportedly distributed in the same area back in September but without any reference to Islam. “Our state’s leaders must speak out against the rising anti-Muslim bigotry nationwide that is apparently inspiring a new recruiting effort by racists,” said CAIR-Alabama Executive Director Khaula Hadeed. “The KKK must be repudiated, whether it targets African-Americans, Muslims or any other minority group with hatred and intimidation.” The recent flier distribution suggest the KKK’s presence in Alabama is growing, as some 4,000 fliers were left at people’s homes in March as civil rights activists descended on Selma for the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in both Selma and Montgomery, historically African American cities. The week that followed, several African American residents in Auburn notified police back in March recruitment fliers attached to rocks were thrown on their driveways. Similar incidents are on the rise nationwide as anti-Muslim sentiment is growing in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks. Joining in the anti-Islamic rhetoric and adding fuel to the fire, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stirred global outrage by calling for a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the country Monday night. “We have no choice,” Trump said to a standing ovation at a rally in South Carolina, calling the ban “common sense.” Trump continued in a statement, “Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.” Trump’s comments stoked widespread public outrage. “This is exactly what ISIS wants, to turn Americans against one another,” a CAIR representative said. “We stand today united as Americans against stigmatization, against Islamophobia, against ISIS.”
Jeb Bush calls for U.S. ground forces to fight Islamic State
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Wednesday called for the U.S. to send more troops to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State. “This is the war of our time,” the former Florida governor said at the Citadel five days after Islamic State militants attacked Paris and killed 129 people. “Radical Islamic terrorists have declared war on the western world. Their aim is our total destruction. We can’t withdraw from this threat, or negotiate with it. We have but once choice: to defeat it.” Bush had planned for weeks to deliver a speech about Pentagon and military purchasing reform at the prestigious South Carolina military college. But the horrific events in France Friday moved Bush, who has supported the potential deployment of troops in Iraq and Syria, to call for ground troops. “The United States, in conjunction with our NATO allies and more Arab partners, will need to increase our presence on the ground,” he added, calling air power insufficient. He offered no specifics, but said the number of Americans sent to the region should be “in line with what our military generals recommend, not politicians.” The speech came as European nations hunted for conspirators in the attack and amid a fierce political debate within the U.S. over whether to limit or halt the resettlement of refugees fleeing war-ravaged Syria. One of the Paris bombers was thought to have arrived in a wave of migrants surging toward the West, but a top German official later said the Syrian passport found at a Paris attack scene was likely a fake. Bush, the brother and son of presidents, has projected himself as a potential commander in chief able to handle such challenges. But his focus on national security has increased as his own campaign for the presidential nomination has struggled to gain traction and especially since the Paris attacks. “The brutal savagery is a reminder of what is at stake in this election,” Bush said. “We are choosing the leader of the free world. And if these attacks remind us of anything, it’s that we are living in serious times that require serious leadership.” It’s no mystery why Bush made the speech in South Carolina. Many of the Republican primary voters in the early-voting Southern primary state are retired and active-duty military. Bush is not the only Republican presidential candidate who supports sending ground troops to fight the Islamic State. South Carolina’s own senior Sen. Lindsey Graham has been an aggressive advocate. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has also suggested sending U.S. troops. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was generally supportive of President Obama‘s decision to put 50 special operations troops in Syria, and has suggested the number ought to grow. However, he hasn’t called for a larger scale mobilization. Bush has long faulted President Barack Obama’s administration, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — the leading Democratic presidential candidate — for allowing wholesale federal spending cuts prompted by the 2013 budget reconciliation after Congress and the president were unable to craft more strategic cuts. The cuts affected military and non-military spending alike, at a time when conflicts in Syria and Iraq “spiraled out of control as President Obama and Hillary Clinton failed to act,” Bush said. And while Bush has often referred to the Islamic State as an unconventional threat, his prescription for the military includes heavier spending on its conventional elements. He called for doubling the U.S. Marine Corps’ battle-ready strength to 186,000, and updating the U.S. nuclear weapons capacity. He also called for increasing production of next-generation stealth bombers. Such aircraft, such as the F-35 joint strike fighter, carry a price tag of roughly $150 million apiece. Bush did not specifically propose a way to pay for the buildup. Bush, a year ago viewed as the likely front-runner, has failed to move to the top tier of GOP White House hopefuls in a field where political outsiders Donald Trump and Ben Carson and charismatic young lawmakers Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have eclipsed him. While Bush projected himself as a potential wartime commander in South Carolina, he also appeared on Tuesday to be anticipating criticism that he would wage war in the Middle East, as his father and brother did when they were president. Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, left office with low approval in part due to his handling of the 2003 invasion of the war in Iraq, and its aftermath. “I think it’s important for the next president, whoever he or she may be, to learn from the lessons of the past and use those lessons to focus on the future,” Bush told an audience of more than 300 at Coastal Carolina University in Conway Tuesday. On Thursday in New York, Clinton will deliver an address outlining her strategy for defeating ISIS as well as her overall plan for fighting radical jihadism. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Jeb Bush on Paris terror attack: This is the war of our time
In a pre-scheduled interview tapes with Salem Radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt shortly after the news was breaking on the terrorist attacks in Paris, Jeb Bush said it’s time for America to lead and called the war on Islamic terrorist “the war on our time.” “No, I’m not surprised,” Bush told Hewitt when asked about his initial reaction, which has now led to 127 deaths from six separate attacks on Friday night. “This is a war being created by Islamic terrorists. it’s not a law enforcement operation and the mindset that in our country at least needs to change to recognize it for what it is. This is an organized effort to destroy Western Civilization. And we need to lead in this regard, we need to re-garner the alliances, fortify those alliances, reconnect with our counterintelligence, and intelligence capabilities with our European allies and engage in the Middle East to take out ISIS, which is more likely to be the wellspring of this type of activity. If it’s not them, there are other terrorist groups. This is the war of our time and we have to be serious in engaging and creating a strategy to confront it and take it out.” French President Francois Hollande said this morning that it was ISIS who was responsible to the attacks.
Rick Santorum tells #SunshineSummit U.S. is verging ‘on global war’
Hours after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum told a Sunshine Summit crowd on Saturday that the U.S. was “on the verge of a global war.” “The world is on fire,” he said. “You’re going to be electing a wartime president … We better elect someone with experience, (not) someone who isn’t ready.” Santorum, a former U.S. senator for Pennsylvania, served on the Armed Services committee, supported the Iraq War and backed Iranian sanctions. He blamed the soft foreign policy of President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, formerly Obama’s secretary of state, for abandoning Iraq “against all the generals’ recommendations.” Santorum said of Parisians, “We will stand with them, pray with them and — if we had better leadership — help them.” He angrily mocked Obama’s concern of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, being a greater threat than Islamic extremists. The terror attacks in Paris that claimed over 100 victims were claimed by Islamic State, the Mideast jihadist organization. “Hold your breath, otherwise you’re going to destroy the world,” Santorum said. Islamic State wants to rule under a 7th century form of Islam, he said, and he’d “bomb them back to the 7th century.” He reminded the audience of what he called the other threat in the region, Iran, which he said is still on the path of developing weapons despite a nuclear deal. “Iran with a nuclear weapon is a threat to every man and woman in this country,” he told the audience. The next president needs to be more like Ronald Reagan, someone that “the other side, the enemy, knows who they’re dealing with.” Santorum is at 0.8 percent in the polls, according to the latest average calculated by The Huffington Post. He’s a devout Catholic and social conservative known for his stands against gay marriage and abortion. Santorum also pushed an amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act while in the U.S. Senate that called for the teaching of intelligent design, the view that an “intelligent cause” is responsible for changes in nature, not Darwinian natural selection. The 57-year-old ran for president in 2012, when his rise in popularity peaked with his win of the Iowa caucuses — though by a slim 34 votes. He went on to win several more primaries before taking a dive in the polls and ending his campaign that April.
