Tuesday May 15, 2012
The tide is finally turning against racial profiling and Islamophobia, but it won’t happen without your help. Read More »
Monday May 14, 2012
The most effective way to dispel misconceptions, break down barriers and expose injustices facing any community or group of people is to tell individual, real life stories - stories of sacrifice, hardship and triumph. And that is precisely what a young group of filmmakers are trying to do with their new and inspiring film, “Adeela.” Read More »
Monday May 14, 2012
In an amendment to an appropriations bill being considered last week, Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) [pictured left] attempted to strip federal funding from police departments that use ethnic or religious profiling, as the NYPD has done against American Muslims and Arab Americans in and around New York City. Read More »
Thursday May 10, 2012
by Omar Baddar and Omar Tewfik
Today, Spencer Ackerman and his colleague at Wired Noah Shachtman released the contents of a recently-terminated DoD training course for senior military officers. The course, entitled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” was terminated late last month by General Martin Dempsey, Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces. As expected, the outrageous materials released today show exactly why the course was shut down. Read More »
Tuesday May 08, 2012
Anti-immigrant fervor has been building for years in France and throughout Europe, where a significant portion of immigrants come from North and West Africa and parts of the Middle East. We have seen the shadows of a similar trend here in the United States, where a post-9/11 world has brought Islamophobia into the spotlight of election politics, and a troubled economy has done the same with anti-immigration policies. Read More »
Thursday May 03, 2012
Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert has yet again displayed his creative ability to completely flip an issue to reflect a viewpoint directly counter to conventional wisdom or reason. Yesterday, an article in The Washington Examiner gave us a glimpse of what Congressman Gohmert is likely to focus on when the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security – Gohmert is Vice Chair –hears testimony from FBI director Robert Mueller. As the article alluded, Gohmert will likely express concern that criticism in the wake of the months-long controversy involving the FBI’s use of bigoted anti-Muslim and anti-Arab training materials may be leading the FBI to overcompensate and appease critics , which Gohmert believes will compromise the FBI’s ability to effectively fight terrorism. Read More »
Monday April 30, 2012
Despite repeated attempts to incite a media frenzy surrounding their “Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference” in Dearborn, Michigan this Sunday, the Islamophobes did not succeed this weekend in garnering the press attention they wanted, and now they are crying about it. On her website, Pamela Geller, the conference’s main organizer, vents about her event’s lack of media coverage: “There is something fundamentally broken in our culture. Imagine a society that extols the supremacist tyranny of the sharia while smearing and defaming human rights activists fighting for freedom and individual rights over gencdercide [sic] and gender apartheid.” Read More »
Monday April 30, 2012
Yesterday, more than a hundred people gathered at a town hall at the Doubletree Hotel in Dearborn, Michigan to stand in solidarity with the Arab American and American Muslim communities against Islamophobia. The town hall, organized by AAI and local community groups, was held in response to an anti-Muslim conference at the Hyatt in Dearborn, organized by Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and other leading Islamophobes. Read More »
Sunday April 29, 2012
This week, we’re faced with the latest challenge when Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer bring their so-called “Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference” to Dearborn on Sunday. Along with a tremendous group of local organizations, AAI has organized a community town hall on Islamophobia on the same day as their conference this Sunday, April 29 at 1pm at the Doubletree Hotel in Dearborn (5801 Southfield Road). AAI President Jim Zogby will be there, along with Eli Clifton, the co-author of a groundbreaking report on Geller and friends called Fear Inc., and prominent journalist and blogger Sarah Posner. Read More »
Wednesday April 25, 2012
By Jeffrey Wright
Spencer Ackerman, Wired’s intrepid national security correspondent, broke yet another important story yesterday evening, revealing that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has ordered a top-to-bottom review of military training materials to ensure that they do not contain Islamophobic content. Dempsey’s order came after military brass learned that a class intended for senior military officers had used Islamophobic course materials. The class, entitled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” was offered as an elective at the military’s Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) in Norfolk, Virginia. JFSC was founded after the Second World War with the goal of training military officers to work cooperatively, and it educates mid-level officers, many of whom will spend their careers in the military and eventually rise to the highest ranks of their branches. Read More »
Tuesday April 24, 2012
Last Friday, several New York news outlets reported that John Brennan, President Obama’s top National Security Advisor, praised NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly for striking an appropriate balance “between our security and our freedoms and our rights as citizens.” These comments engendered a storm of criticism from American Muslim and Arab American groups who contend that such remarks put the White House “seal of approval” on the NYPD's controversial policing and surveillance program. Pulitzer Prize-winning AP reports have revealed that the NYPD has been spying on American Muslims and Arab Americans without criminal predicate. Read More »
Thursday April 12, 2012
By Danielle Malaty
When The Spiritual Life Center, a Sacramento Christian church, found itself without a venue to hold its Easter Sunday services this past weekend, the church's Reverend Michael Moran came up with what many may call an unconventional solution. He sought the help of a local mosque. Read More »
Monday April 09, 2012
For as long as they have been around, the Muslims are Coming! Comedy Tour has been trying to supplant our traditional Gibran Awards ceremony with a Sharia-compliant program. This year they have finally infiltrated the Gala. But seriously, the comedy tour will receive a Special Recognition Award at this year’s Kahlil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Awards Gala for their use of comedy to break down cultural barriers and for their efforts to dispel misconceptions about Muslims and Arabs throughout the country. Read More »
Wednesday April 04, 2012
The FBI and the DOJ have placed themselves in a tough position. Currently they sit isolated somewhere between a disappointed American Muslim and Arab American community and a contingent of powerful Senators who want answers. The FBI's training division and subsequently the DOJ have come under intense scrutiny since September 2011 in the wake of revelations that FBI agents were taught blatantly false and bigoted things about Muslims and Arabs as part of their counter-terrorism training. Read More »
Wednesday March 28, 2012
And it wasn’t only Muslims who were demonized with preposterous allegations of genocidal tendencies and such, but Arabs were also depicted in a racist fashion, said to be prone to “temper tantrums” and “Outburst and Loss of Control,” in contrast with the “Western mind[‘s] even keel.” Then, there was a bunch of silly stuff, like advising agents to not shake hands with Asians or stare at them (I’m totally serious). Read More »
Wednesday March 07, 2012
The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to set the record straight about the video “The Third Jihad.” The film sparked a serious controversy in January when New York Times reporter Michael Powell revealed that the New York Police Department had been showing the video on a continuous loop as part of a training program for New York City Police officers. Powell’s report implicated New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, whom the video’s producers, The Clarion Fund (a group known to harbor anti-Muslim views), interviewed for the video. As a result, several American Muslim advocacy groups called for Commissioner Kelly to step down. Read More »
Wednesday March 07, 2012
With exception of Ron Paul, the GOP presidential candidates all spoke at the AIPAC policy conference yesterday. All of the three candidates delivered a similar message on Iran, taking the opportunity to hit out at president Obama's policies. Iran's nuclear program was the clear focus of the conference, overshadowing any other issue, including the peace process, by far. Despite similar messaging on Iran, the candidate speeches each have their own unique takeaways. I've outlined the ones I thought were the most important in this post. Read More »
Wednesday February 29, 2012
Yesterday, the Florida Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Subcommittee pushed through SB1360, the Sunshine State’s own anti-Sharia bill in a 5-2 vote. The next step is a vote by the full Senate. Read More »
Thursday February 23, 2012
The New York Police Department is under scrutiny—but in an ironic twist, it’s the Arab American and American Muslim communities that are putting the NYPD under the looking glass. And this time, we have support from Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Rob Menendez (D-NJ) and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Read More »
Wednesday February 15, 2012
Last Wednesday, AAI along with a number of community and interfaith organizations met with FBI Director Robert Mueller to discuss inflammatory, anti-Muslim training materials the Bureau used in trainings and presentations to FBI agents. In September of 2011, Wired Magazine reporter Spencer Ackerman made them public. The meeting with Director Mueller focused on steps taken by the Bureau to rectify the matter. Read More »
What Comes First: #Media Impact or Influence? discussed on @aaiusa blog #Arab American Institute http://t.co/CiGquFfO @ramahkudaimi @ramisms
about 56 minutes ago.
#Assad gives interview to Russian channel, warns other countries that "sow chaos" in #Syria could suffer same fate: http://t.co/0m0whyNt
about 1 hour, 32 minutes ago.
Have truer words ever been spoken? “What’s important is the policy, not the tourism" -- http://t.co/y7LTODbT #Countdown #Israel #Romney
about 1 hour, 54 minutes ago.
Be Part of the Change!Benjamin Netanyahu, ever the master maneuverer, has done it again. Just moments before the Israeli Parliament was to ratify the call for new elections, the Kadima Party announced that it had completed negotiations with the Prime Minister and would join the government producing Israel's largest governing coalition in history (including 94 of 120 Members of the Knesset). The announcement sent shockwaves throughout the region and here in the US. Speculation was rife about what this sudden move might mean. Read More »
Barbara Slavin, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and correspondent for Al-Monitor; Ron Kampeas, Washington Bureau Chief for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Shane D'Aprile, editor of Campaigns & Elections. Read More »
The subcommittee's meeting today to explore whether there are risk factors or preincident indicators of terrorist activity identified by intelligence and law enforcement organizations to enable them in thwarting attacks while preserving -- let me repeat that -- preserving individuals' right to privacy and civil liberties. Read More »
May 26 2012
May 31 2012
Jun 21 2012
