Travel agent accused of scamming customers
NEW YORK — A Brooklyn travel agent has been charged with cheating customers out of $14,000 after a New York Arab American organization notified authorities of complaints. Fatma Aly, 42, specialized in booking travel to the Middle East. She is accused of taking cash from customers without fully processing their ticket orders, at...Muslims work with FBI on missing men
CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad speaks during a Wednesday press conference in Washington on the Muslim community’s role in notifying law enforcement of potential militant activity by five American men in Pakistan. American Muslim families and civil rights leaders played a major role in alerting law enforcement about...Student stabs professor to death in New York
Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani, a Saudi Arabian graduate student at Binghamton University, has been charged with second-degree murder after allegedly stabbing to death anthropology professor Richard Antoun, an Arab American, on Dec. 4. Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani mug shots No motive for the crime has yet been identified. Al-Zahrani's...
Store owner turns around life of would-be thief
December 12th, 20090 Mohammad Sohail, alongside New York Post clippings that told his story in May, shows the letter and $50 he got from the would-be robber he sent out of his deli with $40, bread and a blessing. PHOTO: NY Post A New York store owner who showed compassion to a would-be...Obama launches Freedom of Information initiative
NEW YORK (IPS) — Advocates for greater freedom of information are expressing approval of the Obama administration's new "Open Government Directive" — but some are sounding cautionary notes that executive agencies are still hiding behind "national security" to conceal government misconduct. Jameel Jaffer, Director of the...
Report shows jump in anti-Muslim bias incidents
December 5th, 20090 WASHINGTON — An annual report released this week by a prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization shows an increase in the total number of bias-related incidents, but a decrease in anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2008. The report by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), titled "Seeking...VIDEO: Comedy Central spotlights Palestinian rights activism
Rights activists Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian leader, and Anna Baltzer, an American Jew, appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" last month, where host Jon Stewart immediately asked them to fight. "We're part of a pretty large group, actually, of Palestinians and Jews working together," Baltzer said about the nonviolent...
Fort Hood shootings: U.S. Muslims feel new heat
November 21st, 20090 SAN FRANCISCO — In the hours after officials identified Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Virginian of Palestinian ancestry, as the shooter at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5, U.S. Muslim groups quickly condemned the attack. Religious and community leaders were eager to assure the nation that Muslims were appalled by the day's violence. "It's...FBI file reveals Israeli crimes in U.S.
WASHINGTON (BUSINESS WIRE) — An FBI file reveals the Israeli embassy passed stolen classified U.S. government information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In 1984 Israel and AIPAC jointly lobbied Congress to secure preferential Israeli access to the U.S. market against widespread American industry...
U.N. investigator probes U.S. housing crisis
November 19th, 20090 UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. body responsible for monitoring human rights violations is investigating why hundreds of thousands — and possibly millions — of people in the United States are condemned to live on the streets. Last month, the U.N. Geneva-based Human Rights Council sent one of its top experts on human rights to find...Feds seize four mosques, New York skyscraper
Federal authorities said Thursday's move to seize the assets of the New York-based Alavi Foundation over alleged Iranian ties should not effect the activities of the organization's many tenants, which include mosques in Maryland, New York, Texas, and California. The forfeiture action, however, is raising concerns about religious...Right calls Ft. Hood killings “Islamic terror”
WASHINGTON (IPS) — Senior military and Barack Obama administration officials have been on a full-court press to preempt an anti-Muslim backlash since the shooting spree by a Muslim soldier at Fort Hood, Texas, but right-wing pundits have wasted no time in characterizing Major Nidal Malik Hasan's actions as an act of terrorism by a...Innocent post 9/11 detainees get $1.26 million
-Press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights NEW YORK — The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has announced that five men who had been living in New York and were ultimately deported won a $1.26 million settlement from the United States government in a case challenging post-9/11 racial profiling, illegal...Obama’s outreach to Muslim World teetering
WASHINGTON (IPS) — U.S. President Barack Obama's extraordinary efforts since his first days in office to reassure Muslims in the Greater Middle East about U.S. intentions in the region have suffered a series of setbacks that threaten to reverse whatever gains he has made over the past 10 months in restoring Washington's badly...Loosening of F.B.I. rules stir privacy concerns
WASHINGTON — After a Somali-American teenager from Minneapolis committed a suicide bombing in Africa in October 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating whether a Somali Islamist group had recruited him on United States soil. Instead of collecting information only on people about whom they had a tip or links to......
Arabs and Muslims condemn Fort Hood attack
November 7th, 20090 An Army officer identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire at a Texas military base Thursday, killing 13 and wounding 31, according to several news agencies. Major Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army doctor identified as a suspect in the shooting at the U.S. Army post in Fort Hood, Texas, is seen in this undated handout photo from...VIDEO: TV news commentator bashes Islamophobic lawmakers
MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow took aim on Monday at four Republican members of U.S. Congress who announced they would demand an investigation into the Council of American-Islamic Relations during an Oct. 14 press conference, as they promoted a book entitled "Muslim Mafia." They accused CAIR of attempting to infiltrate Congress – by...Charity officials press for federal antiterrorism restrictions to be relaxed
After years of raising concerns that the federal government's antiterrorism rules constrain charities from performing humanitarian work overseas and dissuade Americans from giving, nonprofit officials are growing slightly more hopeful that some of those policies might be modified. A group of charity leaders has been gathering with...Pro-Israel group’s money trail veers hard right
WASHINGTON (IPS) — StandWithUs — an organization that "ensures that Israel's side of the story is told" — has become increasingly aggressive in challenging the "pro-Israel" credentials of moderate Jewish-American groups, going so far as to suggest that receiving money from Arab donors and supporters of Human Rights Watch undermines......
Can Detroit go green?
October 17th, 20090 DETROIT — Just as the auto industry was ripe for change in 1903 when Henry Ford set up Ford Motor Company in Detroit, carmakers again seem on the cusp of revolution. Hybrid and pure electric vehicles threaten to overthrow the dynasty of the old internal-combustion engine even as proposed greenhouse-gas legislation would undermine...Foreign policy hawks launch new campaign against Obama
WASHINGTON (IPS) — Just days after the Nobel Committee in Oslo awarded Barack Obama its coveted peace prize, two of Washington's most prominent foreign policy hawks launched a new group and ad campaign designed to depict the president as weak and defend the more aggressive policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush.......
U.S. berated for shielding Israel on Gaza killings
UNITED NATIONS — A U.S. decision to stall Security Council action against Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas for war crimes during the 22-day conflict in Gaza last December has come under heavy fire both from inside and outside the United Nations. Addressing the Security Council Wednesday, the chair of the 118-member...UM-Dearborn marks 50th Anniversary
Since being founded in 1959 on the original estate of automotive pioneer Henry Ford after a gift of land from Ford Motor Company, the University of Michigan-Dearborn has grown into one of the most distinguished and respected colleges of its kind. Students celebrate UM-Dearborn's 50th anniversary at the Henry Ford Estate on......
