Tag: islamaphobia
Canadian PM Says Mosque Shooting A ‘Terrorist Attack On Muslims’

Canadian PM Says Mosque Shooting A ‘Terrorist Attack On Muslims’

QUEBEC CITY (Reuters) – Six people were killed and eight wounded when gunmen opened fire at a Quebec City mosque during Sunday night prayers, in what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “terrorist attack on Muslims.”

Police said two suspects had been arrested, but gave no details about them or what prompted the attack.

Initially, the mosque president said five people were killed and a witness said up to three gunmen had fired on about 40 people inside the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre. Police said only two people were involved in the attack.

“Six people are confirmed dead – they range in age from 35 to about 70,” Quebec provincial police spokeswoman Christine Coulombe told reporters, adding eight people were wounded and 39 were unharmed.

The mosque’s president, Mohamed Yangui, who was not inside when the shooting occurred, said he got frantic calls from people at evening prayers.

“Why is this happening here? This is barbaric,” he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement: “We condemn this terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge. Muslim-Canadians are an important part of our national fabric, and these senseless acts have no place in our communities, cities, and country.”

The shooting came on the weekend that Trudeau said Canada would welcome refugees, after U.S. President Donald Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program and temporarily barred citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States on national security grounds.

A Canadian federal Liberal legislator, Greg Fergus, tweeted: “This is an act of terrorism — the result of years of sermonizing Muslims. Words matter and hateful speeches have consequences!”

The premier of Quebec province, Philippe Couillard, said security would be increased at mosques in Quebec City and Montreal.

“We are with you. You are home,” Couillard said, directing his comments at the province’s Muslim community. “You are welcome in your home. We are all Quebecers. We must continue together to build an open welcoming and peaceful society”.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said police were providing additional protection for mosques in that city following the Quebec shooting. “All New Yorkers should be vigilant. If you see something, say something,” he tweeted.

‘NOT SAFE HERE’

French President Francois Hollande condemned the attack.

“The terrorists wanted to attack the spirit of peace and tolerance of the citizens of Quebec,” Hollande said in a statement on Monday. “France stands shoulder to shoulder with the victims and their families”.

Like France, Quebec has struggled at times to reconcile its secular identity with a rising Muslim population, many of them from North Africa.

In June last year, a pig’s head was left on the doorstep of the cultural center.

“We are not safe here,” said Mohammed Oudghiri, who normally attends prayers at the mosque in the middle-class, residential area, but did not on Sunday.

Oudghiri said he had lived in Quebec for 42 years but was now “very worried” and thinking of moving back to Morocco.

Mass shootings are rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States, and news of the shooting sent a shockwave through mosques and community centers throughout the mostly French-language province.

“It’s a sad day for all Quebecers and Canadians to see a terrorist attack happen in peaceful Quebec City,” said Mohamed Yacoub, co-chairman of an Islamic community center in a Montreal suburb.

“I hope it’s an isolated incident.”

Incidents of Islamophobia have increased in Quebec in recent years. The face-covering, or niqab, became a big issue in the 2015 Canadian federal election, especially in Quebec, where the majority of the population supported a ban on it at citizenship ceremonies.

In 2013, police investigated after a mosque in the Saguenay region of the province was splattered with what was believed to be pig blood. In the neighboring province of Ontario, a mosque was set on fire in 2015, a day after an attack by gunmen and suicide bombers in Paris.

Zebida Bendjeddou, who left the Quebec City mosque earlier on Sunday evening, said the center had received threats.

“In June, they’d put a pig’s head in front of the mosque. But we thought: ‘Oh, they’re isolated events.’ We didn’t take it seriously. But tonight, those isolated events, they take on a different scope,” she said.

Bendjeddou said she had not confirmed the names of those killed, but added: “They’re people we know, for sure. People we knew since they were little kids.”

(Reporting by Kevin Dougherty in Quebec City; Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington, Allison Lampert in Montreal, Andrea Hopkins and David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto and Chris Michaud in New York; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Peter Cooney, Robert Birsel)

IMAGE: Swat team police officer walk around a mosque after a shooting in Quebec City. REUTERS/Mathieu Belanger

Caught On Camera: Donald Trump’s Anti-Muslim Agenda Revealed

Caught On Camera: Donald Trump’s Anti-Muslim Agenda Revealed

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet. 

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an adviser for Donald Trump’s transition team, has drafted a plan for the incoming administration to impose sweeping Islamophobic policies, including the revival and expansion of a Bush-era Muslim registry, as well as forced interrogations and ideological screenings of immigrants “regarding support for Sharia law.”

He is also calling for a redefinition of the term “criminal alien” to include “any alien arrested for any crime, and any gang member,” a dramatic expansion that could ensnare countless numbers of people before they face trial or conviction.

The plan was revealed when Associated Press photographer Carolyn Kaster captured an image of Kobach entering a private meeting with Trump on Sunday, carrying a binder and papers. Held in Bedminster, New Jersey, the meeting was aimed at discussing “border security, international terrorism and reforming federal bureaucracy,” according to the Trump transition team. Some text on one of those pages, although partially obscured by Kobach’s hand, is legible when the image is enlarged.

The document appears to lay out Kobach’s plan for his first year, if he is tapped to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

The top bullet point, titled “Bar the Entry of Potential Terrorists,” calls for DHS to “Update and reintroduce the NSEERS screening and tracking system (National Security Entry-Exit Registration System) that was in place from 2002-2005. All aliens from high-risk areas are tracked.”

As a staffer in George W. Bush’s justice department, Kobach pushed for the 2002 creation of NSEERS, a registry for men over the age of 16 who hail from countries deemed to pose a terrorist danger to the United States. Of the 25 countries included on the list, 24 had majority-Muslim populations.

By the time DHS announced in 2011 that it was indefinitely suspending the program, it had ensnared nearly 100,000 people and led to thousands of deportations. According to Chris Rickerd of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, NSEERS “mandated ethnic profiling on a scale not seen in the United States since Japanese-American internment during World War II and the ‘Operation Wetback’ deportations to Mexico of 1954.”

President Obama has continued the practice of registering Muslims through the expansion of the federal government’s terrorist watch listing system, which disproportionately targets Muslims.

Unlike Bush and Obama, who have falsely maintained that they were not creating Muslim registries, the Trump campaign has been far more overt. Reuters reporters Mica Rosenberg and Julia Edwards wrote Tuesday that Kobach, who helped author Arizona’s draconian SB 1070 anti-immigrant law, “said in an interview that Trump’s policy advisers had also discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.”

Carl Higbie, a prominent Trump supporter and spokesperson for the Great America PAC, recently told Megyn Kelly on Fox News that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is a “precedent” for a potential Muslim registry.

Kobach’s written plan also calls for DHS to “Add extreme vetting questions for high-risk aliens: question them regarding support for Sharia law, jihad, equality of men and women, the United States Constitution.” The text is disturbingly similar to Trump’s campaign trail calls for an ideological screening of Muslim immigrant and visitors.

“Conspiracy-minded Islamophobia”

Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror, explained to AlterNet that, “For more than a decade, Muslim immigrants in the U.S. have been subject to extra scrutiny and suspicion by federal agencies. The new plan will further ramp up that profiling. Interrogating ‘aliens’ about their views on sharia, jihad, the equality of men and women, and the U.S. constitution will do nothing to prevent terrorism. For President-elect Trump to seek to exclude Muslim ‘aliens’ for not respecting gender equality or the constitution would be ironic to say the least. This is not an anti-terrorism policy but an anti-Islam policy that has its origins in the conspiratorial thinking of the far right.”

Michael German, a former special agent with the FBI who is now a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, agreed. “This document reflects the conspiracy-minded Islamophobia that shouldn’t be part of any government proposal,” he said.

The document appears to recommend that the Trump administration deport a “Record Number of Criminal Aliens in the First Year.” Going further, Kobach calls for the term ‘Criminal Aliens’ to be redefined “as any alien arrested for any crime, and any gang member.” In other words, one could be determined a criminal alien before facing trial or conviction.

German emphasized that the reference to the “gang database” is particularly troubling, explaining, “What we know about the gang database is that it is full of people who are placed there arbitrarily.”

The plan also recommends that the U.S. bring the “intake of Syrian refugees to zero” and calls for a “rapid build” of Trump’s proposed wall along the southern border with Mexico.

Trump’s appointees indicate that he plans to give white nationalists and anti-immigrant hardliners a direct line to the White House. So far, he has nominated white nationalist Steve Bannon as chief strategist, and Jeff Sessions, who was found to be too racist to serve as a federal judge under the Reagan administration, as attorney general. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who has proclaimed he is “open” to torture, is Trump’s appointee for the role of national security adviser.

Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, she coedited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare.

IMAGE: Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach talks in his Topeka, Kansas, U.S., office May 12, 2016. REUTERS/Dave Kaup/File Photo