DIY firm Lowe's in row over Muslim-American reality TV

The Amen family of Dearborn includes a fiance who is converting from Catholicism

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Home improvement retailer Lowe's is facing criticism after removing advertising from a reality TV show showcasing American Muslims.

The company pulled ads from All-American Muslim after complaints from the Florida Family Association.

The cable TV show portrays the lives of five families in Dearborn, Michigan, a city known for its Muslim and Arab population.

Lowe's issued an apology, but did not say it would re-advertise on the show.

The North Carolina-based company said in a statement it apologised for having "managed to make some people very unhappy".

"It appears that we managed to step into a hotly contested debate with strong views from virtually every angle and perspective," the firm said.

"As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance."

In a statement on its website, the Florida Family Association called All-American Muslim "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values".

The association asked members to send emails to companies that ran advertisements during the show.

According to the association, adverts from many other firms are no longer appearing during the programme. However, while many firms buy adverts to run at any time, Lowe's said it pulled adverts bought specifically for broadcast during All-American Muslim.

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I'm saddened that any place of business would succumb to bigots and people trying to perpetuate their negative views on an entire community”

Suehaila AmenAll-American Muslim participant

The Learning Channel, which broadcasts the programme, features several reality shows focusing on the everyday lives of subjects viewed by many as controversial or outside the mainstream.

They include a polygamist family in Sister Wives, and the Duggars, a conservative Christian family with 19 children on 19 and Counting.

The channel describes All-American Muslim as "a powerful series that goes inside the rarely-seen world of American Muslims to uncover a unique community struggling to balance faith and nationality in a post 9/11 world".

'Extreme disappointment'

Keith Ellison, one of only two Muslim congressmen, said withdrawing the advertisements was "disappointing".

"The success of All-American Muslim shows how ready the country is to learn about Muslims as Americans," he said in a statement.

"This probably makes hate-mongers uncomfortable - as they should be," Mr Ellison, a Democrat who site in the House of Representatives for a Minnesota district.

Mr Ellison was among those who signed a petition calling on Lowe's and other advertisers to resist calls to step aside from opponents of the show.

Suehaila Amen, whose family is featured on All-American Muslim, told the Detroit News on Sunday she was disappointed by the retailer's decision.

"I'm saddened that any place of business would succumb to bigots and people trying to perpetuate their negative views on an entire community," she said.

Ted Lieu, a Democratic state senator from California, said he was considering calling for a boycott of Lowe's, a pledge already made by Twitter users using the hashtag #boycottlowes.

"The show is about what it's like to be a Muslim in America, and it touches on the discrimination they sometimes face. And that kind of discrimination is exactly what's happening here with Lowe's," Mr Lieu said.

The Michigan director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Dawud Walid, said his group felt "extreme disappointment" but was working on resolving the situation with the help of non-Muslim allies.

"I will be picking up the phone tomorrow to some of our friends and allies to explain the situation to them," Mr Walid said on Sunday.

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NY Mosque's Sign Smashed on 9/11 Anniversary

"BUFFALO, NY (WIVB) - Was the sign at a mosque on the city's east side intentionally damaged? What makes this incident suspicious is that it happened on Sunday, the 10 year anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks on America.

Police are investigating and have not determined whether it was a was deliberate act, but some residents we talked to believe this was no accident.

Geneva's Auto owner Walter Johnson said, "That was deliberately done and I think it's awful."

A sign outside this a mosque on Genesee Street in Buffalo was wrecked on September 11th, the 10 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers.

Buffalo Police Chaplain Bilal Abdullah said, "I guess it was a 9/11. People maybe looked at it as a way to get back at Muslims in general."

Dorothy Chandler says she saw it happen.

"He was doing about 90 to 100 miles-per-hour. Drove u pon the sidewalk, actually, and crashed into that sign," said Chandler.

Buffalo Police say a truck drove over the lawn in front of the mosque and smashed the sign, which we found in pieces around the parking lot.

Resident Ernest Rainey said, "Everybody has a right to have their own religion."

Rainey lives across the street from the mosque and adjoining school.

"They don't bother anybody. If they do park in front of my house, they don't say nothing to me. They might greet me, if that, and they don't do anything wrong," said Rainey.

Johnson said, "Everyone is not a terrorist. I mean, it's a nice mosque. I know a lot of these guys over here. I do a lot of work on their vehicles. And whoever it is needs to be caught."

The incident, whether intentional or accidental, has some neighbors, like Bruce Austin, quite upset.

Austin said, "I think this is a destruction of property. You know, everyone is not connected with the event that happened on 9/11 and I think it's very unfair."

Police Chaplain Abdullah says there needs to be a better understanding of cultural and religious differences, saying, "I think 9/11 is about bringing things together. Religious organizations together, and that Muslims, people don't look at Muslims as just a big terrorist organization. That's the farthest thing from the truth."

The good news is no one was injured, but it sure has shaken up the immediate neighborhood."

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"Muslim Canucks deal with stereotypes, examine own religion 10 years after 9-11"

By Michelle McQuigge, The Canadian Press 

TORONTO - Gilary Massa's high school art class began buzzing with speculation the day a student rushed in to announce that "somebody bombed America." Amid her horror Massa had one hope which proved to be in vain — that the perpetrators wouldn't be Muslim.

From the safety of her home, she heard the frantic phone calls to American relatives who feared being seen in public. Massa's mother tried forbidding her hijab-clad daughter from returning to school for fear of the persecution she might face.

Massa overruled her mother, but found the Toronto classroom she returned to was not the same one she left on Sept. 11, 2001.

Classmates badgered her with questions about her faith, setting the stage for a pattern of behaviour she would witness time and again over the next decade.

"I automatically had to start justifying myself and talking about my beliefs and denouncing what had happened," Massa said.

"It was a weird thing to have to prove that I didn't agree with the actions of 9-11. What person in their right mind would agree with the bombing of innocent people? It was interesting to me that all of a sudden I was having to actually convince people that, no, I didn't know Osama Bin Laden, he was not my leader, I didn't agree with his actions."

Massa said she was never able to relax that defensive stance over the next 10 years, since stereotypical ideas that took root in the days after 9-11 never abated.

Safa Ali was forced to the same realization after encountering a sign of overt racism she had never witnessed before the collapse of the World Trade Center's twin towers. Her entire family had their passports flagged for no apparent reason, she said, adding the alerts remain in place to this day.

Airport staff treated the family with veiled hostility in the months following 9-11, reserving the bulk of their skepticism for Ali's father and brother, she said. She herself came under attack from a friend's grandfather who had no qualms about bashing her religion and launching a conversion attempt.

Such blatant racism has subsided, but the stereotypes that drove such actions in the past — such as the notion that all Muslim women are oppressed and all believers in the faith are prone to violence — appear to have become more firmly entrenched in society's consciousness, she said.

"When people talk about it, it's almost taken as a given now. There's no need to say it out loud or be aggressive about it," Ali said. "It comes from a place of, you could call it empathy, because they're saying, 'Oh, those poor women and all those poor girls.' But if you dig deeper it comes from this opinion that there's just one way that the majority of people are and it's so sad that they're like that."

Stereotypical thinking gave Yousaf Khan a scare in the summer of 2006 when several of his former classmates were arrested as part of the infamous Toronto 18.

The suspects were dubbed Canada's first homegrown post-9-11 terrorist network when they were arrested in 2006 amid headline-grabbing allegations of a plot to target landmarks in Toronto and Ottawa, behead the prime minister and attack the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Eleven of the men served jail time, while the remaining seven had their charges dropped or stayed.

Khan, 27, had enjoyed nothing but positive experiences with Canadians since arriving in Ontario in 2000, but feared the spectre of a home-grown terrorism network would infringe on his daily life.

Fortunately for Khan, that fear proved groundless in each of the three provinces he's called home, including his current city of Edmonton. The experience, however, did force him to ponder the complex dynamics at play in Canada's Muslim community.

His former schoolmates who turned extremist were driven by a powerful sense of isolation and humiliation, he said, adding their views were fuelled by turbulent politics in the Middle East combined with subtle snubs at home.

Khan and his friends, however, took a different path. The tragedy of Sept. 11 proved beyond a doubt that fundamentalist doctrine had no place in mainstream society, he said.

"From what I've seen amongst my own friends ... before, they might have had some kind of sympathy with Osama Bin Laden and everybody else," he said. "Seeing that there's absolutely no success, there's absolutely no divine support, I have to think the sympathy for him has completely waned away."

Questions of identity also dogged Ali and Massa as they came of age in the post-911 era.

Ali said she questioned her faith more critically in her teens and now calls her belief in Islam a "more salient" part of her identity.

The issue runs even deeper for Massa, who said the systemic distrust of Islam she believes has crept into Canadian culture has made her question the relationship between the religion she practices and the country she calls home.

Massa feels particularly threatened by legislation banning traditional Islamic attire, such as a proposed bill in Quebec that seeks to ban the use of the face-covering burka or niqab when providing or receiving public services.

The law — which has languished in Quebec's National Assembly for months — would ban women from receiving government services while wearing the burka or niqab, which cover the face. Some Quebec legislators want the proposed ban extended to all religious symbols, such as the Sikh ceremonial dagger known as the kirpan.

Such attitudes trouble Massa.

"What exactly is Canadian identity? I thought it was about being Canadian and being able to continue your religious or cultural traditions and having the freedom to do that," she said.

"Those sorts of things are slowly being taken away. It's a small minority of my community that is under fire right now, but I fear that those types of things will be extended."

Not all Muslims have felt the sting of victimization.

Amir Shahzada, a Toronto cab driver who moved to Canada in 2002, said he has never experienced discrimination during his time in North America.

"I'm driving a cab for almost five, six, seven years, and I have a lot of people, different mentality people ... They are very good," he said.

Sohail Raza, president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, says any tensions that exist can be traced back to the Muslim community rather than the rest of Canada.

Mosque leaders have capitalized on the notion of Islamophobia, convincing Muslims they are under attack and driving the community towards fundamentalism, he said.

"I'm free to critique Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, but why am I not able to take any critique on myself?" he said. "(Mosque leaders) get away with that. They play with the human rights issue. They play with freedom of speech. They have infiltrated institutions just to harm Canada."

Massa disagrees, saying the post-9-11 years have encouraged more Muslims to educate themselves on the tenets of their religion and question teachings handed down from family members or community leaders.

Still, she said, Muslims should be allowed to grapple with identity questions and sort out their internal differences without judgment or interference from the rest of Canada.

"I'm the first person to criticize the actions of my own community, but I think that is a discussion we have to have as a community."

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American Muslims, Atheists Most Likely to Reject Violence

"A new poll out by Gallup shows that out of all the religious groups in the U.S., Muslims are most likely to reject violence, followed by the non-religious atheists and agnostics. 78 percent of Muslims believe violence which kills civilians is never justified whereas just 38 percent of Protestant Christians and 39 percent of Catholics agreed with that statement.

The poll underlines the misconception held by many in America that their Muslim countrymen are violent. If this poll is correct, it ironically seems Christian Americans are the most in need of a reminder of the peaceful teachings of their saviour and moral model, Jesus Christ."

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Video: CAIR Rep Says 9/11 Coloring Book Promotes Anti-Muslim Stereotypes...

The fact that there is a colouring book out there directed to young impressionable children that openly promotes ignorance is shocking to say the least. These open acts of racism and prejudice prove more and more the negative and backwards way that our society is heading. Humanity is sinking and ignorance is rampant, we live in a time where being anything other than a white Christian leads to an automatic dislike and turns you into a stereotype. These attitudes are becoming more and more prevalent where I live and what's worrying is that people seem to think it's OK.



"There's a new coloring book on the market and it doesn't feature cute animals or cartoon characters...it shows the Twin Towers burning and Navy Seals shooting Osama Bin Laden. CAIR-MI Executive Director appears on Dr. Drew's CNN program and says the coloring book promotes anti-Muslim stereotypes. CONTACT: CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid, E-mail: dwalid@cair.com"


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Sign the petition to discontinue the nasty colouring book

"Muslims Called 'Enemy' at Hearing on Minn. Islamic Center"

"An Islamic Community Center is one step closer to moving into a Plymouth neighborhood, but not everyone in town is happy about it.

A downtown Plymouth post office doesn't use most of the space in their building and it's for sale. So, the Northwest Islamic Community Center made an offer to buy it.

That move brought a rare crowd into the Plymouth Planning Commission meeting Wednesday night.

It's because the Islamic group would like to share the building with the post office, leasing it back for rent, which means prayer services and postal services would be in the same building.

During a public hearing on whether the building should be used for religious purposes, citizens sent strong messages — on both sides.

"Aiding the enemy is treason," said one man opposed to the center.

"Those who are, you know, do not understand the religion, they are a small minority," said a man in favor of the center. "I hope we can reach out to them, and I hope they can come visit us and know us in person."

The Planning Commission gave unanimous approval for a conditional-use permit, which they believe can be used for religious reasons. They called it a win for both the Islamic center and the post office, which needed to sell the space.

The City Council will make the final decision next week."

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Minn. City Gets 'Vile' Hate Mail Over Planned Islamic Center

"Plymouth City Council member, Bob Stein, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that he is disappointed to receive vile, religiously hostile emails from people opposed to the Islamic Center. The Muslim group needs a permit from the city to open the community center and the Plymouth Planning Commission will make its recommendation on approval of that permit Wednesday night."



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"MINARETS IN TEMECULA"

"America was founded on the concept of religious freedom, but the desire of the Muslim residents in Temecula, a city north of San Diego, to build a new place of worship is met with resistance from elements in the local community. We examine how this conflict plays out against a backdrop of national and global politics and explore the roots of the opposition, as well as the diverse nature of the support for the project."

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