what pisses me off the MOST on this planet are DOUBLE STANDARDS and HYPOCRISY; if the mosques were, say, synagogues instead, well, you know action would've been taken already:
VANDALS TRASH MOSQUE
Sebastian Kitchen, Avalanche-Journal, 3/8/04
http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/030804/loc_030804049.shtml
Police and the FBI are investigating a hateful act of vandalism directed at
the area's Muslim community.
The Islamic Center of the South Plains was vandalized overnight Saturday,
and the mosque's spiritual leader found the destruction when he arrived at
6:20 a.m. Sunday for the first daily prayer.
Mohamed El-Moctar, the imam, found pro-American and anti-Muslim slogans
written on the walls along with damage throughout the building.
"I feel sad about what happened," El-Moctar said. "I feel sad. Our
community is very peaceful, and our community is targeted - not for
anything they did, but for what they are and what they believe."
His office was in shambles. The door was broken. His computer was on the
floor and had racial slurs written on it. His shelves had been tipped over
with books, paperwork and other items littering the floor.
"What hurt us more was not the material loss, it was the graffiti written
on the wall inside the mosque," El-Moctar said.
The fence around the mosque was bent down. Metal that once covered a window
had been pried back, and the window was smashed with a brick. Glass still
littered the mosque floor Sunday night as men kneeled to worship.
El-Moctar said the suspects likely entered through the window or a side door.
He said the FBI told him there was more than one person involved based on
shoe prints outside the mosque.
Nothing in the police report definitely identifies the crime as a hate
crime, police Lt. Jerry Brewer said. The crime will be listed as burglary
of a building, a state jail felony, he said...
ALSO SEE:
MOSQUE VANDALIZED IN SOUTH PLAINS CITY
Associated Press, 3/8/04
http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8162BR81.html
LUBBOCK- Smashed windows, anti-Muslim graffiti, broken furniture and other
destruction at a South Plains mosque are under investigation by the FBI and
police early Monday following a weekend break-in that religious leaders say
was a hate crime.
Imam Mohamed El-Moctar said his office at the Islamic Center of the South
Plains was ransacked when he arrived for morning prayers on Sunday.
A fan dangled above an overturned shelf and broken chairs in the women's
worship hall. El-Moctar pointed to a dent in the wall where he believed a
chair had been thrown.
"This is the action of someone angry, very angry," he told the Lubbock
Avalanche-Journal in Monday's online edition.
The mosque's spiritual leader said he found pro-American and anti-Muslim
slogans written on the walls along with damage throughout the building.
"I feel sad about what happened," he said. " ... Our community is very
peaceful, and our community is targeted not for anything they did, but for
what they are and what they believe."
Police Lt. Jerry Brewer called the property damage at the mosque
significant. Investigators believe the break-in occurred sometime between
10 p.m. Saturday and 6:20 a.m. Sunday by multiple suspects, possibly gang
members.
In addition to breaking furniture and windows, the intruders took a sound
system and a VCR. A donation box was also torn open, and the funds inside
stolen. Pennies were left on the floor near the box.
Miles Burden, supervisor-in-charge of the Lubbock FBI office, told the
newspaper that agents went to the mosque Sunday morning. FBI officials in
Lubbock and Dallas did not immediately return calls to The Associated Press
for comment...
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ARSON FIRES STRIKE 2 MUSLIM SITES IN FRANCE
Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, 3/5/04
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/international/europe/05CND-FRAN.html
PARIS - A Muslim prayer center in the Alpine town of Seynod was destroyed
today and the annex of a mosque in nearby Annecy was damaged in separate
arson attacks before dawn.
The local police said the two fires were set on purpose but declined to
label them hate crimes.
The Ministry of the Interior made no public statement about the arson
attacks, and Frank Louvrier, the ministry spokesman, said that one was not
planned. A spokeswoman at the prime minister's office referred all
inquiries to the Ministry of the Interior.
The absence of reaction by the center-right French government to attacks on
the two Muslim places of worship was in stark contrast to the activist
steps it took after a Jewish school annex in a suburb of Paris was badly
damaged by a pre-dawn fire bomb in November.
Just hours after the attack against the Jewish school, Interior Minister
Nicolas Sarkozy visited the site and said it was "more than strongly
suspected" to be an anti-Semitic and "obviously" racist act. He vowed that
those who set the fire would be caught and punished "with the greatest
severity."
The next day, President Jacques Chirac declared that "an attack on a Jew is
an attack against France" and approved a plan for tougher policing and
prosecution of hate crimes and sweeping urban renewal investments of almost
$8 billion to clean up neighborhoods thought to breed Islamic extremism.
Mr. Sarkozy has no plan at the moment to visit the Muslim sites, Mr.
Louvrier said...
Fayik Dag, president of the Islamic Union in France at Seynod, accused the
government of a double standard in not condemning the attacks against the
Muslim targets...
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SIKH TEENAGERS REPORT THAT BIAS ATTACKERS CUT OFF THEIR HAIR
http://www.sikhcoalition.org/
(3/5/04) Lodi, New Jersey - Two Sikh teenagers reported to police that they
were beaten and robbed by a group of men who yanked off their turbans and
then cut off their hair in Lodi, New Jersey. Local police have confirmed to
the Sikh Coalition that the incident is being investigated as a bias crime.
The two teenagers, whose families have requested that they remain
anonymous, were at a bus stop when three men approached them and asked to
borrow money shortly after 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday night.
The Sikh teenagers and the men began pushing each other. According to
police, the two Sikhs then chased the assailants into a nearby park. The
assailants were joined by two more men who surrounded, beat and robbed the
two Sikhs of approximately forty dollars. According to the two Sikhs, one
man then removed their turbans, pulled out scissors, and cut three to four
feet of their hair as they pleaded for him to stop.
After learning about the reported incident today, the Sikh Coalition
requested a meeting with the Chief of the Lodi Police Department. The
Coalition attended the meeting with family members of the two victims,
members of the Lodi Sikh community, American Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee,
Bergen County Human Relations Commission and Community Relations Service of
the United States Justice Department.
Lodi Police Chief Vincent Caruso and Captain Vincent Quatrone, who is
supervising the investigation, briefed meeting attendees on police efforts
to investigate the crime. The police chief reported that the department had
decided to investigate the matter as a bias crime because the attackers
used epithets such as "Bin Laden" while cutting the two Sikhs' hair...
The Sikh Coalition expresses its deepest sympathies for the victims and
their families and encourages Sikhs everywhere to remember them in your
prayers.
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