Here is a link to a map at The Economist that a friend of Judy’s sent today. It’s a map showing what percentage of citizens’ income is used for food/fuel/drink in most countries of the world, although its purpose is not to show immigration patterns, it is nonetheless instructive. Of course it’s intuitive that immigrants are flowing to North America, Europe and Australia because of the strong economies in those democratic and capitalist countries. I hope you find it as interesting as I did—to see economies depicted on a color-coded world map.
Month: July 2008
Black guy shoots Uzbek in Ohio, CAIR involved
We have written on several previous occasions about the tensions building in the American black community toward immigrants (white or black immigrants). This is a case where you have to feel enormous sympathy toward the middle-aged Uzbek (probably a refugee) frightened by a gang at a gas station.
Cleveland Police announced they made an arrest in the shooting of a local man while he was pumping gas.
William “Happy” Neal [see his photo at the story link] was arrested on Thursday, July 3 for the June 20 shooting of Fazliddin Yakubov at the Superior Certified gas station located at 7608 Superior.
A Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) spokeswoman is quoted:
June 20th, some people were taunting Fazliddin Yakubov, 49, right before he was shot three times in the lower abdomen as he stood near a gas pump, said Julia Shearson, executive director of the Cleveland Chapter Council on American Islamic Relations.
People at the gas station might have mistaken Yakubov, who is a native of Uzbekistan, as an Arab because he spoke the Uzbek language and then recited a Muslim prayer in Arabic when he became frightened by a group of people milling around the gas station, Shearson said.
I don’t know why Shearson assumed these blacks were targeting an Arab, its likely any immigrant would do. I’d be interested to know what the exchange was about.
Incidentally, two Uzbek men (refugees) died under mysterious circumstances in Boise, Idaho in 2006. See that post here. Anyone have a clue why we are bringing Muslim Uzbeks to the US?
Here they come! Immigration lawyers
Yesterday’s Washington Post had a lengthy article about how the Immigration law field is booming and law schools are cranking out hordes of young idealistic lawyers, often former immigrants themselves, ready to help not only refugees and asylees but illegal immigrants as well.
A subject that three decades ago was a secondary, technical field delegated to adjunct professors is booming at law schools nationwide. Elective immigration law courses taught by tenured specialists are filling lecture halls, immigration clinics are expanding and student groups devoted to the subject are mushrooming.
The momentum is partly driven by a high-profile, rancorous immigration debate. But it is also the result of an era of mass immigration that has fueled demand from foreigners and businesses seeking help navigating U.S. immigration statutes and has created a generation of law students intimately familiar with the issue, often because they are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves.
British author campaigning against Female Genital Mutilation
Blulitespecial sent me this link within moments of my nice chat over at this post written about honor kilIings in early June. The commenters there asked me not to use the word “heathen” in connection with anything to do with Muslims because it offended our readers Scandinavian religious heritage. LOL! I’ll honor their wishes and describe FGM as savagery and not heathen behavior.
Also, check out this post where we had a comment (no.7) earlier today on FGM. The subject is obviously a hot one.
Now, back to the British author’s campaign. Read the whole article about how Ruth Rendell has worked the subject of mutilation of a little girl into a novel soon to be published entitled, “Not in the Flesh.” Rendell discusses how difficult it is to stop the practice in the UK because it is so secretive.
Secretive, yes, but here is what I think is the real reason—no one wants to offend Muslim refugees and immigrants by talking about it. The article describes the practice as coming mostly with immigrants from the Horn of Africa. There is not one mention of any connection to Islam. Granted some who are not Muslims practice this mutilation, but the majority of the practitioners are Muslims.
This politically correct tiptoeing around FGM (and other similar abuses) for fear of offending will be the death of us.
Suit filed in Walkersville Ahmadiyya Muslim Mosque case
This news is not totally unexpected, the property owners and their lawyer had hinted that a lawsuit might be brought against the rural town of Walkersville, MD when it had earlier ruled against a special exemption request that would have allowed a large Muslim complex to be built in the town. For background see my post of June 10th and then follow links back for the full story.
WALKERSVILLE, Md. – Officials of a rural Maryland town illegally discriminated against a Muslim group by barring them from building a mosque and holding annual conventions on land zoned for farming, the property’s owner claimed in a federal lawsuit filed Monday.
The complaint was filed not by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA but by developer David Moxley and his father Robert, who had planned to sell the group 224 acres in Walkersville for about $6 million.
The Silver Spring-based religious group canceled the land purchase earlier this year after the town’s three-member Board of Zoning Appeals voted unanimously to reject their request for a special exception to land-use restrictions.
Officials of the town of 5,600 based their denial largely on open space preservation concerns and fears that the thousands of people attending the group’s annual, three-day Jalsa Salana national convention would overwhelm the community’s roads and emergency services.
Think about this next section of the article and the implications of the law that is being used in this suit. This means, I guess, that no town or jurisdiction could say no to a large or otherwise incompatible religious facility when considering its zoning decisions.
The complaint alleges violations of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees free exercise of religion, and the 14th Amendment, which provides equal protection to all.
It alleges violations of the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, enacted in 2000 to bar land-use regulations that would discriminate against a religious organization.
I spent years working in the property rights movement in this country and it was no secret that the federal government was seeking (spurred on by environmentalists) to control land use at a federal level and take it away from local governments. But, here you have the tables turned on the environmentalists because local citizens who are concerned about the quality of their environment could have a large and potentially environmentally destructive facility shoved down their throats in the name of religious freedom.
Can you imagine what fun this case could be on a Supreme Court level. Would liberal environmental groups side with local government (opposing the feds) against immigrant groups wishing to build large religious facilities on open space?
By the way, I am not a lawyer, nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, so the above speculation is just that!
For more go to Citizens for Walkersville here.