Day: September 21, 2008

The Greeley Tribune links Swift/Somali conflict and “Obsession” DVD distribution

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 24th:  CAIR files FEC complaint about distribution of “Obsession”, see Jihad Watch here.

Update from Grand Island:  Somalis making threats?

Wow!   You must see this lengthy report in the Greeley Tribune today by reporter Chris Casey.  It is the kind of indepth reporting we should be seeing in the big city papers, but rarely do.   (Hat tip to Blulitespecial who finally finished watching his races and found me all sorts of stories on the Swift/Somali brouhaha, including this one).  

Apparently the Tribune is one of the papers that recently received “Obsession” to distribute to readers along with their paper and it, and the Somalis, are the talk of the town.   You can see the trailer at this link.    However, try to view the whole hour-long DVD.  It is powerful.

In Greeley, the dispute continues on prayer breaks for Muslim workers at the meatpacking plant. Sentiment has spread among some in the community that the newcomers are pushing too much, exhibiting a desire not to assimilate but rather impose their religion on others.

Nationally, the DVD arrived on 28 million doorsteps as rhetoric on homeland security heats up in the presidential race.

The confluence of recent events — the Muslim workers’ dispute and, on its heels, the “Obsession” DVD — is the talk of the town. Many Greeley residents have noticed the 400 mostly Somali refugees who’ve arrived in the past 18 months to take jobs at JBS Swift. The workers say they are here to escape the oppression of their war-torn homeland, build a new life and peacefully practice their religion.

What to make of these newcomers and their religion, which is indelibly linked to 9/11 and other violent acts across the globe, has sparked a variety of views. The DVD alone prompts widely different opinions.

A Greeley woman calls the disc “neo-con propaganda,” while a history professor at Colorado State University says the film is factually accurate and shows it in his classes.

By the way, if this lady calling the film “neo-con propaganda” is the same one the reporter discusses later, she didn’t even bother to watch the film before running her mouth.

A Weld County Commissioner had already watched the film and read Mark Steyn’s America Alone which is on our recommended reading list.

Bill Jerke, a Weld County commissioner, said he worries that if a large percentage of workers walk off an assembly line at once, it can lead to an over-stressed and potentially dangerous situation for the remaining workers.

Jerke has watched “Obsession” — he bought the DVD a couple of years ago at a Republican function — and read a book called “America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.” Those sources, which he deems well-researched, as well as worldwide bombings by radical Muslims over the past 15 years, make him circumspect of Muslims in America.

You can go read all the critics of “Obsession” in Casey’s story, I’m skipping to the good part!

For all of us who have been fighting an uphill battle to bring the threat of radical Islamic activity to the forefront comes some validation of that work by a professor of Middle Eastern History at Colorado State University.

James Lindsay, an associate professor of Middle Eastern history at CSU, takes an opposite view on “Obsession.” He believes it’s a straightforward look at radical Islam.

He said the producers are explicit that film is about the radical ideology within Islam, which is advanced by the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida and other groups. The film’s introduction states that most Muslims are peaceful and don’t support terror.

The militant Islamic branch — which the film says makes up about 10 percent to 15 percent of a worldwide Muslim population of 1.2 billion, the world’s second-largest religion behind Christianity — has a conquest ideology, Lindsay said.

“It’s one of subjugating the world to their ideology. There is not room for another ideology, according to the radical Muslim ideology, and it’s frightening,” he said. “But it’s part and parcel of the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and the al-Qaida types that they want to impose their will on everyone.”

Conflicts between the West and Islam are inevitable, Lindsay said, because the demands of Islamic law are in conflict with the West’s approach to law and religion. The Quran speaks of creating a society that’s obedient to God’s law, not obedient to men’s model, he said.

He concludes:

Lindsay doesn’t expect to see an end to the conflict between radical Islam and the West in his lifetime.

“If we value who we say we are, we have to be vigilant against this ideology, which is hell-bent on our destruction,” he said.

In light of what has gone on in Greeley and in Grand Island, NE, in the last two weeks with people standing up to demands of Islamic fundamentalists, I’m a bit more hopeful than the good professor— at least for America.

For everything that has gone on in Greeley and Grand Island, visit our archives here.

Informative overview of Somali/meatpacker clashes from Omaha World-Herald

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Go to this very informative and lengthy summary article today on the conflict on-going around the country between Muslims demanding special accommodation for their religious practices in the workplace and employers.

I did chuckle when I read how it involved more immigrants and the “religious diversity” they bring to America.  It was many many paragraphs down the article before anyone said that the problem was increasing with the arrival of large numbers of mostly African Muslim refugees.

Read the whole article, it’s good, but way too meaty for me to dissect this morning.

For new readers, we have resettled 83,000 Somali refugees through the State Department’s Refugee Resettlement Program in the last 25 years.   The majority of those refugees were resettled by Christian groups funded by you, the taxpayer,  like Lutheran Family Services mentioned in this article.    But, the Lutheran’s aren’t alone, others include Church World Service, US Conference of Catholic Bishops through its many Catholic Charities, an Episcopal group,  and World Relief (an evangelical Christian outfit).  One of the top ten is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

In my opinion: meatpacking Somalis have overplayed their hand

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The AP has a story last night about how the Somalis, all of them, employed or now unemployed, are going to meet today in Grand Island, NE and try to figure out what to do next.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Muslim workers involved in a prayer dispute at a Grand Island meatpacking plant are scheduled to meet Sunday to decide what to do next.

Mohamed Rage, who leads the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization, said Saturday that workers at the JBS Swift & Co. plant wanted to hold another protest, but that he urged them not to.

Instead, Rage said, all the Muslim workers — including those no longer with the company because of the dispute — will meet Sunday to talk about a resolution.

Muslim workers — most of Somali background — have been asking for accommodations with break times to allow prayer at sunset. The issue led to walkouts at the plant this week — not only from Muslims, but also from non-Muslims who protested such accommodations as preferential treatment.

We’ve been following this issue for the last couple of weeks on-going in both Grand Island and Greeley, CO and I believe these demands for religious accommodation are not isolated and spontaneous.  See our posts in chronological order here. 

Someone, somewhere, orchestrated this year’s Ramadan accommodation push and now it has backfired.  They thought the company would roll over, but surely didn’t anticipate the explosive response by other workers from all backgrounds.  

Note they (whoever is behind this) are not leaving it to the local Somalis but have brought in a big city community organizer—Mohamed Rage.   Rage is telling them not to protest again right now.    He obviously gets it—as the Somalis continue to act belligerently they lose public support and sympathy and are annoying the heck out of the multicultural workers, and American blacks,  in both plants.

All this is happening at the very time that the Muslim American Society is registering Muslim voters across the country.   Here is a story from Boston just this week:

Local groups, from the Muslim American Society of Boston to Centro Presente of Somerville, are holding events to get immigrants even more involved.

Over the past year, the society has registered more than 4,200 new voters, largely immigrants, hoping to reverse a tide of anti-Muslim sentiment and to influence government policies that affect them, from immigration laws to homeland security. A recent candidate night attracted 150 people, said Bilal Kaleem, the society’s executive director.

Frankly, this is the soft, or stealth jihad, the smart Islamists are working through our system to place their people in elected office.   In August of 2007, another key player in the Muslim American Society, Imam Yahya Hendi told a Saudi audience that we would have 30 Muslim mayors in America in 2015.  A tad ambitious I suppose, but telling nonetheless.    I’m going to bet these smart guys are pissed as hell that the Somalis have shown themselves to be angry and violent in their demands for special religious treatment in the workplace.

Another group that is probably pretty ticked is this American Muslim Democratic Caucus who are asking for a “seat at the table” according to this story in Louis Farrakhan’s publication, the Final Call:

DENVER (FinalCall.com) – American Muslims from around the country met with Joshua Dubois, director of religious affairs for the Barack Obama presidential campaign, during the Democratic National Convention, to address concerns that the Muslim community was being marginalized by the campaign.

“It’s not a smear to be called a Muslim. We have Muslim staffers all over the country,” said Mr. DuBois at a luncheon sponsored by the American Muslim Democratic Caucus.

“You will have a seat at the table,” he said, “The issues today are too critical for us not to work together.”

So, just when they are trying to convince Americans that Muslims are just like the rest of us, these Somalis in Grand Island and Greeley show their colors and their desire for Islamic supremacism.

Much of what organizers conveyed during the press conference was to quell fears that Muslims are different and Islam is violent.

“We are as American as apple pie,” Dr. Lalani. “Sen. Obama stands for everything that we believe in. We believe President Obama will be a president for all Americans. That is good enough for us.”

“Somehow we are not well known by Americans. They’ve been misled by negative news reports and the happenings around the world that make people think Muslims are violent, intolerant or want to impose their religion on others. All of this is false.”

Is it really false?   Seems to me the meatpacking Somalis are telling the world something else.

This is getting way long, but if you are interested in this topic.  Please go back and look at posts I’ve written in the past where American blacks and Somalis are not getting along in various places in the US and where the Immigrant Muslims have apparently looked down their noses at Black American Muslims  (see the BAMs vs. the IMMs).

The strategy seems to be in disarray.  Maybe the ‘stealth jihadists’ aren’t so smart afterall!  Or, maybe better still, Americans (blue collar Americans at least) are a differant sort of people and won’t roll over as the Europeans have.