Day: August 16, 2009

More news from the Islamic Republic of Maine

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is about an article sent to me by reader Susan at the end of last week.  I didn’t get to it right away and then my cable was out, and it is just as well I didn’t post it earlier because it is a perfect example of what we just learned in Janet Levy’s excellent review in American Thinker this morning.   This is precisely what she describes as the M.O. for how the Islamic doctrine of Al Hijra is practiced.     If you didn’t see it, read Janet’s piece and read my previous post on Mark Steyn too, then come back and learn how Islamic accommodation is being practiced in a state that has been welcoming Muslim immigrants of all stripes for some time now.

From the Portland Press Herald:

PORTLAND — The Maine Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit against Portland, claiming the city violated the rights of a group of Afghan Muslims who want to use a building on Washington Avenue as a mosque.

According to the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, Portland denied the use of 978 Washington Ave. as a “church or other place of worship” under its zoning ordinances.

The one-third-acre property, formerly the Dick Waterhouse TV repair shop, is zoned commercial. Conditional uses for religious purposes are permitted in that zone, but city rules require that such properties be at least an acre. In addition, the city found that the property doesn’t have enough parking spots to get a variance.

The MCLU argued in its filing that federal laws protecting religious rights supersede local zoning. The plaintiffs are the Portland Masjid and Islamic Center, the building’s owner, Sadri Shir, and her husband, Nawad Shir, of Cape Elizabeth.

“The city of Portland is sacrificing constitutional principle for bureaucratic rule,” the MCLU’s executive director, Shenna Bellows, said in a prepared statement. “You shouldn’t need a permit to pray.”

This concept of whether religion trumps environmental and public safety concerns is one I wondered about in the Walkersville, MD case where a Muslim group was stopped from building a conference center because it would violate the zoning.   That case is in court too, but I don’t know on what grounds exactly it was filed, maybe the same grounds.

So, if the MCLU should win its argument, it would mean that any Muslim religious facility (any religion?) would take precedence over any zoning law, right?   I wonder how the leftwing environmentalists will take that news since, up till now, most are on the same side as those promoting Muslim immigration.  Looks to me like there will have to be a day of reckoning for professional environmentalists on immigration generally.

Back to the Maine story.  The drumbeat picks up as Ramadan approaches which is just what we told you would happen with the meatpackers and religious accommodation in those plants that hire extensively from the Somali community.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins Aug. 21, and the plaintiffs would like to gather in the building on Washington Avenue for their observances, said Zachary Heiden, legal director for the MCLU.

Heiden said he wants to know whether the city would allow his clients use of the building during Ramadan. If it doesn’t, he said, the MCLU will consider asking for an emergency court injunction to allow it.

And then get this!   Muslim Afghanis cannot worship with Muslim Somalis!

There are perhaps several hundred Afghan Muslims in the Portland area, he said. Although there are two small prayer center-type mosques in the area, they are used primarily by the Somali community, Heiden noted in the filing, which is “linguistically and culturally dissimilar from the Afghani community.”

I was going to post a couple of the 148 comments this article generated, but this is getting too long.   One of those was a commenter from Lewiston who said the Somalis disapprove of  dogs.  That is because dogs are just like pigs, feces and dead bodies—dirty in Islam.   Trying to find something humorous here I’ll harken back to a post yesterday.  Shariah law forbids dogs and bras.   Is this what we are welcoming to Maine and America.

For more on Maine, just type ‘Maine’ into our search function and see how many times it comes up—a whole lot!

Writer takes Mark Steyn to task over avoiding the question of what to do about Muslim immigration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Although I received this from Paul this morning just before I saw Janet Levy’s brilliant piece at American Thinker, I think it’s a good follow-up to Levy’s article.  (Read Levy before proceeding)   I admit I’ve been a great admirer of Steyn.  I read “America Alone” and recommend it to people new to the movement, but it never occurred to me that Steyn really doesn’t ever call for a halt to Muslim immigration, although he clearly sees the writing on the wall.

Indeed as we have noted on many occasions at RRW, most people on the established rightwing of American politics are scared to death to even mention the subject and others are actively promoting Muslim immigration—notably Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform.

Lawrence Auster writing at his blog View from the Right, the politically incorrect right, had this to say yesterday about Steyn.  I’ve been meaning to tell you about Christopher Caldwell’s book anyway and so this post will kill two birds with one stone.  Go read what Steyn says about Caldwell’s book (links below) then read Auster who begins:

For the last several years I have taken Mark Steyn to task for remaining stone-cold silent about Muslim immigration into the West even as he was writing dozens of articles and a book on the Islam threat inside the West, a threat that could not exist without Muslim immigration. I’ve also pointed out that Steyn has never advocated doing anything about the Islam threat, except for his pet notion that Westerners should strive to replicate Muslim birthrates. But now, in an article about Christopher Caldwell’s new book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, Steyn at long last addresses the issue he has assiduously and silently avoided for so long. Evidently this “brilliant” leader of “conservative” opinion couldn’t broach the issue of Muslim immigration, until a respectable member of the conservative mainstream had done it first, thus making it ok, or, rather, unavoidable, for Steyn to talk about it as well. 

In some ways the article is remarkable, with Steyn admitting things about immigration, and about his past evasion of the issue, that he’s never admitted before.

However, according to Auster, Steyn squishes out at the end going back to his old saw about birthrates.  And, oh well (wringing of hands), what’s to be done about that?  No answer from Steyn.

Read it all.

The Hijra: the Islamic doctrine of immigration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of reading this brilliant article by Janet Levy today at the American Thinker.  It is without a doubt the most significant and concise description I have ever read to describe the expansion of Islam throughout the western world and why it is happening.

Levy begins her review of  “Modern Day Trojan Horse: The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration” by Sam Solomon and Elias Al Maqdisi as follows.  Does this sound familiar?

Within the past few decades, mosques have increasingly dotted the landscapes of American and European cities and towns, with mega mosques often overshadowing adjacent, centuries-old churches in predominantly Christian regions. Islamic schools or academies and a host of Muslim organizations have become omnipresent across the West.

Meanwhile, Americans and Europeans have made countless accommodations to Muslim demands. They have included footbaths; high-decibel, five-times-daily calls to prayer; segregated male-female gym and swimming pool hours; halal food; workplace dispensations for handling pork products and for female head and face coverings; and special, public prayer rooms. Also, shari’ah-compliant financial transactions, the expunging of offensive likenesses of Mohammed or imagined depictions of Arabic characters that connote “Allah,” official swearings-in on Korans in place of customary Bibles, the neutralizing of official descriptive language about Islamists and the jihad, the revision of so-called offensive content in movies and television programs, the removal of representations of pigs from the public sphere, and many other acculturations to Muslim entreaties have all been made in the service of respecting Muslim religious beliefs and practices.

To those in Western democracies, these accommodating actions appear, on the surface, to be little more than harmless civil gestures, respecting the needs of a growing religion in their midst and welcoming a new addition to their proud, multicultural tradition. Many Westerners pat themselves on the back for their liberal bent, their tolerance and their open-mindedness.

Little do they realize that this strategic pattern of demands is part of an insidious, 1,400-year-old proscription for Muslims that originates in the Koran and the Sunnah, the deeds of Mohammed. It is the Hijra or doctrine of immigration. Modeled by Mohammed’s migration from Mecca to Medina, this immigration is not to a romanticized melting pot wherein newcomers gratefully search for opportunities for a better life in liberty and freely offer their talents and loyalty to benefit their new homeland. This is immigration for Islamic expansionism employing ethnic separatism to gain special status and privileges within the host country. Hijra is immigration designed to subvert and subdue non-Muslim societies and pave the way for eventual, total Islamization.

Please continue reading at American Thinker.

Update:   Here is an article from Maine that demonstrates exactly what Janet is saying.