This is a story from way back in April first reported at Creeping Sharia (here) but it just showed up in a post at this website—The National Policy Institute.
ARA [Atlanta Retailers Association] was founded in 1995 by a group of Ismaili Muslims. Its members are mostly immigrants to the U.S. from India and Pakistan and the association’s bylaws specify member companies be majority-owned by a person of the Ismaili Muslim faith.
ATLANTA — A U.S. District Court Judge here dismissed claims by two independent convenience stores that they were illegally denied membership in the Atlanta Retailers Association (ARA), an incorporated group of nearly 900 Ismaili Muslim convenience store owners based in Georgia.
As reported exclusively by CSNews Online, store owners, Terry Wilson of Wilson’s Grocery, and John Potts of Potts Grocery, filed a complaint two years ago alleging they were denied membership in ARA because they are not Ismaili Muslim and therefore were unable to qualify for discounts on beverages that the group had negotiated for its members with Pepsi Bottling Group.
In a ruling on Monday, Orinda D. Evans, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, decided against the store owners, dismissing their claims of discrimination as well as their motion for a class certification.
[….]
The case appeared to turn on the definition of Ismaili Muslim as a religion, not a race, and whether a private group could set its own membership criteria. Ismaili is a branch of the Shia sect of Islam.
So does this mean that a group of Christian or Jewish retailers (or any kind of business) could join into groups to negotiate better deals and exclude Muslims? Hmmmm! Wonder how fast the ACLU would move on that!
I found this story interesting on another level. We have written on many occasions about the massive food stamp fraud schemes occurring in the convenience store business. In our county our Pakistani run store was raided and the owner busted here earlier this year. For more stories on immigrant food stamp fraud and ‘mom and pop’ stores search RRW for ‘food stamp fraud.’
For more on Ismaili Muslims go here.