Tag Archives: Muslim

‘Religious left’ emerging as U.S. political force in Trump era

By Scott Malone

(Reuters) – Since President Donald Trump’s election, monthly lectures on social justice at the 600-seat Gothic chapel of New York’s Union Theological Seminary have been filled to capacity with crowds three times what they usually draw.

In January, the 181-year-old Upper Manhattan graduate school, whose architecture evokes London’s Westminster Abbey, turned away about 1,000 people from a lecture on mass incarceration. In the nine years that Reverend Serene Jones has served as its president, she has never seen such crowds.

“The election of Trump has been a clarion call to progressives in the Protestant and Catholic churches in America to move out of a place of primarily professing progressive policies to really taking action,” she said.

Although not as powerful as the religious right, which has been credited with helping elect Republican presidents and boasts well-known leaders such as Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, the “religious left” is now slowly coming together as a force in U.S. politics.

This disparate group, traditionally seen as lacking clout, has been propelled into political activism by Trump’s policies on immigration, healthcare and social welfare, according to clergy members, activists and academics. A key test will be how well it will be able to translate its mobilization into votes in the 2018 midterm congressional elections.

“It’s one of the dirty little secrets of American politics that there has been a religious left all along and it just hasn’t done a good job of organizing,” said J. Patrick Hornbeck II, chairman of the theology department at Fordham University, a Jesuit school in New York.

“It has taken a crisis, or perceived crisis, like Trump’s election to cause folks on the religious left to really own their religion in the public square,” Hornbeck said.

Religious progressive activism has been part of American history. Religious leaders and their followers played key roles in campaigns to abolish slavery, promote civil rights and end the Vietnam War, among others. The latest upwelling of left-leaning religious activism has accompanied the dawn of the Trump presidency.

Some in the religious left are inspired by Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic leader who has been an outspoken critic of anti-immigrant policies and a champion of helping the needy.

Although support for the religious left is difficult to measure, leaders point to several examples, such as a surge of congregations offering to provide sanctuary to immigrants seeking asylum, churches urging Republicans to reconsider repealing the Obamacare health law and calls to preserve federal spending on foreign aid.

The number of churches volunteering to offer sanctuary to asylum seekers doubled to 800 in 45 of the 50 U.S. states after the election, said the Elkhart, Indiana-based Church World Service, a coalition of Christian denominations which helps refugees settle in the United States – and the number of new churches offering help has grown so quickly that the group has lost count.

“The religious community, the religious left is getting out, hitting the streets, taking action, raising their voices,” said Reverend Noel Anderson, its national grassroots coordinator.

In one well-publicized case, a Quaker church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on March 14 took in a Honduran woman who has been living illegally in the United States for 25 years and feared she would be targeted for deportation.

‘NEVER SEEN’ THIS

Leaders of Faith in Public Life, a progressive policy group, were astounded when 300 clergy members turned out at a January rally at the U.S. Senate attempting to block confirmation of Trump’s attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, because of his history of controversial statements on race.

“I’ve never seen hundreds of clergy turning up like that to oppose a Cabinet nominee,” said Reverend Jennifer Butler, the group’s chief executive.

The group on Wednesday convened a Capitol Hill rally of hundreds of pastors from as far away as Ohio, North Carolina and Texas to urge Congress to ensure that no people lose their health insurance as a result of a vote to repeal Obamacare.

Financial support is also picking up. Donations to the Christian activist group Sojourners have picked up by 30 percent since Trump’s election, the group said.

But some observers were skeptical that the religious left could equal the religious right politically any time soon.

“It really took decades of activism for the religious right to become the force that it is today,” said Peter Ubertaccio, chairman of the political science department at Stonehill College, a Catholic school outside Boston.

But the power potential of the “religious left” is not negligible. The “Moral Mondays” movement, launched in 2013 by the North Carolina NAACP’s Reverend William Barber, is credited with contributing to last year’s election defeat of Republican Governor Pat McCrory by Democrat Roy Cooper.

The new political climate is also spurring new alliances, with churches, synagogues and mosques speaking out against the recent spike in bias incidents, including threats against mosques and Jewish community centers.

The Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, which encourages alliances between Jewish and Muslim women, has tripled its number of U.S. chapters to nearly 170 since November, said founder Sheryl Olitzky.

“This is not about partisanship, but about vulnerable populations who need protection, whether it’s the LGBT community, the refugee community, the undocumented community,” said Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, using the acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

More than 1,000 people have already signed up for the center’s annual Washington meeting on political activism, about three times as many as normal, Pesner said.

Leaders of the religious right who supported Trump say they see him delivering on his promises and welcomed plans to defund Planned Parenthood, whose healthcare services for women include abortion, through the proposed repeal of Obamacare.

“We have not seen any policy proposals that run counter to our faith,” said Lance Lemmonds, a spokesman for the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a nonprofit group based in Duluth, Georgia.

(Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Additional reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Dina Kyriakidou Jonathan Oatis)

EU headscarf ban ruling sparks faith group backlash

Women enter a store selling hijabs in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, Belgium, August 14, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

By Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Companies may bar staff from wearing Islamic headscarves and other visible religious symbols under certain conditions, the European Union’s top court ruled on Tuesday, setting off a storm of complaint from rights groups and religious leaders.

In its first ruling on a hot political issue across Europe, the Court of Justice (ECJ) found a Belgian firm which had a rule barring employees who dealt with customers from wearing visible religious and political symbols may not have discriminated against a receptionist dismissed for wearing a headscarf.

The judgment on that and a French case came on the eve of a Dutch election in which Muslim immigration is a key issue and weeks before France votes for a president in a similarly charged campaign. French conservative candidate Francois Fillon hailed the ruling as “an immense relief” that would contribute to “social peace”.

But a campaign group backing the women said the ruling could shut many Muslim women out of the workforce. And European rabbis said the Court had added to rising incidences of hate crime to send a message that “faith communities are no longer welcome”.

The judges in Luxembourg did find that the dismissals of the two women may, depending on the view of national courts, have breached EU laws against religious discrimination. They found in particular that the case of the French software engineer, fired after a customer complaint, may well have been discriminatory.

Reactions, however, focused on the conclusion that services firm G4S in Belgium was entitled to dismiss receptionist Samira Achbita in 2006 if, in pursuit of legitimate business interests, it fairly applied a broad dress code for all customer-facing staff to project an image of political and religious neutrality.

“BACKDOOR TO PREJUDICE”

The Open Society Justice Initiative, a group backed by the philanthropist George Soros, said the ruling “weakens the guarantee of equality” offered by EU non-discrimination laws.

“In many member states, national laws will still recognize that banning religious headscarves at work is discrimination,” policy office Maryam Hmadoun said.

“But in places where national law is weak, this ruling will exclude many Muslim women from the workplace.”

Amnesty International welcomed the ruling on the French case that “employers are not at liberty to pander to the prejudices of their clients”. But, it said, bans on religious symbols to show neutrality opened “a backdoor to precisely such prejudice”.

The president of the Conference of European Rabbis, Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, complained: “This decision sends a signal to all religious groups in Europe”. National court cases across Europe have included questions on the wearing of Christian crosses, Sikh turbans and Jewish skullcaps.

In the Belgian case, the ECJ said: “An internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination.”

It was for Belgian judges to determine whether she may have been a victim of indirect discrimination if the rule put people of a particular faith at a disadvantage. But the rule could still be justified if it was “genuinely pursued in a consistent and systematic manner” to project an “image of neutrality”.

However, in the case of Asma Bougnaoui, dismissed by French software company Micropole, it said it was up to French courts to determine whether there was such a rule. If her dismissal was based only on meeting the particular customer’s preference, it saw “only very limited circumstances” in which a religious symbol could be objectively taken as reason for her not to work.

(Additional reporting by Waverly Colville in Brussels and Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Last letters : From Mosul schoolboys to Islamic State ‘martyrs’

Teenage militant Alaa abd al-Akeedi's final letter to his family appears on official Islamic State stationery in Mosul in Erbil, Iraq, February 26, 2017.

By Stephen Kalin

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – “My dear family, please forgive me,” reads the handwritten letter discarded in the dusty halls of an Islamic State training compound in eastern Mosul.

“Don’t be sad and don’t wear the black clothes (of mourning). I asked to get married and you did not marry me off. So, by God, I will marry the 72 virgins in paradise.”

They were schoolboy Alaa Abd al-Akeedi’s parting words before he set off from the compound to end his life in a suicide bomb attack against Iraqi security forces last year.

The letter was written on an Islamic State form marked “Soldiers’ Department, Martyrs’ Brigade” and in an envelope addressed to his parents’ home in western Mosul.

Akeedi, aged 15 or 16 when he signed up, was one of dozens of young recruits who passed through the training facility in the past 2-1/2 years as they prepared to wage jihad. In several cases this involved carrying out suicide attacks – Islamic State’s most effective weapon against a U.S.-backed military campaign to retake the group’s last major urban bastion in Iraq.

His letter never reached his family. It was left behind with a handful of other bombers’ notes to relatives when Islamic State abandoned the facility in the face of an army offensive that has reclaimed more than half of the city since October.

The militants also left a handwritten registry containing the personal details of about 50 recruits. Not all entries had years of birth, and only about a dozen had photographs attached, but many recruits were in their teens or early 20s.

These documents, found by Reuters on a trip into eastern Mosul after the army recaptured that area, include some of the first first-hand accounts from Islamic State’s suicide bombers to be made public and offer an insight into the mindset of young recruits prepared to die for Islamic State’s ultra-hardline ideology.

Reuters interviewed relatives of three of the fighters including Akeedi to help determine where they came from and why they chose jihad. In rare testimonies by families of Islamic State suicide bombers, they told of teenagers who joined the jihadists to their dismay and bewilderment, and died within months.

Reuters could not independently verify the information about other recruits in the registry. Islamic State does not make itself available to independent media outlets so could not be contacted for comment on the letters, the registry or the phenomenon of teenage suicide bombers.

‘BROTHER JIHADI, RESPECT QUIET’

Islamic State has attracted thousands of young recruits in Mosul – by far the biggest city in the caliphate it declared in 2014 over territory it seized in Iraq and Syria. The group has carried out hundreds of suicide attacks in the Middle East and plotted or inspired dozens of attacks in the West.

The training compound visited by Reuters consisted of three villas confiscated from Mosul residents. Man-sized holes knocked through exterior walls allowed easy access between the villas.

Lower floors were littered with IS posters and pamphlets on topics ranging from religion to weaponry, as well as tests on warfare and the Koran. Green paint and bed sheets on the windows obscured the view from outside and gave the rooms an eerie glow.

Flak jackets and body-shaped shooting targets filled one room, while medicines and syringes were scattered around another that appeared to have served as a clinic.

The rooms upstairs were packed full of bunk beds with space for almost 100 people. Printed signs outlined strict house rules. One ordered: “Brother jihadi, respect quiet and cleanliness”.

PLEDGING ALLEGIANCE

Most of the recruits listed in the registry were Iraqi but there were a few from the United States, Iran, Morocco and India. Akeedi’s entry says he pledged allegiance on Dec. 1, 2014, a few months after the jihadists seized Mosul.

A relative told Reuters by phone that Akeedi’s father was deeply distressed by his son’s decision but feared punishment if he tried to remove him from Islamic State’s ranks. Reuters was unable to contact his father.

Akeedi rarely visited his family after joining the jihadists. On his last trip home he told his father he was going to carry out a suicide attack in Baiji, an oil refinery town south of Mosul where the militants had been fighting off repeated offensives by the Iraqi military.

“He told his father, ‘I am going to seek martyrdom,'” said the relative, who declined to be named because he feared reprisals from Islamic State or from Iraqi forces preparing to storm the area.

A few months later, Akeedi’s family was told by the militants that he had succeeded.

Another recruit of the same age, Atheer Ali, is listed in the registry beside a passport-sized photo showing a boy with bushy eyebrows and large brown eyes. He wears a dark collar-less tunic, a brown head covering and a cautious smile.

His father, Abu Amir, told Reuters his son had been an outstanding student who excelled in science and was always watching the National Geographic TV channel. He loved to swim and fish in a nearby river and would help out on his uncle’s vegetable farm after school.

TOO YOUNG FOR FACIAL HAIR

Ali was shy and slim, lacking a fighter’s mentality or build, Abu Amir said in an interview at his eastern Mosul home, sifting through family photos.

So the father was horrified when one day in early 2015 Ali didn’t come home from school but ran off with seven classmates to join Islamic State.

When Abu Amir went to the militants’ offices across the city to track down his son, they threatened to jail him.

He never saw his son alive again.

A few months later, three Islamic State fighters pulled up at Abu Amir’s house in a pickup truck and handed him a scrap of paper with his son’s name on it. He was dead.

Abu Amir retrieved Ali’s body from the morgue. His hair had grown long but he was still too young for facial hair. Shrapnel was lodged in his arms and chest.

He said the fighters told him he had been hit by an air strike on a mortar position in Bashiqa, northeast of Mosul. They described him as a “hero”.

Gathered in the family sitting room, Ali’s relatives said he was brainwashed. Many of his school friends fled Mosul after the militants took control and Ali fell in with a new crowd, but his family never noticed a change in his behavior.

“Even now I’m still astounded. I don’t know how they convinced him to join,” said Abu Amir. “I’m just glad we could bury him and put this whole thing to rest.”

‘HIS MIND WAS FRAGILE’

Sheet Omar was also 15 or 16 years old when he joined Islamic State in August 2014, weeks after the group captured Mosul. Next to his registry entry is the fatal addendum: “Conducted martyrdom operation”.

Shalal Younis, Omar’s sister’s father-in-law, confirmed he had died carrying out a suicide attack, though he was uncertain about the details.

He said the teenager, from the Intisar district of eastern Mosul, had been overweight and insecure and joined the jihadists after his father’s death.

“His mind was fragile and they took advantage of that, promising him virgins and lecturing him about being a good Muslim,” said Younis. “If someone had tempted him with drugs and alcohol, he probably would have done that instead.”

(Editing by Pravin Char)

Muslims raise $78,000-plus for vandalized Jewish cemetery in Missouri

Local and national media report on more than 170 toppled Jewish headstones after a weekend vandalism attack on Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, U.S. February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Tom Gannam

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Muslim Americans have helped raise more than $78,000 to repair vandalized headstones at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, according to an online fundraising page, amid attacks and threats against Jewish institutions.

About 170 headstones were toppled or damaged at the century-old Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery over the weekend, according to cemetery staff.

Some Jewish groups described the vandalism and threats as the latest evidence that anti-Semitic groups have been emboldened by the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president. His campaign last year drew the support of white nationalists and right-wing groups, despite his disavowals of them.

“Muslim Americans stand in solidarity with the Jewish-American community to condemn this horrific act of desecration,” the fundraisers said on their website. More than 2,700 people had donated $78,546 as of Wednesday afternoon.

Jewish community centers across the United States have reported a surge in bomb threats, all of which have so far proved to be hoaxes. On Wednesday afternoon, the Anti-Defamation League, one of the country’s most prominent Jewish advocacy groups, said its national headquarters in New York City received an anonymous bomb threat but was later given the all clear.

Trump condemned the threats as anti-Semitism for the first time on Tuesday after repeatedly declining to do so when asked by journalists last week. Some Jewish organizations have criticized his approach, saying they fear that the groups that supported Trump had become more active.

The fundraising effort was launched by Linda Sarsour, a liberal political activist, and Tarek El-Messidi, the founding director of Celebrate Mercy, a non-profit organization that teaches the public about Mohammad, the founder of Islam.

On Tuesday night, Sarsour posted on Twitter that she was raising the funds “in solidarity with our Jewish sisters and brothers.”

Sarsour was a supporter of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in his bid to become the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and went on to become one of the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, which drew record crowds to the capital on Jan. 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration.

Cemetery staff, who did not respond to a request for comment, were still calculating the cost of repairing the damaged tombstones as of Tuesday. The organizers of the fundraising campaign said they would donate any excess funds to repair “any other vandalized Jewish centers.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; editing by Grant McCool)

Turkey steps up scrutiny on Muslim migrants from Russia

memorial for nightclub attack victims in Istanbul Turkey

By Maria Tsvetkova and Humeyra Pamuk

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey has increased scrutiny of Russian-speaking Muslim communities in the past few months following a series of attacks blamed on Islamic State, a concrete example of the renewed relationship between the two countries.

Turkish police have raided the homes of Russian-speaking immigrants in Istanbul, detained many and expelled others, according to interviews with Russian Muslims living in the city. At least some of those targeted by Turkish authorities are known to be sympathetic to radical Islamist movements.

The security activity indicates that Russia and Turkey are sharing intelligence, part of a newly-forged alliance that has also seen Moscow and Ankara work together on a peace deal for Syria.

The cooperation comes as a resurgent Russia, already active in Ukraine and keen to boost its diplomatic influence in the Middle East, has been playing a greater role in Syria in the vacuum left by the United States under Barack Obama.

The roundups mark a change for Turkey, which has historically welcomed Muslims fleeing what they say is repression in countries including Russia, among them communities who fought government forces in Russia’s North Caucasus.

“Around ten of my acquaintances are in jail now,” said Magomed-Said Isayev, a Muslim from the Russian North Caucasus mountains, who moved to Istanbul three years ago.

He said for most of his time in Turkey he had no difficulties with the authorities. He said he had done nothing to harm Turkish citizens, but now he felt he was no longer safe from the threat of detention.

Turkey has been criticized by some Western allies for being too slow to stop the flow of foreign fighters crossing its borders to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in the early years of the jihadist group’s rise.

Turkey has rejected such suggestions, saying it needed greater intelligence sharing from its allies in order to intercept would-be jihadists. It has tightened its borders and last August launched a military campaign in Syria to push Islamic State away from Turkish territory.

ATTACKS ON TURKEY

Several recent Islamic State attacks in Turkey have been blamed on Russian-speaking attackers.

After a gun-and-bomb attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk airport that killed 45 people last June, police detained two suspects from the North Caucasus.

An Uzbek has been charged with a gun attack on an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day in which 39 people were killed.

“Before that, Turkey was very loyal to those who came from ex-Soviet countries,” said Russian Muslim activist Abdul-Alim Makhsutov, who has lived in Istanbul for several years.

“We have a long-established tradition of moving to Turkey for religious reasons and to escape pressure. The terrorist attacks tarnished this reputation.”

Turkey has provided sanctuary to Muslims from Russia since the 19th century, when the tsars conquered the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region. A new flow of migrants was prompted by two wars in Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s, and a crackdown on Islamists in the south of Russia that continues today.

A Turkish security source said operations had increased following the recent attacks and that raids in areas where foreigners were living had shown that militants were living in and hiding among those communities.

“Our operations are not limited to specific parts of Istanbul but all across the city. It is about foreigners without the necessary paperwork, passport or ID. We fight crime wherever it may be,” a Turkish police official told Reuters.

A Russian security official said Moscow has been sharing lists of suspicious Islamists with Ankara for two or three years, but Turkey has only started using the information in the wake of recent attacks, as it has become a clear target for jihadists.

Russia’s foreign ministry and Federal Security Service did not respond to Reuters questions about intelligence-sharing with Turkey. A Turkish intelligence source said they were cooperating more with Russia but declined to give further details.

KIDS BEHIND BARS

One 25-year-old woman from Russia’s Dagestan region, told Reuters she had lived openly in Turkey for three years. Until last October her family had experienced no problems, she said.

She said her family had bought property in Turkey and took care to renew their immigration documents, while her brother competed professionally for a Turkish wrestling team.

In October, masked policemen in flak jackets, conducting an anti-terror raid, smashed in the door of the family’s apartment, the woman said.

She spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because, she said, she did not want to endanger members of her family. During the interview, she wore a black chador with only her face uncovered and broke off the conversation to pray.

The family, including women and four children, as well as a female neighbor and her children, were held for several days in a police station, she said.

At first, the police locked them in a room with bars on the windows but after a while police had to leave the door open “because the children often went to the toilet,” the woman said.

The detainees were transferred to Istanbul police headquarters and after two weeks most of the women and children from her family, and the family of her neighbor, were released.

But she said her father, brother, sister-in-law and 10-month-old niece were still in detention. They had not been charged with any offence, the woman said, though Reuters was not able to independently verify that. Istanbul police said it could not comment on specific cases.

The Dagestani woman said that in detention she had been questioned about Islamic State, and whether her family was affiliated to it. She denied any links to the group.

Russians living in Turkey say that some detainees were told by the Turkish police that the action against them was based on information provided by Russia.

“I’ve heard they (Russian authorities) inform the Turks about two kinds of people, who may be involved in terrorist activities or have a shady reputation,” said Ali Evteyev, a former Russian mufti and now an Istanbul resident.

He said that often there is no prosecution, but it is made clear to them they are no longer welcome. “The Turks just don’t extend their residence permit. You have to go to jail and try to appeal, or leave.”

(Editing by Giles Elgood)

Lawsuit claims Trump travel ban discriminates against Muslims

Protest of Donald Trump's travel ban

(Reuters) – The American Civil Liberties Union accused the Trump administration in a lawsuit filed on Thursday of violating the religious freedom of some nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries who have been barred from entering the United States.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District of California on behalf of three student visa holders, including one Yemeni who left the United States and is unable to come back, according to court documents.

The lawsuit is a proposed class-action brought on behalf of nationals who are living or have lived in the United States and are originally from the Muslim-majority nations whose citizens President Donald Trump has temporarily banned from entering the United States, with some exceptions.

The suit is the latest in a series of legal actions challenging the executive order that was issued last Friday. Federal judges in several states have placed limits on the order.

The order set off protests over the weekend at several major airports as immigration and customs officials struggled to interpret the new rules.

The plaintiffs and the members of the class “fear that, in the event they attempt to enter or re-enter the United States, they will be denied permission to do so,” the lawsuit said.

It accuses Trump and his administration of violating the free speech, religious freedom and due process rights of those affected by the order, and says it is an attempt to fulfill a campaign promise made by Trump to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

“Senior advisers to defendant Trump have engaged in anti-Muslim rhetoric that provides additional support for the notion that the executive order was prompted by animus toward Islam and Muslims,” the suit said.

Department of Justice officials could not be reached for comment late on Thursday.

The ACLU asked the court to rule that the executive order violates the rights of the students and class members and to order the administration not to enforce the travel ban, according to the suit.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Sandra Maler, Robert Birsel and Kevin Liffey)

U.S. Muslim school curriculum: English, math and political activism

muslim school teaching kids political activism

By Scott Malone

MANSFIELD, Mass. (Reuters) – The students at Al-Noor Academy, a Muslim school outside Boston, bombarded their government class speaker with questions: How do you start a political discussion? How do you use social media in politics? And how do you influence elected leaders?

The group of mostly 16-year-olds was too young to vote but seemed eager to find ways to counter the rhetoric of President Donald Trump who last week issued travel restrictions to the United States by citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries.

“Before this election happened, I really didn’t know much about politics at all,” said Sarah Sendian, a sophomore student at the school in Mansfield, Massachusetts. “With the new president and all of the things that are happening, it sparked a lot of interest in a lot of young people.”

The class is one of the first actions of newly formed Muslim political organization Jetpac – standing for Justice, Education, Technology, Policy Advocacy Center – to encourage political activism among the 3.3 million Muslims who make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population.

“This is the time when Muslims should step forward,” said Nadeem Mazen, the group’s founder and a city councilor in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “What’s going on at the national level only emphasizes what we’ve known prior to Trump being elected, and it’s that we need really good leaders.”

Thursday’s lesson at the 116-student junior and senior high school was heavy on how to build networks of like-minded people and turn them out at public meetings, rallies and elections to amplify the voices of U.S. Muslims.

About 824,000 of them were registered to vote as of 2016, a figure that had risen by about 60 percent over the past four years, according to national Muslim advocacy group the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

‘KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING’

The class’s teacher, Joe Florencio, reminded his students that generations of immigrant populations have gone through the same process of becoming politically active.

“To be effective politically, you have to know what you’re doing,” said Florencio, the sole non-Muslim faculty member in a building that once housed the Roman Catholic church where his parents were married.

Students at the school, founded in 2000, study both standard U.S. academic subjects including science and math as well as Arabic and the Koran, a model similar to the many parochial schools in the northeastern United States.

Jetpac, which hopes to eventually offer versions of the class to private and public schools across the United States, faces an uphill climb. The number of anti-Muslim attacks reported to the FBI last year spiked to their highest level since 2001, the year that al Qaeda-backed hijackers destroyed New York’s World Trade Center.

While the group acknowledged that it will take time for political newcomers to win elections, even the act of campaigning could help Muslims, simply by making people more familiar with politics, said Faiza Patel, of the NYU School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.

“It allows them to meet lots of people, people that they might not otherwise meet and that has the effect of reducing prejudice,” said Patel, who studies interactions between Muslims and the U.S. justice system. “You start to see people as human beings.”

Almost half of respondents to a 2016 Pew Research Center poll said they believed that at least some U.S. Muslims harbored anti-American views, but respondents who knew a Muslim personally were less likely to believe that than ones who did not.

Yousef Abouallaban, a member of the Al-Noor school committee whose two eldest sons have attended the school, said he hoped the class would help the children of Muslim immigrants overcome a bias held by some of their parents against getting involved with politics.

“We were raised in a different culture where our belief is that people who get involved in government are corrupt people. At all levels. So if you are a decent person, you should never get involved in politics,” said Abouallaban, who immigrated from Syria in 1989. “That’s not the case in the United States and this mentality has to be changed.”

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Bill Rigby)

Trump says his travel ban needed to ensure U.S. religious freedom

DAY 9 / JANUARY 28: Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump agreed to try to rebuild U.S.-Russia ties and to cooperate in Syria, the Kremlin said, after the two men spoke for the first time since Trump's inauguration.

By Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump defended his order to temporarily bar entry to people from seven majority-Muslim nations, which has come under intense criticism at home and abroad, saying on Thursday it was crucial to ensuring religious freedom and tolerance in America.

Trump, speaking at a prayer breakfast attended by politicians, faith leaders and guests including Jordan’s King Abdullah, said he wanted to prevent a “beachhead of intolerance” from spreading in the United States.

“The world is in trouble, but we’re going to straighten it out, OK? That’s what I do – I fix things,” Trump said in his speech.

Trump’s executive order a week ago put a 120-day halt on the U.S. refugee program, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and imposed a 90-day suspension on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The measure, which Trump says is aimed at protecting the country from terrorist attacks, has drawn protests and legal challenges.

Trump, a wealthy businessman and former reality TV star who had never previously held public office when he was sworn in on Jan. 20, also sought to reassure the large crowd about the nature of his phone calls with world leaders.

The Washington Post said Trump had a tense call with Australia’s Prime Minister about his immigration order.

“Believe me, when you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having – don’t worry about it. Just don’t worry about it,” Trump said. He did not specify which calls he was referring to.

“We’re taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It’s not going to happen anymore,” said Trump, who campaigned on a stance of “America first” that he said would ensure the country was not taken advantage of in its trade or other foreign relations.

Trump said violence against religious minorities must end. “All nations have a moral obligation to speak out against such violence. All nations have a duty to work together to confront it, and to confront it viciously, if we have to,” he said.

Trump said the United States has taken “necessary action” in recent days to protect religious liberty in the United States, referring to his immigration action.

Critics of the measure have accused him of violating the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom, because the designated countries are majority-Muslim, and of slamming the door shut to refugees.

Trump has said the move was necessary to ensure a more thorough vetting of people coming into the United States.

“Our nation has the most generous immigration system in the world. There are those who would exploit that generosity to undermine the values that we hold so dear,” Trump said.

“There are those who would seek to enter our country for the purpose of spreading violence, or oppressing other people based upon their faith or their lifestyle – not right. We will not allow a beachhead of intolerance to spread in our nation,” he said.

Trump said his administration’s new system would ensure that people entering the United States embrace U.S. values including religious liberty.

He also pledged to get rid of the “Johnson Amendment,” a tax provision that prevents tax-exempt charities like churches from being involved in political campaigns.

The White House said on Wednesday it has issued updated guidance on the travel order clarifying that legal permanent residents, or green card holders, from the designated countries require no waiver to enter the United States.

(Writing by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Frances Kerry)

Artist works to preserve Christian heritage in Hamas-run Gaza

Christian artist and sculptor Naser Jeldha crafts a sculpture in his studio in Gaza City

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Only about 1,200 Christians remain in Gaza — only a tiny fraction of the population in a territory run by Hamas Islamists — but artist Naser Jeldha is doing what he can to preserve its Christian heritage through art.

In his studio in the heart of old Gaza, not far from a 5th century Orthodox church, Jeldha spends his days carving religious figurines, chiseling low-relief carvings of Biblical scenes and painting portraits of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the saints.

“My message is about my religion,” said the gray-bearded 57-year-old, a member of the Greek Orthodox community.

“I want to make it visual, I want to make people see it, not only to be kept as texts in church.”

As he works, steel-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose, Jeldha listens to Byzantine prayer music that echoes softly around the studio, creating an atmosphere from another era.

The walls are covered in his pictures, with more laid out on the arms of chairs and sofas, and others propped on a 150-year-old Russian piano in the corner. As well as painting and sculpture, Jeldha plays the accordion, piano and guitar.

In the run up to Christmas – celebrated on Jan. 7 in the Orthodox church – Jeldha is busy making pieces as gifts for friends and relatives.

While he has been an artist for 35 years, he does not display his works or offer them for sale. Instead, he presents them as gifts at weddings or events on the Christian calendar. He does, however, have plans for a public showing soon.

In the next two weeks, he is also hoping he will be one of about 800 Christians granted a permit by Israel to leave Gaza and travel to Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to attend prayer services in Jesus’s birthplace.

“We have applied for permits and if we get them I intend to travel with my family,” said Jeldha, who is determined to remain in Gaza despite the departure of many Christians over the last decade in the face of rising economic hardship.

While Gaza’s Christians generally enjoy good relations with their Muslim neighbors, there have been isolated attacks by hardline Salafist groups on Christian tombs and symbols.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza since 2006, is keen to ensure the Christian community feels safe and protected. Its leaders occasionally visit the heads of the three Gaza churches to build stronger relations.

Jeldha acknowledged that the economy was suffering, with the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, a move to pressure Hamas, limiting trade, driving up costs and causing despair.

Despite that, Jeldha, whose white front door is adorned with a small cross painted in blue, said he would never leave.

“I have lived in this neighborhood for 54 years. I have brotherly and wonderful relations with Muslims,” said the father of four. “Gaza is beautiful and I will not leave it…I do not feel I am a stranger here.”

(Writing by Nidal Almughrabi, Editing by Luke Baker and Angus MacSwan)

Thousands of Indonesians expected to rally against rising intolerance

Members of hardline Muslim groups hold a big national flag as they attend a protest against Jakarta's incumbent governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian running in the upcoming election, in Jakarta, Indonesia

By Eveline Danubrata

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Thousands of Indonesians are expected to rally on Saturday against what they see as growing racial and religious intolerance in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.

Religious leaders, human right groups and other organizations will join the parade in central Jakarta, spokeswoman Umi Azalea said by telephone.

The movement was not political but aimed at “celebrating Indonesia’s diversity”, Azalea said.

“Indonesia has so many religions, cultures and ethnicities. Yet now we are seeing some groups that are forcing their own will, and that is very worrying.”

Indonesian police said on Wednesday they would investigate a complaint by Muslim groups that the Christian governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, had insulted Islam.

The decision has stoked concerns about rising hardline Islamic sentiment in the country of 250 million people and is also seen by some analysts as a blow to democracy.

More than 100,000 Muslims protested against Purnama earlier this month. Police fired tear gas and water cannon to quell the protest.

There are also signs of rising religious tension elsewhere in Indonesia. Last Sunday, police arrested a suspected militant who threw an explosive device at a church in the eastern island of Borneo.

(Reporting by Eveline Danubrata; Editing by Nick Macfie)