Islam In America

“A woman who told police she shoved a man to his death off a subway platform into the path of a train because she has hated Muslims since Sept. 11 and thought he was one was charged Saturday with murder as a hate crime, prosecutors said.

“Erika Menendez was charged in the death of Sunando Sen, who was crushed by a 7 train in Queens on Thursday night, the second time this month a commuter has died in such a nightmarish fashion.”

Read it all here.

A brief look at a brief moment in American military history, courtesy of The New York Times:

“The Civil War featured many dazzling innovations: ironclads, hot-air balloons, the Gatling gun. But if armored warships and more powerful guns pointed to the future of warfare, another innovation, hailed at the time as a forerunner of combat to come, certainly did not: the United States Army’s Camel Corps.”

And, yes, the camels arrived with a most-likely-Muslim wrangler named Hadji Ali.

Read more here: “The Short Life of the Camel Corps” By Kenneth Weisbrode.

“An Indiana man who pleaded guilty yesterday to setting an Ohio mosque on fire told a judge he was motivated by media accounts – specifically those on Fox News – suggesting Muslims were threatening Americans and were in control of parts of the federal government,” reports the Southern Poverty Law Center on Salon.com.

“When asked if he knew any Muslims or about the Islamic faith, he said he did not; he knew only what he got from Fox News, and he did know that ‘they don’t believe in Jesus Christ as the savior,’” [Mahjabeen] Islam said.

“Federal authorities in New Jersey are ending 2012 with the arrests of two accused white supremacists who allegedly went on a hate-filled assault spree last New Year’s Eve,” reports Bill Morlin of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“Christopher Ising, 31, a reported member of the Atlantic City Skins from Waretown, N.J., was arrested today [18 December 2012] by FBI agents on an indictment charging him with conspiracy and commission of a hate crime assault.

“Michal Gunar, 27, of East Windsor, N.J., also faces the same federal charges. He is an alleged member of another New Jersey-based white supremacist group known as the Aryan Terror Brigade, the FBI said in announcing the arrests.”

Read the rest here.