Immigrant Muslims Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!!

On Monday of this week Lisa Valentine was thrown in jail for refusing to remove her hijab in a Douglasville, GA courtroom.  She was sentenced to 10 days in jail on the charge of contempt of court by Municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins.  Mrs. Valentine was released on Tuesday after serving one day of the 10 day sentence.  According to Kelley Jackson, the spokesperson for the only Black attorney general in the U.S., Thurbert Baker said "the state law doesn't prohibit head scarfs, but it's at the discretion of the judge, the sheriffs and is up to the security officers in the court house to enforce their decision."  Obviously, the sheriff's deputies in the court had the option not to make the arrest.  Mrs. Valentine thinks that possibly the deputies put the handcuffs on her and made the arrest because she said the charge was bullsh*t and she admits she used the word in it's full sense, because she felt she was being stripped of her civil rights.

In her defense, anyone that felt as if they were attacked by the court may have reacted verbally as Mrs. Valentine did, but per Georgia law, the sheriff's deputies had the discretion to enforce the law or not.  Douglas County is going through what many counties in the Atlanta Metro Area are going through and that's a re-gentrification of it's outlying counties and suburbs with melanated people and often such legal reactions by the courts and law officers are quite common. This of course, is no excuse for the misuse of the law.  

On Friday, representatives of the "Christian community", The NAACP, The Nation of Islam and representatives from the Council of American-Islamic Relations held a rally and news conference in front of the court house in support of Mrs. Valentine.  Though CAIR sent representatives, there were no participants from the wider immigrant Muslim community.  I saw not one person of Arabic, Persian, Pakistani, or anyone that was present at the rally we could point to that was not what the U.S. would consider non African.  This is deeply troubling since immigrant Muslims choose to sit back and have the nerve to say they are being discriminated against more than Black people in the United States.  I had the opportunity to admonishone such person and explained to him that immigrant Muslims have had the chance to stand with Black people in the past to fight against racism and discrimination and they did nothing.

Now, the opportunity presents itself again in the case of Sister Lisa Valentine, and once again the immigrant Muslim community is silent.  This is not only a chance for the immigrant muslim community to stand with Black people to fight down injustice in the form of racism and religious discrimination, but for Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Moorish Science Temple members (who have suffered the same fate as Mrs. Valentine in a Douglas County courtroom previously) and anyone that stands for constitutional justice and the rights of the people to live correctly under the Constitution.  Especially to the immigrant Muslim community, here is your chance to stand up with us or shut up.

Comments

[DJ Black Adam]

Arabs often are silent when things happen to African Americans, even Muslim ones, they generally only want our support when they become victims of racism.

[[Victor Amenta]]

DJ, Thanks for coming by, you are correct. This is their opportunity to assist a fellow Muslim, yet silence. Therefore its obvious they are more interested in race superiority than Islam. this is why I cannot take few immigrant Muslims serious when they speak on Islam.

[Kit (Keep It Trill)]

On one hand we can think that the ordinary immigrants were working, or keeping a low profile since any arrests at a protest rally may put them in more harm's way than American citizens. If you think the racial profiling we suffer from is bad, check out some of their stories.

On the other hand, you hit the nail on the head with how little interest many have had with discrimination of African Americans, and also harbor negative stereotypes of us.

I once told an Iranian coworker it was nice having another minority and person of color to work with since nearly everyone else wasn't. Boy, did she get offended. She told me Iranians were not only white, but the original white people, and reminded me her belief several times a year. The hypocrisy of this was although she was very fair, her sister was a light tan brown like me, which I pointed out when I saw her picture.

Then there the doctor from India I briefly dated. He said that no Indian could ever get serious about a black woman; their goal in the US was generally to find a white woman so their children could pass for belonging to the Brahman class. With few exceptions, I noticed this to be true - the males either married whites or their own.

Those are only two stories and I have more. I have not found this racism to be typical of Muslim Africans, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Arabs who in this country appear to have a little or a lot of African ancestry. They generally know they have the double whammy of having visible black heritage and being Muslim.

Anyway, nice thought-provoking post. Wishing you a good New Year,

~ Kit
keepittrill.blogspot.com/

[[Victor Amenta]]

KIT, Thanks for coming through. this is a very interesting story as my daughter is dating a guy whose mother is Iranian and his father is Black American. She has accepted the black culture, the children have all been raised to speak of and think of themselves as Black American. And, like you I have been in contact with many many more who refuse to identify with any person that's Black be they from Ethiopia to Nigeria.

[Mes Deux Cents]

Hi,

This is exactly why I don't go overboard in worrying about situations like the war in Gaza. I was thinking about this the other day; African Americans are quik to stand-up when other people of color are being abused. But that same concern is almost never given in return. Instead we get the same stereotyping from these other people of color that we get from Whites.

[[Victor Amenta]]

Mes Deux Cents, Glad to see you coming thru. You are totally correct. We seem to have compassion for oppressed people all over the world, yet many of these people still look on us with scorn.