 Okay, we're back. We're live. This is Think Tech here on A Given Thursday. Welcome to a show we call Bigotry in America on Think Tech. I'm your host, Jay Fidel. Our show today, it's an important show, and we call it The Incident in Davis, California. We're going to talk about apologies and acceptance across communities and our American community and how it needs to change and how we must all participate in dealing with hate in this country. If you want to ask a question, make a comment. You can tweet us at Think Tech H.I. or call us at 808-734-2014. Our guests for the show are Gail Rubin, a retired attorney, and Shireen Kudosi. I pronounced that right. She's director of Muslim Matters with America Matters. They're both joining us by Skype from California. Welcome to the show, Gail and Shireen. Thank you very much. So there was an incident in Davis, California and in other places, and it was statements made by an Imam in a sermon or a speech in his mosque. And we want to talk about what he said, what motivated him to say it, whether he was alone or with others in this statement, how the communities that is the Jewish community and the Muslim community reacted to his comment and the apology he made and the acceptance of that apology by the Jewish community. We want to hear about what this means in terms of those communities and the views of those communities and how they are likely to deal with it going forward. So Gail and Shireen, thank you for being here. Let me ask you first, Shireen, if you could tell us what happened in the mosque with Imam Shaheen. Yeah, so this summer, Imam Shaheen from the Islamic Center of Davis gave a one hour sermon on calling for the apocalypse against the Jews. And this is not just in Davis. This is elsewhere. This has happened at least two other times around the same time frame in California. He gave a one hour speech. The mosque defended him. They put out a statement in defense of him. And after one week of pressure, including launching a petition, including support, getting the support of local elected officials like Brad Sherman, getting a bit of media coverage, the community finally came forward and he apologized for his statement. But when he apologized, he had the entire interfaith community used as props behind him. And the apology, which I use very generously in quotes, was pretty much a statement about how he's been a model for the community. But his one hour speech is really indicative of where he stands in the interfaith community and where he stands as a Muslim and where he stands as an American Muslim right now in the landscape, which is very charged politically and on racial lines and religious lines. So this is unacceptable in my eyes. Yes. Well, what did he say? What are the words? What are the thoughts that he expressed in that speech? The general language that these that these individuals have in all that gale attitude to have covered this with other imams that have toured in Europe that these imams travel from country to country. And we have them homegrown here. Their language and their rhetoric is very apocalyptic. And I use that full knowledge of what that means. That means that there will never be peace for Muslims until Muslims fight with the Jews that the last day will call on Muslims fighting with the Jews. And that until we get to that point, there will be no resolution, whether it's in Palestine, which is the issue that kicked off his sermons, whether it is Muslims living abroad and elsewhere in other parts of the world. And so it's very violent. It's very hateful. It's it's completely anti-Semitic. But I would say I would go further than anti-Semitism. I would say it's full out. Jew hatred. Yeah. And he said something about annihilate all the Jews one by one. And in your article that you wrote on talk about that, you called it a statement of genocide. Yeah. Yeah, it's absolutely genocide. And so these people, someone like Amar Shaheen, he's not a man of faith in the sense that we would envision someone of faith to be these are propagandists who have access to the pulpit and they use theology to to prosecute the faith that they say that they're from. So this is this is a serious problem in my eyes in California and elsewhere. So how did it come to your attention, Shireen? And what did you do about it? Well, so what happened is it made the headlines and of course it didn't make enough of the headlines as much as it should have. And I was speaking with a colleague of mine who who informed me what was going on. So the minute I heard his sermon, which again was up for a week and now memory is the only organization that really still has parts of it up. I was really enraged for when I worked with counter G had I covered or I am a bull who's another hate preacher and his sermon hour long again, calling for the annihilation of all Jews saying that there will be no peace until we kill every every Jew and we fight with them. It's it is so deeply offensive to me as an American and more importantly as a human being as a person of faith that we we are calling for genocide against the entire people under the banner of God, and that is unacceptable. So what I did is I launched a petition with change.org to call for his removal and call for the pressure on the mosque board. Ultimately, and a mom is not going to step down without community reinforcing him and the people who really have control over whether an mom comes or goes is the mosque board. And so I don't expect him to be taken down because these communities are far too insulated. There are other solutions that we can talk about, but it is important for Muslims to stand up and what we can from within our own faith. So the takeaway from your article is that the article you wrote is that he needs to be removed from his position. He needs to be fired, terminated, what have you? Did you get a you know, I mean, my reaction, my reaction to that was you're pretty courageous. And a lot of people who wrote comments on your article said the same thing that you're pretty courageous. Did you get any any feedback from the Muslim community, from extremists in the Muslim community? You know, I'm really glad you asked me that because the people who message me are the Muslims who want to who wants to stand with me publicly, but they can't because the in a post Trump era, for example, Muslims aren't afraid of a travel ban, quote unquote, against Muslims. We're not afraid of Trump. We're not afraid of even white nationalists. We're afraid first and foremost about what our own community will do against us if we speak out. So I had a good ton of Muslims message me privately supporting it. They weren't always able to sign on board because of the backlash they would receive in their own community and how it affects their income and their business and and their their own sort of standing the community. But they are supportive of it. They they're tired of this as well. Jay, can I jump in here? I think perhaps it's important for your listeners to actually hear verbatim the words that were spoken by Imam Shaheen. May I quote them now is now a good time? Yes. Thank you. So he spoke to Fridays in a row Friday, July 14 and again on the 21st, and he repeated essentially from the same hadid. And before I quote it, it's important to know that this hadid is also incorporated into the Hamas Charter. Hamas, as we know, is a designated terrorist organization that seeks the utter destruction and annihilation of the Jewish state. So this these are the same words. And I quote, he quoted O Allah, he's invoking the name of God to liberate us from the filth of the Jews. O Allah, show us the wonders of your ability that you inflict upon them. Show us the black day and count them one by one and destroy them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. Do destroy them and do not spare their young or their elderly. O Allah, turn Jerusalem and Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews. Now I think all people of good faith and good will would would agree that the this kind of language does not belong in any civilized society. And most not in a house of worship. And the fact that he is has misappropriated a house of worship to utter these despicable murderous words, we should all be outraged. And I am a Jew, an American Jew, and I live a mile away from this mosque. And this mosque is also located directly across the street from the University of California at Davis. And a large percentage of students at UC Davis attend this mosque. That should be of concern to everybody. Why? Because now, if students are inclined to become radicalized, of course, we know the internet is a large source. All they have to do is walk across the street and listen to Imam Shaheen. Well, you caused to be made a movie of this. And I'm interested in seeing that movie. Well, if you don't mind Gail and Shireen, I'd like to play that movie now and see what you revealed in that movie and what kind of reaction you had from the local community. So let's play the movie now. The Prophet says that the time will come, the last hour would not take place till the Muslims fight the Jews. And we don't say if it's in Palestine or other, till they fight. And when that war breaks, that they would run and hide behind every rock and house and wall and trees. The house and the wall and the trees will call upon the Muslims. I want to stand against hate speech that calls for the destruction of the Jewish nation, the Jewish people. It has no place in America. It has no place on this planet. So this happened in July and in August we had the reaction and this protest that we're seeing now in the movie, right? Yes, that video was held at our local park on a day where there's a lot of people attending the local farmers market. We just as a group of concerned citizens felt compelled to speak out why. We felt that our elected officials and self-appointed leaders did not do the right thing to protect us. Within a week after the video went viral, and by the way it was the mosque itself that posted its videos, its pattern and practices that every week post its sermons. And so for one, one should be concerned that they are so out there and unabashedly posted this on their own website. That's important for people to understand. So what initially happened is representatives from the mosque and care, the Council on American Islamic Relations, doubled down and tried to blame the victim, saying memory, the outfit that translated the Arabic portions, misconstrued or misquoted and then no, they were called to task. And then the mosque began its apologia process with its handler care and that's another issue. Council American Islamic Relations operates throughout the US and poses as a civil rights organization protecting the rights of Muslims in America. But in fact, they themselves have radical ideology and tendencies. Within a week after this sermon was revealed, there was a closed, carefully controlled press conference where the Imam was told to read an apology. He apologized for hurt feelings but he never took back the ideology. He never said he was wrong to have that ideology and he knows exactly what he was saying. He's very schooled and learned in this particular form of radical Wahhabi Salafist ideology. You know, I remember that his apology was based, that's the end of the movie, that his apology was based on his passion. He said he was driven by his passion, which I thought was a very interesting justification for the statements he made because he didn't apologize for his passion, you can't change passion and I guess his passion is the anti-Semitic passion. So this was an apology, at least in my view, that really didn't go anywhere. What was the reaction of the Jewish community? Well, that's also been a very interesting issue, which really there is a crisis in the American Jewish community that's been going on for so time because in the last 10 to 15 years as Jew Hatred has ramped up, there has been quite a crisis on how to deal with it. So we have what's called the Jewish Federation in Sacramento, which represents essentially our region and they wanted to quickly show harmony and good faith with the interfaith community and work with care and the EMA to massage and create this apology. But I will tell you the average Jewish citizen on the street doesn't buy it and is very concerned as am I. How about you, Sherene, do you buy it? I mean was this a legitimate apology? It sounds like it was done behind closed doors. It sounds like it was negotiated and in any event it deferred the issue about whether to terminate him. How do you feel about this apology, the negotiated apology? The apology was a joke. It was not apology whatsoever. I wish we had the opportunity to engage that apology and I'm actually really embarrassed for every single person in that community within the interfaith community and within the sort of civic community who stood behind this EMA and listened to this apology and allowed themselves to be treated as props in this apology, which it was not. It was shameless. It was scripted. It was very intentionally crafted in order to appease whatever sort of backlash they were getting but the right approach to this would be to remove that EMA 100 percent and that hasn't happened. I don't think that's going to happen because there isn't enough pressure. Jay, what I found really shocking is I tried Gail and I and a few others. We tried so hard to bring media attention onto this, including I'm going to ask them Californian conservatives who championed the issue of being against Islamism but when it's at their doorstep I had hardly anyone do anything. They have the opportunity in our own backyard and nobody cared. Two weeks later I wake up on the Saturday and I see the Charlottesville rally and I see all this media attention go towards the KKK and the BLM movement but this entire larger issue of apocalypse and calling for Armageddon within houses of worship was largely ignored and it is a failure of the Muslim community. It is a failure of the media and and I thank you for giving us the opportunity and I thank Gail for what she did but it is just we're so outnumbered and out-resourced here. One other thing before we go to our break, Shireen, you created a petition and you circulated the petition online. You got as much extension on it as you could and as I recall right now you have about five thousand signatures on the petition. What does it say and what does it mean? It calls out the Imam for what he's done. It says that he he doesn't have no place in a place of worship. He is a propagandist. He is a prostitution of faith. So the other thing is it's not a matter of assigning blame to every single Muslim who walked to the mosque doors because they're there to listen to a sermon and so not only did he give this sermon, not only is the mosque board responsible for what he said but he also took advantage of every single worshiper who walked with those doors and so for the three reasons outlined in the change.org document he has really no place as a leadership role within the house of worship. How can I sign the petition? Where do I go? Yeah, if you can go to change.org and actually if we can share the link after the show that would be fantastic. If you go to change.org look up Amr Shaheen and or my name and it should pop up in the search bar. Okay, we're going to take a short break you guys. We come back. I want to talk about how this is repeated in other places in California and the country. The effect of the Trump administration on this kind of bigotry and I want to ask you what can be done both from the Muslim side, the moderate Muslim side and from the Jewish side and from the beside all other sides in order to deal with this kind of bigotry and hatred. We'll take a short break. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness. She's signed. All the better to see you with my dear. What are you doing? Okay. Research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now? Oh yeah, this is the starting line. Push! This is over. You're dead! Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child. Every parent. Every day. Nothing is making sense. We're back. This is Bigotry in America on Think Tech here on a given Thursday. Our guests are Gail Rubin who is Jewish. A retired attorney in California and Davis. And Sherene Kudosi who is the director of the of Muslim matters with America matters and she's a Muslim person and they both written articles about the incident in Davis and during our during our break Gail was talking about you know a very ironic situation where the Jewish community was was helping this particular mosque and I like to like to talk about that but then I like to go forward to a discussion of what's happening in California and the country in general. So what happened in January? So in January this very same mosque was vandalized by a woman a disturbed woman. Obviously a hate crime. Obviously despicable. We don't do that to our houses of worship. Windows were broken and some bacon was wrapped around a door you know that's forbidden under Islam and hundreds hundreds within after this incident came to the park the interfaith community came together showed support for the mosque did fundraising to help prepare the damage etc. So now come forward six months later and their very same mosque and leader in clergy calls for utter annihilation of the Jewish people and we didn't see that reaction. We did not see support in the park. We did not see the interfaith community come and and rally behind us. Instead they colluded to do a hush touch apology and let's move forward and that includes the mayor of Davis and the city council and the board of supervisors. And we all know that words can't kill. We all know the words that started under Hitler. We all know the words that started from Mao's little red book and how many millions were murdered and so the irony which is the bitter pill to swallow is there's a clear double standard as professor Ellen Dershowitz writes about often when it comes to due hatred. There's a double standard because if you replace those murderous words with kill every black or kill every gay man rest assured this Davis community would have been lobbying for him to be fired. And the other issue just real quickly is we have to look why is this imam there because there have been issues that there is no real board in control or anyone to go to and that's because this mosque was built funded and the imam placed under the aegis of North American Islamic trust. I encourage your listeners to Google North American Islamic Trust. They are an endowment with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood with ties to Hamas and they purposely build and install radical imams like Imam Shaheen in communities to test the waters. And what's most alarming is you see Davis has the ignoble distinction of being rated among the top 10 anti-submitted campuses in our country. And now we have Imam Shaheen right across the street. Yeah and servicing a lot of kids a lot of students out of that campus. Well you know there are other by the way I want to offer you the opportunity to make comment on that Shireen because you were talking about that during the break. Yeah you know I my sympathy goes out to all the different sides who are who are affected here the worshipers and then the interfaith community in the civic community such as the mayor of Davis and the larger interfaith groups and the question is these are groups that want to engage Muslims and they don't know where to go to so they make the mistake of thinking well the mosque is the representation of the Muslim community and the fact is that they're a fantastic Muslim civic and business engagement opportunities with with rising Muslim leaders with rising Muslim spiritual gurus guides speakers organizations that are progressive and even just Muslim businessmen and business women. So going to the mosque is not always not your representation of the Muslim community as a faith group or even as a voting block. There are other places that they can go to and to do that all they need to do is I mean anybody is welcome to call me up I can give them access to a few other people and have a conversation about what are your goals what are you trying to do is this mosque or is the mosque in your area the best place to go to in order to outreach with Muslims and and if you feel it is then maybe there needs to be some sort of middleman so let's take a look at San Diego for example San Diego's Republican mayor Kevin Faulkner recently partnered with care which should be so obvious that you don't partner with care solely on a on a one-to-one basis to launch a Muslim appreciation week and so rather than reach out to myself or Muslims for Progressive Values or or Anila Ali or Saraya Dean who are all in California in Southern California the default they go to is either care or it's the mosque and so this like this sort of loop in the cycle of Islamism continues which is which is really ironic because on the one hand we put up memes and and and prayers when you know when we're attacked by terrorists but when those the terrorists in suits when the ideologies carried through a different channel through a different door we sit there and we partner with them and these people are not they're not on our side they're not going to work with us in the way that we need them to work with us now you mentioned earlier Shireen that there were other similar incidents there have been recently this year other similar incidents in California where other Imams have made similar statements can you talk about that and you can you talk about what was done over it yeah absolutely nothing really so if you go to gatestone.org and you just Google my name in Gatestone there is an article that comes up and that article mentions one other individual and that individual was in Riverside so there's one there and there was one in LA so both of these Imams have the same rhetoric and again this was the issue in response to the situation that kicked off in in Israel on Temple Mount between whether Muslims had access to Temple Town which they absolutely did and so rather than look at the larger context of what happened the security was clamped down in Israel because of attacks and and more killings the the default Muslim position has been well they're not giving us access to a holy site which is a whole other issue which in my opinion as a Muslim Muslims and Jews both need to have access to that so what we do back at home as we take those issues rather than look at the number of atrocities that are happening in the Muslim world at the hands of Muslim dictators and Muslim tyrants we hyper focus on Israel and Israel is sort of the boogeyman and which is which is the issue that comes back at home we take it into the mosques and we we politicize our own houses of worship and so and then we complain when when the the administration looks at Muslims and looks at the Muslim community as a political or as a racial sort of a unit when groups like care come in when groups like you know interfaith communities that come in that are not interested in the genuine well-being of the Muslim community which means being the tough parent which means challenging our community from within this is a sort of a cycle that just perpetuates itself whether it's the Islamists whether it's civic leaders whether it's the interfaith community whether it's the media and and I don't see meant to this the only way I really see it is people like Gail people like yourself people you know who are doing the individual work so that we can challenge this on some level and create some ways Gail you know I can't remember this kind of thing happening before maybe it has happened but I can't remember it I haven't seen it in the media and and I am thinking that there's there's a lot of bad stuff going on and I wonder if you feel that that bigotry and anti-Semitism along these lines is more now than it was before and I'm interested also when you thought about whether the things the Trump administration has done and not done makes makes anti-Semitism and bigotry worse than it was before what what's your sense of the the direction the arc of all this so I've been active very intimately active in working to push back against Jew hatred which manifests in code language such as anti-Zionism anti-Israelism boycott divestment sanction movement basically against all things Jewish which you know is rather ironic we don't even rank as a full one percent of the world's population and the sovereign nation of Israel is about the size of New Jersey and about 19 Israel's would fit into all of California so be that as it may as context there has been growing Jew hatred in the form of Israel bashing on our college campuses that spill into our communities almost for the last 15 to 20 years and it has been ratcheting up campus officials have been failing to deal with it I have been directly involved in trying to defeat several BDS actions in my region and in my community and it has been growing and growing and growing so from my personal experience it's a false narrative and a false equivalency to say it's because of Trump and I make no judgment pro or con about who is our president or or not I'm just stating a fact that that's a false equivalency as we see this ratcheting up definitely because you know what if you call out white supremacy and violence you're brave but if you call out Islamist supremacy and violence and genocide then you become a racist and that has been going on for quite some time yeah this is a great concern Gail great concern and we will follow it in here in this show bigotry in America on think tech but I wanted to get suggestions from you and Cherine both about what your respective communities could do to deal with this to ameliorate it in some way to clarify how people think and deal with other communities so let me start with you Gail what's your suggestion to the Jewish community how does the Jewish community that includes me how do we deal with this kind of anti-Semitism which might otherwise just be growing on us right education education is the key to so many matters people seem to not want to become educated even if you steer them to the sources and that's disturbing because we know education is the road to peace truly if you see suspicious activity report it right that's what we're told to do go to Homeland Security go to the FBI but most importantly and I'm going to speak from a legal standpoint we and others we know congressman Brett Sherman and our local congressman John Garamendi who spoke out against it did make requests as did the Simon Wiesenthal Center as did the Zionist Organization of America ZOA for the FBI to investigate because on its face this is a pattern and practice issue which is an important jurisdictionally that it's not a one-off thing that Imam Shaheen did and so we have state civil rights laws under both the Ralph and Bain Civil Rights Act and we have federal laws with regard to incitement to genocides or coercion or harassment of a protected class or a minority group now the question is and that's why we went to our city council on August 9 we said city your first task is to see keep us safe your task is to maintain the public trust of safety we want you to take this matter to the U.S. Attorney's Office to the district attorney to the FBI and have an investigation because we know one thing at least this mosque in Imam has used the resources of the internet to incite genocide now that is definitely subject to prosecution under federal law so why are we so soft in complacent yeah well I think the important thing is you're talking about it Gail you're here on this program and other programs you're writing about it I compliment and admire both of you for having done that but let's let's close with Shireen now Shireen what's your advice to the Muslim community what would you suggest to them in order to ameliorate what is it really an awful problem well first I'd want to I really want to thank Gail for what she just contributed I think that's so smart and it's so stewed and it's a lot of work that's gone in on her part to do the work that our own community should be doing and when it comes to the Muslim community you know we are trying really hard there is an entire subculture of Muslims of progressive Muslims who are trying to create a niche it's mostly online we're now trying to move that niche and that online subculture of progressive values towards some sort of physical space whether it's meeting in public or whether it's coming together in some sort of real time but to the civic community to the politicians who are looking for the Muslim vote to the interfaith councils I urge you stop working with people who are not working in your interest start reaching out to different people who different Muslims there are Muslims in every city you can reach out to me I will help you find someone who is truly progressive empower them work with them and that's the next generation of leadership that we need that that's my goal right now is to multiply some version of myself or better so that tomorrow there are thousands of us and we're not just some one candle in the dark and so that's what we have to do whether it's the Muslim community or whether it's the non-Muslim American community is empower new leaders because the ones you're working with aren't working in our interests thank you Shareen Shareen Godosi and Gail Rubin I admire you in respect and thank you both for appearing on our show and this is Bigotry in America on ThinkTech and it's really been a very important discussion Aloha to you both thank you for having us we appreciate it thank you bye