During a holy month when he was supposed to be fasting, a Muslim inmate in the Mecklenburg County Jail still wanted his lunch.
So Travaile Speller has sued, claiming that his jailers and the Mecklenburg Sheriff’s Office discriminated against his religious practice by forcing him to eat only two meals each day during Ramadan.
“That is clearly depriving me of necessary calories, as well as the recommend(ed) daily volume of nutrients that my body requires to function normally,” Speller says in his hand-written complaint. “They are intentionally eliminating one whole meal (lunch) which is cruel and unusual punishment directed towards all Muslims.”
Haha
There’s just one problem: During Ramadan (which took place this year from May 15 to June 15), practicing Muslims are limited to two meals each day. Those are known as suhoor, which can be eaten before dawn, and iftar, which is served after sunset.
The daylight hours are off limits for food, drink and sex, a month-long ban that would appear to cover Speller’s lost lunches.
Inmate Travaile Speller, who says he is a Muslim, has sued the Mecklenburg County Jail for religious discrimination after he was blocked from receiving lunch during the holy month of Ramadan.
Mecklenburg Jail
“They withheld his lunch during Ramadan? They were supposed to withhold it during Ramadan,” said Jibril Hough, a spokesman for the Islamic Center of Charlotte and a member of Sheriff Erwin Carmichael’s faith advisory board.
“The jail was doing him a favor and actually respecting his faith.”
That will get you locked up for offending the peaceful muslims I’m sure. lol
Both approved Ramadan meals were provided to any Mecklenburg inmate who registered in advance to observe the fast, according to the copy of the sign-up form included with Speller’s lawsuit. Speller added his name to the list on April 30, court documents show.
As written, the form serves as almost a step-by-step guide on how to adhere to the four weeks of fasting. Inmates would remain on the approved list of Ramadan observers as long as they accepted the suhoor meal, did not drink fluids or eat commissary items during the day, and did not join the lunch line, the sheriff’s office said.
In other words, they had to fast.
Followers of Islam believe fasting teaches patience, modesty, and spirituality.
Two weeks after the Ramadan fast ended, however, Speller filed his complaint. He says the loss of a month of midday meals violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
“My meals should not be diminished based on my religion, or because of my observance of my religious holiday,” he wrote.
It was not immediately clear how the jail came up with its Ramadan policy and how many inmates observed the fast. On Tuesday, Mecklenburg sheriff’s spokeswoman Anjanette Grube said the office had not been served with Speller’s complaint and could not comment.
Helping Muslim inmates abide by the rules of the holiday would have required some adjustments by the jail kitchen. Hough says the morning meal can be served as early as 4:30 a.m. while iftar would come well after the jail’s normal dinner schedule.
Islam traditionally has been a popular religion in prisons and jails. A 2016 New York Times article said 11 percent of the state’s prison population was Muslim. At the maximum-security Sing Sing Correctional Facility, 80 percent of the Muslim inmates had converted after entering prison, a prison Imam told the paper.
Jail records indicate Speller has been arrested at least 10 times over the last two years. He has been in custody since January, when he was charged with a series of burglary and larceny offenses.
According to the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book, “Whoever fasts during Ramadan out of sincere faith and hoping to attain Allah’s rewards, then all his past sins will be forgiven … It is the month of patience, and the reward of patience is Heaven.”
For now, Speller appears fixed on more earthly rewards: His lawsuit calls for a jury trial, and $250,000 in damages.
Pakistan rapist ‘let off’ after sick deal ‘allowing victim’s brother to rape his sister’
The case of ‘revenge rape’ involving two families has was uncovered by cops after they drew up documents agreeing to the depraved deal
A FAMILY allegedly let off their daughter’s rapist after a sick trade let the victim’s brother do the same to her attacker’s sister.
The twisted case of “revenge rape” involving two families has been uncovered by cops in Pakistan.
One man had been accused of raping a woman in Pir Mahal in the Toba Tek Singh district of Punjab province, on March 20.
The suspect’s family had approached the victim’s family for “pardon and reconciliation”, according to local news reports.
Staggeringly the victim’s family agreed to pardon the rapist, on the appalling condition that “her brother would commit the same act with the suspect’s sister”, dawn.com reports.
A meeting between the two families agreed to the terms, and the brother then allegedly had sex with the suspected rapist’s sister on March 21.
Cops found out about the case when the two families prepared legal documents agreeing not to press charges against each other.
Pir Mahal Police Sub-Inspector Shaukat Ali Javed saw the papers and reported the families to his superiors.
All 12 people at the meeting, including four women, one of which was the victim of the second rape, were arrested on Saturday.
The case has chilling similarities another incident in the southern city of Multan last July, where a village council ordered the “revenge rape” of a 16-year-old girl.
The girl’s brother had sexually assaulted a 12-year-old, and the attack was reportedly carried out in front of her parents and 40 members of the village council.
Survives Nazis and dies and the hands of muslim GFPs
Murder of elderly woman in Paris probed as anti-Semitic
French authorities say the killing of an elderly Jewish woman in Paris is being investigated as an anti-Semitic murder. The woman, identified in French media as Mireille Knoll, was stabbed at least 11 times and her body was set on fire.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday two suspects have been put in custody. It said it is asking investigating judges to charge the pair with premeditated murder of a vulnerable person for anti-Semitic motives.
The office also asked for the suspects to be jailed pending trial.
Leading Jewish group CRIF said the 85-year-old woman was slain last week in Paris’ eastern 11th district. The victim had reportedly escaped a round-up of Jews in Paris during World War II. The group says a neighbor who had previously made anti-Semitic statements was one of the people under arrest. They didn’t confirm reports that the man was Muslim.
CRIF asked for “utmost transparency in the ongoing investigation so that the reasons for this barbaric crime are known to everyone as soon as possible.”
The group plans a rally in her memory and support of her family on Wednesday.
The body was found the same day a gunmen killed several people in an attack on a supermarket in southern France.
They do not show a picture of the peaceful Muslim who used his car as a damn bulldozer.
These guys seem like really great neighbors right?
21-year-old Mohammed Abdul, of McMillan Street, London, has appeared in court on charges of attempted murder after a car was driven into a crowd outside a nightclub in Gravesend, Kent.
Abdul is thought to have smashed into revellers in a Suzuki Vitara at Blake’s, Queen Street, injuring 13 people, KentOnline reports.
18-year-old Gravesend resident Elena Napoliello described how she and a friend were “standing in front of the bar in the marquee, waiting for our coats to be taken to the cloakroom [when] all of a sudden, I saw multiple people falling backwards onto us, and so I was confused as to what was happening.
“Then, I saw the headlights of the car coming towards me and my friend and we got pushed backwards by one of our friends to get us into safety.
“I could see everyone surrounding this 4×4, but there was nowhere for us to go, so we had to hide in the back of the marquee. Everyone was shouting to ‘get down and hide’, which is what we were doing.
“When I could see the car coming towards me, I could see everyone kicking and punching the car trying to stop it and then the next minute I could see the guy on the floor. I didn’t see him very clearly because everyone was surrounding him.”
Detective Chief Inspector David Chewter thanked “the security staff at the nightclub as well as those members of the public who helped” after what he described as “the collision”, and noted that “many people” were injured in “the incident”.
Injuries reported include a dislocated knee, a broken shin bone, and one woman whose pelvis was either shattered or dislocated, according to conflicting reports. Fortunately, none of the injured are thought to be in danger of death.
The attack is not being treated as terror-related.
This Muslim woman tried to burn the school down and join Al-Qaida. But the FBI let her go.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — After Tnuza Jamal Hassan was stopped from flying to Afghanistan last September, she allegedly told FBI agents that she wanted to join al-Qaida and marry a fighter, and that she might even wear a suicide belt.
She also said she was angry at U.S. military actions overseas and admitted that she tried to encourage others to “join the jihad in fighting,” but she said she had no intention of carrying out an attack on U.S. soil, according to prosecutors. Despite her alleged admissions, she was allowed to go free.
Four months later, the 19-year-old was arrested for allegedly setting small fires on her former college campus in St. Paul in what prosecutors say was a self-proclaimed act of jihad. No one was hurt by the Jan. 17 fires at St. Catherine University, but her case raises questions about why she wasn’t arrested after speaking to the agents months earlier and shows the difficulty the authorities face in identifying real threats.
“She confessed to wanting to join al-Qaida and took action to do it by traveling overseas. Unless there are other circumstances that I’m not aware of, I would have expected that she would’ve been arrested,” said Jeffrey Ringel, a former FBI agent and Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor who now works for a private security firm, the Soufan Group, and isn’t involved in Hassan’s case. “I think she would’ve met the elements of a crime.”
Authorities aren’t talking about the case and it’s not clear how closely Hassan was monitored before the fires, if at all. When asked if law enforcement should have intervened earlier, FBI spokesman Jeff Van Nest and U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Tasha Zerna both said they couldn’t discuss the case.
Counterterrorism experts, though, say it seems she wasn’t watched closely after the FBI interview, as she disappeared for days before the fires. But the public record in a case doesn’t always reveal what agents and prosecutors were doing behind the scenes.
Authorities are often second-guessed when someone on their radar carries out a violent act. Some cases, including Wednesday’s mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 people, reveal missed signs of trouble. The FBI has admitted it made a mistake by failing to investigate a warning last month that the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, could be plotting an attack.
U.S. officials were also warned about Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years before his 2013 attack, though a review found it was impossible to know if anything could’ve been done differently to prevent it. And the FBI extensively investigated Omar Mateen, the gunman in the June 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. As part of an internal audit, then-FBI Director James Comey reviewed the case and determined it was handled well.
Hassan, who was born in the U.S., has pleaded not guilty to federal counts of attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida, lying to the FBI and arson. She also faces a state arson charge. One fire was set in a dormitory that has a day care where 33 children were present.
Although her attempts to set fires largely failed, Hassan told investigators she had expected the buildings to burn down and “she hoped people would get killed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter said in court. He added that she was “self-radicalized” and became more stringent in her beliefs and focused on jihad.
Hassan’s attorney, Robert Sicoli, declined to talk about whether the family saw warnings. Her mother and sister declined to speak to The Associated Press.
According to prosecutors, Hassan tried to travel to Afghanistan on Sept. 19, making it as far as Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before she was stopped because she lacked a visa.
Prosecutors say that when the agents interviewed Hassan on Sept. 22, she admitted she tried to join al-Qaida, saying she thought she’d probably get married, but not fight. When pressed, she allegedly told investigators she guessed she would carry out a suicide bombing if she had to do it but she wouldn’t do anything in the U.S. because she didn’t know whom to target.
Hassan admitted that she wrote a letter to her roommates in March encouraging the women to “join the jihad in fighting,” prosecutors allege. The letter was initially reported to campus security, and it’s unclear when it was given to the FBI or if the agency made contact with Hassan before the September interview.
It’s also unknown how closely U.S. authorities were monitoring Hassan between the interview and Dec. 29, when she was barred from traveling to Ethiopia with her mother. Prosecutors say at the time, Hassan had her sister’s identification and her luggage contained a coat and boots, which she wouldn’t have needed in Ethiopia’s warm climate.
Hassan later ran away from home and her family reported her missing Jan. 10. Her whereabouts were unknown until the Jan. 17 fires.
Ron Hosko, a retired assistant director of the FBI’s criminal division who has no link to Hassan’s case, said that based on an AP reporter’s description of it, “I would certainly look at this person, not knowing more, as somebody who would be of interest to the FBI.” However he cautioned that the public doesn’t know the extent of the agency’s efforts to monitor Hassan, including whether she was under surveillance, what sort of background investigation was done and how agents might have assessed her capacity to follow through on a threat. He also said the FBI might have made decisions based on her mental capacity.
“Not every subject requires 24/7 FBI surveillance,” he said. The reality is that hard decisions on resources are being made constantly, with the biggest perceived threats receiving the most attention.
“I’m sure there are plenty of days where they hope they are right and they are keeping their fingers crossed,” he added.
Stephen Vladeck, professor of law at the University of Texas, said monitoring possible threats is a delicate balance, and law enforcement can’t trample civil rights while trying to prevent violence.
“This is a circle that can’t be squared,” he said. “We are never going to keep tabs on every single person who might one day pose a threat.”
If Muslim women are not fighting in the war they will not be shot right? If you are a terrorist why should I feel sorry for you?
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday that female rebels should be shot in the vagina, so as to render them “useless.”
Duterte made the remarks in front of a crowd of about 200 former rebels on Tuesday, suggesting his soldiers be given “new orders.”
“We won’t kill you. Will we just shoot your vagina so that…if there is no vagina, it would be useless,” Duterte said.
The comments immediately sparked a wave of backlash from human rights organizations around the world. Christine Palabay, secretary-general of the Philippine rights group Karapatan, named the leader as a “frothing-in-the-mouth fascist.”
“His recent comments and pronouncements are but the latest of the series of these madman’s display of tyranny, lunacy and machismo,” Palabay said. “Duterte has distinguished himself as a frothing-in-the-mouth fascist who incites the worst violations of international humanitarian law.”
