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| Muslims Clash Over Oakland Liquor Stores |
| 2006-01-10 |
| They weren't your ordinary thugs. Dressed in bow ties and dark suits, nearly a dozen men carrying metal pipes entered a corner store, shattered refrigerator cases and smashed bottles of liquor, wine and beer, terrifying the clerk but stealing nothing. The just wanted to leave a message: Stop selling alcohol to fellow Muslims. In urban America, friction between poor residents and immigrant store owners is nothing new. Nor are complaints that inner-city neighborhoods are glutted with markets that sell alcohol and contribute to violent crime, vagrancy and other social ills. But the recent attack at San Pablo Liquor - and an identical vandalism spree at another West Oakland store later that evening, along with an arson fire there and the kidnapping of the owner a few days later - have injected religion into the debate. The two episodes highlighted tensions - and different interpretations of the Quran - between black Muslims in this struggling, crime-ridden city of 400,000 and Middle Eastern shop owners, many of them also Muslims. Six men connected to a bakery founded by a prominent black Muslim family have been arrested in the Nov. 23 attacks, which were caught on store security cameras. In both instances, the vandals asked store clerks why they were selling alcohol when it was against the Muslim faith. One of the men arrested on charges that included hate crimes and vandalism was 19-year-old Yusuf Bey IV. His father, Yusuf Bey, a black Muslim leader who died in 2003, founded Your Black Muslim Bakery, which sells Malcolm X books along with baked goods. The elder Bey was accused of raping young women between 1976 and 1995. The accusations were later dropped. But his organization has been lauded for providing jobs and guidance to young black men from poor communities. The younger Bey was arrested after police identified him as one of the men in the video. The younger Bey's attorney, Lorna Brown, suggested Bey was a victim of mistaken identity. But she also said the vandalism has prompted discussions throughout the black community. "I think it's pretty clear that the number of these stores in low-income communities is not good for people," she said. San Pablo market owner Abdul Saleh, who has kept his store open following the attacks, said his decision to sell alcohol is "between me and God." "We're just coming here to make a living like anyone else," he said. While black and Middle Eastern Muslims may pray at the same mosques on weekends, their worlds do not tend to overlap beyond that, said Hatem Bazian, professor of Near East and ethnic studies at the University of California at Berkeley. The Middle Eastern store owners tend to live in the suburbs, the black Muslims in the cities, Bazian said. The immigrant shopkeepers also interpret Islam to allow the sale of alcohol. In the wake of the attacks, community leaders have targeted the glut of corner markets selling fortified wine, malt liquor and cheap alcohol as one of the most pressing problems in Oakland, where roughly 16 percent of families live below the poverty line. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #24 liberalhawk I wasn't talking about converted Jews but about Jews passing for Muslims. The equivalent of Spanish marranos. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-01-10 17:06 |
| #23 These idiots are just criminals and vandals and should be treated as such regardless of their being a muzzie. As much as I dislike most of the hate crime enhancements today (constitutional protections should serve the purpose on their own), I'd almost be willing to make most Islamic motivated crimes into hate crimes. Since Dar al Harb is a land of endless conflict and war, any crime committed in its name must be one of hatred. I realize that this will require the same change-of-mind that the Pentagon is struggling to go through right now. It just makes a lot of sense to adjudge Islam as a political ideology that is at violent odds with existing culture. That violence is a form of hatred and all of the enhancements should apply. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-01-10 16:59 |
| #22 "AFAIK Mustafa Kemal was also Muslim With your logic Robespierre was a Catholic or Stalin an Orthodox. Mustafa was born a Muslim that is all, nothing in his actions or writings points at him keeping the faith. " not quite - I dont think Kemal ever actually apostasized, as Robespierre and Stalin did. Any turks here can confirm this? As for being a Jew, there were some converted Jews in the Young Turk movement, but IIUC the opponents of the Young Turks exagerrated the numbers. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-01-10 15:29 |
| #21 cmon guys, NOI looniness is only peripherally related to Wahabi looniness. And as stated above, its the NOI loonies who are involved here - and its ordinary muslim liquor store owners who are the victims (if the NOI wants fewer liquor stores, there are legal ways to bring that about) |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-01-10 15:26 |
| #20 cmon guys, NOI looniness is only peripherally related to Wahabi looniness. And as stated above, its the NOI loonies who are involved here - and its ordinary muslim liquor store owners who are the victims (if the NOI wants fewer liquor stores, there are legal ways to bring that about) |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-01-10 15:26 |
| #19 Aris Katsaris said: AFAIK Mustafa Kemal was also Muslim With your logic Robespierre was a Catholic or Stalin an Orthodox. Mustafa was born a Muslim that is all, nothing in his actions or writings points at him keeping the faith. BTW according to the Nafik his mother wanted to send him to a Coranic school and it was his father who insisted into giving him a Western education. I wouyld need to refresh my memories but I think it was at a French school in Turkey. Also I have heard allegations that from the side of his father Mustafa Kamal came from a family of Jews who had converted to escape prosecutions. And for your info, in Spain, there are families who have practiced Judaism in secret for five centuries while being Christians in public and only surfaced in the 1980s. From a Jewish source. I know there were also families of secret Jews in Muslim countries. So let's have that fascinating hypothesis: Mustafa Kamal was a Jeeeeeeeeeew. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-01-10 15:24 |
| #18 "I think it's pretty clear that the number of these stores in low-income communities is not good for people," she said. This is known as "treating the symptom". |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2006-01-10 14:46 |
| #17 also Mt Arafat would better be called a hill; it is only about 250 ft high |
| Posted by: mhw 2006-01-10 12:15 |
| #16 Actually there are several verses in the Quran that deal with this. 4:43 seems to allow alcohol except before prayer; 2;219 seems to counsel moderation; 5:90-91 seems to be more prohibitionist. It took until several hundred years after Mohamot before the various judicial schools decided that prohibition was required. |
| Posted by: mhw 2006-01-10 11:16 |
| #15 "...the vandals asked store clerks why they were selling alcohol when it was against the Muslim faith..." I doubt there's anything in the faith against selling alcohol to non-Muslims. After all, if you can behead them you can certainly sell them liver poison. And any Muslim who would consume alcohol is not going to get his raisins anyway. Knowing what I do about the "Nation of Islam" (aka "Black Muslims"), I suspect that there's some racism involved here too. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2006-01-10 10:13 |
| #14 JFM> Yes, they did but they were countered by Mustafa Kamal who had a colossal despise of Islam and saw it as an instrument of foreign domination. AFAIK Mustafa Kemal was also Muslim, and certainly so were most of his followers. This is the sentence I was disagreeing with: "Wherever Muslims have the numbers, they enforce Shariah." Wherever Muslims have the numbers, *some* of them *try* to enforce Shariah, that's certain. Not mentioning the times that they've failed due to the resistance or unwillingness of other muslims is what makes all the difference. Likewise with the imported Islamofascism in Albania -- said importation again indicates that the absoluteness of "whenever Muslims have the numbers they enforce Shariah" is false. Oh and while we are at it in your spare time you should investigate about what happenned to the Greeks of Turkey around 1955 *rolls eyes* You should also read the Coran. Don't worry, I have; much of it anyway. But I've never had any doubt that religion was an enemy, and I'm well aware that in modern days Islam is much more unreformed and thus reactionary than Christianity is. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2006-01-10 10:00 |
| #13 I thought those dapper young Black men were part of Carrie Nation's Temperance Union? |
| Posted by: The Angry Fliegerabwehrkanonen 2006-01-10 09:18 |
| #12 The Oakland vandals are not Wahabi; they are from a form of Islam that would be called heretical in Soddiland (although I think the Black Muslim groups get a temporary 'bye' as long as they contribute to hatred toward Jews). So long as they're in Dar al Harb, the differences between the Black Muslims and the Wahabbists are ignored. If Dar al Islam were to reign in Oakland, the matter would be a bit different. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-01-10 08:34 |
| #11 They didn't in Turkey. Ever? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-01-10 08:31 |
| #10 The Oakland vandals are not Wahabi; they are from a form of Islam that would be called heretical in Soddiland (although I think the Black Muslim groups get a temporary 'bye' as long as they contribute to hatred toward Jews). Having said that, Islam is the factor here that gives Yusuf Bey IV gives the mind set that "I don't have to obey civil law; I obey a higher law." |
| Posted by: mhw 2006-01-10 08:28 |
| #9 Here is a quote from Mustafa Kamal (extracted of Ataturk.com): "Turkey is the friend of all civilized nations". But in the Nafik he justifies his abolition of islamic uses, garment, alphabet and laws as "a requiremnt for Turkey joining the side of civilized nations" |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-01-10 08:03 |
| #8 Yes, ma grandfather's mother had bought him "Mein Kampf" before the war IIRC, and I'm sure he understood better the stakes (he was a resistant, too). Reading the coran is a good move, and I wish it could be done more often, in a contextualized environment (such as the difference between the Mecca and Medina verses), this would be an eyes-openers for many. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-01-10 08:00 |
| #7 "They haven't in Albania" -- not as yet. See this article dated 11/15/2005 published in a "Kosovo Albanian" newspaper, protesting the spreading influence of Saudi-financed Wahhabism in Albania and the Albanian dispora apparently written by a practicing Muslim. "They are visible everywhere with their eccentricity in every respect - long beards, Asian dresses, short trousers, wives covered by black dresses (which remind you of Slav Orthodox nuns), and extremely radical and vulgar vocabulary. God, they only need to bring camels from the deserts in order to conform completely - of course, according to them - to the "Sunnet" [practices of Muhammad] of the Prophet! For this reason, the Shkup [Skopje] citizens are justified in calling them "bearded men," "Selamalejkums" [from the Arab greeting selam aleykum], "mojahedin," "Taleban," and so on. Their eccentricity is really out of this world for our European environment and for our national traditions. Finally, their entire extreme and radical doctrine, ideology, and practice is against our religious doctrine, which has been embedded in ! our tradition for centuries since our forefathers embraced the Islamic religion. Our Wahhabists want, among other things, to uproot our traditional religious doctrine - Hanafi Madhab(Madhab is a particular system of Sharia) [religious legal doctrine] - and replace it with the rigid doctrine of "Wahhabism." What an absurdity - they want to uproot the extremely tolerant and rational teachings of our Hanafi Madhab with the extreme, stale, infantile, and irrational teachings of Saudi Wahhabism! " The author implies that he had so far delayed publishing his thoughts because he thought the USA was dealing with Wahhabism. He adds, "In Kosova [Kosovo] these Wahhabi bastards have started to desecrate our graves and our monuments 'in the name of religion.' " (Stephen Schwartz, an anti-Wahhabi Muslim apologist has stated "Destruction of tombs and cemeteries is often, in fact, the first sign of Wahhabi activity.") Most of us around here can't distinguish one form of Sharia from another, or Wahhabi from wasabi. The liquor store vandalism resembles the cemetery vandalism practiced by Wahhabis elsewhere. |
| Posted by: Flerert Whese8274 2006-01-10 07:59 |
| #6 They didn't in Turkey. Yes, they did but they were countered by Mustafa Kamal who had a colossal despise of Islam and saw it as an in,strument of foreign domination. You should read the Nafik (the printed version of an autobiographical speech he delivered) before saying such sillinesses. Unforturnately he died at only 57, otherwise he would have gone farther in the unislamisation of Turkey. Today it is the fear of the army and teh fact that Erdogan knows that many of his voters have been thoroughly unislamized by decades of Kamalism and would not follow him who is preventing Erdogan of going farther and faster towards Shariah. Oh and while we are at it in your spare time you should investigate about what happenned to the Greeks of Turkey around 1955 (Hint: nowadays, there are no Greeks in Turkey). You should also read the Coran. It is ever useful to know the ideology of the enemey and the ideology in the book is one of conquest and enslavement of the whole world. There was high proportion of Resistants between those people of the invaded countries who had read Mein Kampf. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-01-10 07:37 |
| #5 Communities have a right to decide what type of commerce is allowed in their community. For example it is law in most states that no liquor store is within 1/4 mile of a high school. Other communities have sex shop laws and limits to bars. The point here is the community can decide and should, through zoning, and limit if it is really an issue. These idiots are just criminals and vandals and should be treated as such regardless of their being a muzzie. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-01-10 07:19 |
| #4 They are starting to enforce Sharia in Turkey, Aris, with tacit approval from the Erdogan government: liquor stores and non-halal restaurants vandalized, churches attacked. While your army was marching you around Greece, articles were posted here with the details. I wish it weren't so, I was one of those arguing that Turkey was the sole example of a successfully secular Muslim state, like the U,S, is successfully secular Christian, and Israel is successfully secular Jewish. Infortunately, at least under the current government, that doesn't appear to be true, although it isn't anywhere near the point of the Arab countries or the Pakistans West & East. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-01-10 06:05 |
| #3 Wherever Muslims have the numbers, they enforce Shariah. They didn't in Turkey. They haven't in Albania. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2006-01-10 05:43 |
| #2 Wherever Muslims have the numbers, they enforce Shariah. Ergo: kick those pigs out. Reminder of Muslimutt "heaven": http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate/heaven.html |
| Posted by: CaziFarkus 2006-01-10 05:14 |
| #1 The younger Bey was arrested after police identified him as one of the men in the video. The younger Bey's attorney, Lorna Brown, suggested Bey was a victim of mistaken identity. But she also said the vandalism has prompted discussions throughout the black community. "I think it's pretty clear that the number of these stores in low-income communities is not good for people," she said. Cough Cough, BullShish! |
| Posted by: Threaper Ulaimp7643 2006-01-10 02:07 |