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Tag: anti-muslim

  • Katie Couric Interview Canceled by Donald Trump Amidst Growing Controversy Over Anti-Muslim Banter

    A planned interview with Katie Couric has been canceled per the request of Donald Trump amidst continued controversy of recent comments made about Muslims, including his call to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the United States.

    The New York Times confirmed that Trump’s interview with Couric, Yahoo’s global news anchor, which had been planned for Wednesday, according to Tony Maciulis, the head of news at Yahoo Studios.

    The Times reports that the interview was slated to take place at Trump’s office tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The interview had been scheduled since the summer and was reportedly confirmed within the last three weeks.

    It is unclear why Trump canceled the interview, although in an email, a spokeswoman for Trump, Hope Hicks, said that the postponement was “purely a scheduling issue and we have every intention to reschedule as soon as possible.”

    Some media outlets wonder if a previous interview with another Yahoo News reporter, in which the reporter asked him if he would rule out creating a registry of Muslims in the United States, had anything to do with his decision to cancel the interview.

    Trump, who currently tops most polls for the Republican presidential nomination, has been widely criticized since his call on Monday to bar Muslims from entering the country after the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attacks.

    Donald Trump is apparently is taking some time away from the press to regroup and has no events on his public schedule until Friday.

  • Anti-Muslim Film: YouTube Ordered to Remove Offensive Film

    The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order today demanding YouTube to remove an anti-Muslim film from its site. The film, called Innocence of Muslims, has been the source of much controversy around the world, including a riot in Libya that killed for Americans in 2012.

    Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress who took part in the Innocence of Muslims film, says that she and the other actors were told they were starring in a short film called Desert Warriors, but that the producer dubbed over most of the speaking parts to create the anti-Islamic work Innocence of Muslims. Not only did the film openly mock Muslims, some scenes depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a pedophile and homosexual, which caused Garcia and her family to receive many threats of violence.

    Garcia asked YouTube to remove the anti-Muslim film in 2012, but the request was denied, so she brought forth a lawsuit. While Garcia was initially told that the video wouldn’t be removed because it was a First Amendment issue, Garcia’s lawsuit was based on the video being a copyright infringement issue. The lawsuit eventually made it to federal court where a three-judge panel decided in favor of Garcia in a 2-1 ruling.

    Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote the majority opinion for the decision. Read an excerpt from the opinion below:

    Garcia’s performance was used in a way that she found abhorrent and her appearance in the film subjected her to threats of physical harm and even death. Despite these harms, and despite Garcia’s viable copyright claim, Google refused to remove the film from YouTube. It’s hard to see how Google can defend its refusal on equitable grounds and, indeed, it doesn’t really try. Instead, it argues that an injunction would be inequitable because of the overwhelming public interest in the continued hosting of Innocence of Muslims on YouTube.

    Read the rest of the decision here.

    Image via LiveLeak

  • Gap Ad Takes Stand Against Anti-Muslim Vandalism

    Gap has been rolling out new campaigns that typically create a lot of buzz, but this year’s seems to have drawn a different kind of attention. The theme of this year’s campaign is “Make Love” and Gap created an image of two people: jewelry designer, Waris Ahluwalia, a Sikh and model/ filmmaker  Quentin Jones. The image for the ad was posted outdoors and in store windows.

    However, New York photographer, Robert Gerhardt observed that one of the posters that had been posted outside a New York City passageway had been defaced.  The phrase “Make Love” was replaced with “Make Bombs”. Also, the phrase “Please stop driving taxis” was added to the poster.

    Gerhardt took a photo of the defaced poster and forwarded it to Arsalan Iftikhar, Islamic Monthly senior editor and founder of the TheMuslimGuy.com who then posted the photo to his Twitter and Facebook wall. “When I first saw my Facebook friend’s photo of this Gap subway advertisement defaced by vandals with racist messages, I wanted the world to see how millions of brown people are viewed in America today.” Gerhardt told the Huffington Post.

    Gap responded the next day and tweeted back at Iftikhar to find out the original location the ad. “Hi there. Thanks for informing us. Can you please follow & DM us. We’d like to know the location of this,” read the tweet. The company went further to change the background of the picture to show solidarity. Though Sikhs are a different religious sect than Muslims, the two groups are often mistaken for each other. Gap has since received praise from Muslims and Sikhs communities.

    “The Muslim Guy” Responds

    (main image via YouTube)