Shehabi

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A Muslim woman wears the hijab

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California reached a settlement with the County of Orange yesterday allowing for Muslim women to keep their religious headscarves on while in custody.

That wasn't the case back in 2006 when Lebanese Arabheimer Souhair Khatib and her husband pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor welfare crime.

Ordered to perform hours of community service, Khatib later asked for an extension alongside her husband, but the judge revoked their probation and placed them in holding cells. It was there that a male deputy ordered the devout Muslim to remove her scarf.

Khatib reluctantly complied after trying to explain why doing so in the sight of men she didn't know would cause great distress. She sued in 2007 on the basis that her religious freedoms were violated. As a result of the just-reached agreement, observant Muslim women in similar situations won't have to suffer through the same ordeal.

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Hollywood's awards season has plopped onto red carpets many stars and players from films and television shows (think Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Homeland) that glorify CIA agents, with director Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker follow-up drawing the most controversy for its scenes of American-endorsed torture.

Perhaps the documentary on torture survivors rolling Saturday at Cal State Fullerton is then cinematic karma.

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Maen Areikat

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FreedomHouse2/Flickr Creative Commons

As geopolitical gridlock stymies international aid in Syria, expatriates and Americans of Syrian descent are taking it upon themselves to travel to the region and medically assist refugees on border towns and residents inside Syria.

One of them is Omar Chamma, who resides in Fountain Valley with his wife and three children. He works a full-time job in house construction, but lately his brother helps with the business, as Chamma leaves almost twice a month now for Syria. In the conflict's beginning, Chamma had heard conflicting reports about the amount of international aid provided to Syria, so he decided to visit the border himself at the end of June. He traveled to a Syrian town bordering Turkey and what he saw there changed his life, he says. Since then, he has traveled five times to Syria via Turkey, delivering medical supplies, and he will leave for his sixth one this evening with two Syrian American doctors.

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Alex Odeh

Upon the 25th anniversary of the terrorist act that claimed the life of Alex Odeh in Santa Ana, the FBI announced that the investigation into the events surrounding the October 11, 1985 incident was still an active one. A million-dollar reward was reaffirmed for those with information that would lead to the arrest of the perpetrators.

Two years later, the bureau's pronouncements still have not led to any measure of justice in the case.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which Odeh served as Southern California Regional Director before his killing, called for a moment of silence at 12 p.m. noon EST today and is putting pressure anew on federal agencies.

"The unlawful killing of Alex Odeh is an injustice to his family, the Arab American community and to all Americans," says current ADC President Warren David in a press release. "After 27 years we are still outraged. We demand the DOJ and the FBI bring closure to this heinous act immediately."

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Local Syrian activists are planning a protest against the 17th annual Arab American Day Festival in Garden Grove because they claim its founder's Arabic-language newspaper supports Syrian ruler Bashar Al-Assad's regime, which has cracked down on pro-democracy protesters in a brutal conflict that has killed 30,000 people since the uprising began in March 2011. 

The So Cal Syrian Coordination Committee, an informal group of pro-opposition activists, writes that "Arab American Day Festival is made and sponsored by pro-Assad regime newspaper called Al-Alam Al-Arabi. They promote Assad's regime propaganda by justifying killing innocent people who called for freedom and democracy in Syria," on its Facebook event page for the protest. A lady who answered the phone at the festival's office said she wasn't aware of the protest and she didn't have time to respond to it.

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auhsd.us

As an extended subsidy to a hotelier was being blessed at city hall, the home of former Anaheim city council hopeful Belal 'Bill' Dalati played host to a fundraiser Tuesday evening for current candidate Jordan Brandman. The invitation for the event asked members of the Arab-American community to join Hussam Ayloush, Nahla Kayali and Rashad Al-Dabbagh in support of the Anaheim Union High School District Trustee's latest campaign.

All are prominent players noted for their good work in the city's unofficial Little Arabia enclave. Ayloush is the Executive Director of the local Council on American-Islamic Relations; Kayali heads the non-profit Access, which held an event yesterday at Pearson Park in Anaheim for World Refugee Day. As faithful readers will recall, Al-Dabbagh is a young activist involved in the movement to officially designate Little Arabia.

So why are all these gada'a people supporting the douche Brandman?

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​Last time we checked in on Orange councilmember Jon Dumitru, he was leaving misspelled anti-Islamic ramblings on his Facebook page that he then tried to laughably clean up after the fact. That little incident sparked a nationwide furor, but turned Dumitru into a star among the lunatic set, the people who insist Muslims are trying to get us all sharia and shit.

Now, Dumitru is courting those pendejos and their money in his campaign for mayor of Orange.

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