COMMUNITY MATTERS
CAIR California Reports Rise in Violations
On Aug. 29, CAIR’s California chapter released its annual civil rights report, which summarizes and analyzes all of the civil rights and immigration complaints reported to its offices in the Greater Los Angeles Area (CAIR-LA), the Sacramento Valley (CAIR-SV), San Diego (CAIR-SD) and the San Francisco Bay Area (CAIR-SFBA) during 2016. According to the report (https:// ca.cair.com/downloads/CAIR-CivilRights-Report-2017.pdf ), the chapter handled a total of 1,239 incidents throughout 2016, a 10 percent increase
in reported incidents from 2015. The complaints were related to religious-based discrimination received by all four CAIR California offices and immigration matters reported to CAIR-LA and CAIR-SD. Key highlights include a 49 percent increase in reported discriminatory treatment during travel from 2015 to 2016. The number of immigration matters handled also increased significantly. CAIR-LA’s Immigrants’ Rights Center alone assisted in more than 400 immigration applications, with an increase of 58 percent in naturalization petitions from the previous year. The categories receiving the most incident reports for 2016 were immigration (38.8%), law enforcement interactions (17%), hate incidents or hate crime (14.7%) and employment discrimination (10.6%). ih
Roshni Rides won $1 million and a trophy presented by Presdient Clinton for their rickshaw ridesharing transportation service for refugees
Million Dollar Winners Gia Farooqi, Moneeb Mian, Hasan Usmani (an alumnus of New Jersey’s Noor-Ul-Iman School) and Hanaa Lakhani — all from Rutgers Business School — won the $1 million Hult Prize 2017 Challenge at the UN headquarters on Sep. 16 for their Roshni Rides, a transportation network solution that provides accessible, affordable and reliable public transportation for urbanized refugees living in informal settlements
in South Asia. After winning the semi-final round, they raised $30,000 through a crowdfunding campaign to launch a two-month pilot project in Orangi Town, Karachi. The Hult competition challenged student teams from around the world to propose scalable start-up businesses capable of improving the lives of 10 million refugees by 2022. Roshni Rides competed against five teams for the prize. ih
12 ISLAMIC HORIZONS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017
Hijab Rights Legally Protected CAIR’s Greater Los Angeles Area office announced on Aug. 10 the settlement of a federal lawsuit that it had filed on behalf of Kirsty Powell, an African-American Muslimah whose hijab was forcibly removed by a male officer of the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) in view of other male officers and dozens of inmates. Forced to spend the entire night without it while she was in custody, she described the experience as deeply traumatizing. Powell, who was arrested during a traffic stop on outstanding warrants (since cleared), made several requests to be searched by a female officer and to wear her hijab while in custody. The officers informed her that they were “allowed to touch a woman” and that she was “not allowed to wear her hijab.” Two days earlier, the Long Beach City Council had voted to approve the settlement, which included $85,000 in damages. CAIR-LA brought the lawsuit under the First Amendment as well as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), a federal law that protects the religious rights of prisoners. Her co-counsel, New York-based constitutional lawyer Carey Shenkman, said: “Long Beach did the right thing by admitting that stripping Kirsty’s hijab stripped her of her religious freedom. I hope more cities follow this example by adopting policies to ensure the constitutional rights of Muslims are protected.” Last November, after the suit was filed, the LBPD amended its policy to accommodate religious head coverings for persons in custody. Long Beach joins the neighboring jurisdictions of San Bernardino County and Orange County, which both adopted policies that allow a person to wear religious headwear while in detention after settling similar lawsuits in 2008 and 2013, respectively. ih