August 2011, Pages 32-33

Northern California Chronicle

SALAM Masjid and Center for Higher Islamic Learning Opens in Sacramento

By Elaine Pasquini

After 23 years of planning, fund-raising and building, the SALAM Masjid and Center for Higher Islamic Learning in Sacramento celebrated completion of its final phase of construction with a facility tour and reception on April 29.

The 22,000-square-foot building encompasses a prayer area adorned with calligraphy, a functional high-tech auditorium with seating for 300, a work-out room with equipment donated by community members, a gift/book store, an Islamic library open to the public, and a lounge where children play ping-pong on occasion. The prayer hall, which has no partitions separating men and women, accommodates 600 people and features large glass windows into the prayer area to allow for observation by the press or public.

"We are beginning a new chapter in spiritual development by providing this facility to the local community where people from all walks of life and religious beliefs can come and learn about Islam on their own," SALAM Board Chairman Farrukh Saeed told opening night guests. "The SALAM Center will continue to strive to be the leader in interfaith community services and relations and provide true Islamic education. Islam's message is justice, peace and equality for all human beings on this earth without any discrimination."

Upon its founding in 1987, SALAM (Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims) initially conducted its activities through a post office box, rented offices and community centers until 1993, when the group purchased the two-and-one-half-acre property on College Oak Drive. The campus was built over the next 23 years as funding became available. During construction of the first phase—the sidewalk, gate, fence and front parking space—SALAM acquired two trailers, one for use as a temporary mosque and the other for the weekend school. In 2002 construction of a community hall, conference room, commercial kitchen, and weekend and elementary school was completed. The final phase—construction of the mosque and Center for Higher Islamic Learning—began in April 2006 and was completed late last year.

"This celebration marks the beginning of the even harder task of realizing our long-term vision of creating an intellectually thriving environment which will encourage learning and a lot of interfaith activities," said project director Javed Iqbal. "It is especially crucial at this time to break down barriers between human beings."

The SALAM Academy presently offers classes for pre-school through fifth grade. An introduction to Islam class is held the first Saturday of every month for anyone interested in learning about the religion.

"We've created a center for higher learning as a tool for community members to learn about Islam," said SALAM founder Metwalli Amer, "to reach out and project Islam in its correct image, to be a moderate voice in the community, to be the home of each and every Muslim, to empower women as partners in building this center, and to be an active part of the Sacramento community at large."

There are currently an estimated 65,000 Muslim-Americans living in the greater Sacramento area. For more information, visit <www.salamcenter.org>.

Supreme Court Rejects Torture Case

Human rights supporters across the country deplored the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal on May 16 to review the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling dismissing the case of plaintiffs Binyam Mohamed, Abou Elkassim Britel, Ahmed Agiza, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah and Bisher al-Rawi against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. for its role in the Bush administration's extraordinary rendition program. In their complaint, filed in 2007, the men charged that Jeppesen provided flight planning and logistical support services to the aircraft and crews used by the CIA in the plaintiffs' forced disappearance and secret transfer to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas for interrogations involving torture impermissible under U.S. and international law. (See April 2008 Washington Report, p. 50.)

Charlotte Casey, former president of the Peace and Justice Center in San Jose, the city where Jeppesen, the flight-planning company and subsidiary of Boeing Commercial Aviation Services, is based, expressed her feelings about the decision to the Washington Report:

"It is not surprising that the Roberts Supreme Court rejected the appeal by the ACLU," she said, "but the bigger disappointment was the adoption by Obama's Justice Department of the 'state secrets' privilege as a way to dismiss the claims of torture victims like Binyam Mohamed and the other men who were flown to secret prisons and tortured. Torture is illegal under U.S. and international law and we have to hold our government, and the corporations they rely on, responsible for their criminal activities during the so-called war on terror."

Denouncing extraordinary rendition and torture, members of the South Bay Coalition to Stop Torture have protested outside the San Jose Federal Building and Jeppesen's downtown San Jose headquarters for several years to bring awareness to the lawsuit.

Last year the American Civil Liberties Union petitioned the Supreme Court for review, arguing that the government had misused the "state secrets" privilege to deny justice to torture victims.

The high court's decision not to review the case leaves in place the appeals court's Sept. 8 decision, which held that there was simply no feasible way to try the case without the risk of divulging state secrets and that therefore the suit could not proceed "even assuming plaintiffs could establish their case solely through non-privileged evidence."

According to Ben Wizner, litigation director of the ACLU National Security Project who argued the case before the appeals court, the May 16 decision means that "the Supreme Court has refused once again to give justice to torture victims and to restore our nation's reputation as a guardian of human rights and the rule of law. To date," he noted, "every victim of the Bush administration's torture regime has been denied his day in court. But while the torture architects and their enablers have escaped the judgment of the courts, they will not escape the judgment of history."

On the day of the Supreme Court decision, 20 organizations, including Amnesty International USA and Alliance for Justice, signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder stating: "The Court's refusal to hear this case, along with its refusal to hear similar cases in the past few years, scuttles any hope that the courts will provide either justice for victims of rendition and torture or accountability for the governmental officials who designed and carried out these programs." To serve the interests of justice, the letter called for an investigation in accordance with the Justice Department's September 23, 2009 policy "to provide greater accountability and reliability in the invocation of the state secrets privilege." The letter's signatories further argued, "Where government wrongdoing is uncovered, providing plaintiffs with appropriate redress could at least grant some small measure of recompense for the denial of these plaintiffs' day in court."

Know Your City Leaders

As part of the Arab Cultural and Community Center's "Know Your City Leaders" series, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who is running for mayor, and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, the first Iranian American elected to public office in San Francisco, who is running for sheriff of the city and county of San Francisco, spoke about their campaigns to members of the Arab-American community on May 18. Many of the attendees were local small business owners and some were members of the Arab-American Grocers Association. An estimated 85,000 Arab Americans live in San Francisco—some 175,00 in the entire Bay Area.

Other candidates running for city offices also will be meeting at the ACCC with members of the Arab-American community prior to the upcoming Nov. 8 election.

Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.