Times Union: Group renews calls for professor’s ouster from Jacksonville Human Rights Commission

[Patricia M. McBride]

You are fighting a losing battle with these folks. They just are so uninformed, they are never going to understand that Islam is not in any way compatible with our laws and our constitution period. And this man is a proponent on Sharia Finance which has already given Muslims a foot in the door which is all they have needed in other countries.

Anti-radical-Muslim group cites 'extremist' views at October talk that turned unruly.

Posted: December 1, 2010 - 6:46am

By Tia Mitchell

The controversy surrounding the appointment of a Muslim professor to a city board is bubbling up again, with calls now for his ouster.

Parvez Ahmed has served on the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission for about seven months without incident. But last week, the Jacksonville chapter of ACT! for America started a new campaign with the goal of seeing the University of North Florida professor removed.

The anti-radical-Muslim group’s leader, Randy McDaniels, began e-mailing supporters Saturday and urging them to contact Jacksonville City Council members to lobby in favor of Ahmed’s removal. Ahmed joined the commission last year after a contentious confirmation process where he was asked to defend membership in the Council on Islamic-American Relations and was even asked to “pray to your God” at a council meeting.

Ahmed is the former national chairman of CAIR, a group that critics have accused of being a front for extremism. McDaniels’ e-mail points to recently unsealed documents from a federal trial that upholds the U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to end its relationship with CAIR partially because it has been accused of having ties to Hamas.

McDaniels also says his group has Ahmed on video sharing what he called “extremist views” during an October speech at the Fleming Island branch of the Clay County Public Library. McDaniels could not be reached Tuesday.

Harry Parrott Jr., president of the Clay County chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which sponsored the event, said Ahmed talked about the Muslim view on the separation of church and state before answering questions from the audience.

That is when a half-dozen members of ACT! for America began peppering Ahmed with questions intended to “humiliate him and give him a hard time,” Parrott said.

Ahmed said nothing radical, Parrott said, but the ACT! members, filming the entire time, were in an uproar. They were repeatedly told to sit down and be respectful to the others in the audience, he said.

It got so bad, Parrott added, that members of Americans United chapter escorted Ahmed to his car afterward.

City Council President Jack Webb — one of six council members who voted against confirming Ahmed to the commission last year— said he is paying attention to ACT! for America’s latest complaints.

He said he isn’t ready to make a decision about whether or not Ahmed should be removed from the Human Rights Commission, but the recently unsealed evidence deserves his attention.

“I want to read it, I want to dissect it, I want to analyze it,” he said.

Webb said he will look to see if any of the information is new or wasn’t disclosed at the time of Ahmed’s confirmation. The documents carry greater weight, he said, than some of the criticisms made against Ahmed by ACT! for America or similar organizations.

Ahmed defended both his religious views and his status as a Human Rights Commission member. He said the attacks from McDaniels are more of the same and there have been government leaders that criticized the Justice Department’s decision to cut ties with CAIR. Either way, this was already vetted during the confirmation process, Ahmed said.

The speech Ahmed gave at the library was titled “Is Islam Compatible with American Values?” Parrott, a retired Baptist minister, said he expects the video taken during the event will be heavily edited then used by ACT! for America members to make Ahmed look like a radical.

They were the ones, Parrott said, whose actions were out of line.

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