Muslim Panel: Many Distrust Legal System
Many New York Muslims are deeply distrustful of the American legal system, three local Muslim leaders said at a panel discussion yesterday in Brooklyn.
During the hour-long event, sponsored jointly by the Kings County Courts Community Outreach Program and the Interfaith Center of New York, the panelists said Muslims here, fearing government and press scrutiny, frequently fail to report domestic abuse and hate crimes.
"This is a serious issue based on a lack of trust and fear that exists in the community," a Yemen-born public schools educator, Debbie Almontaser, told several dozen judges who attended the discussion.
Ms. Almontaser, who has been named principal of the city 's planned English-Arabic secondary school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, said she participated in the panel as a Muslim American, not as a representative of the Department of Education.
Also on the panel was the director of the United Muslim Movement Against Homelessness and the Muslim Women's Help Network, Abuds-Salaam Musa, an African-American Muslim; and the founder and executive director of the Council of Peoples Organization, Mohammad Razvi, whose organization teaches immigrants from Pakistan and elsewhere about the American legal system and their rights within it.
