Ohio Homeland Security fired its Muslim liaison officer because he objected to its use of tax dollars to create programs “asserting that all Central Ohio Muslims and Arabs were terrorists or terrorism sympathizers … [and] included a picture of plaintiff as an example of a terrorist sympathizer,” the man says in Federal Court.
Omar Alomari was born in Jordan in 1950 and immigrated to the United States in 1978. He is Muslim and speaks seven languages, he says in his discrimination complaint against the Ohio Department of Public Safety, and three top officials or former officials. He was hired on a contract basis in November 2005 as its “multicultural relations officer,” Alomari says.
[…]
Alomari says letters and phone calls attacked a pamphlet he had written, called “Culture Guide to Arabic and Islamic Cultures,” “including one caller comparing the guide to Nazi propaganda and another caller questioning when a guide about Christianity would be produced.”
[…]
[He complained to his boss] to no avail, apparently. He says that when the Columbus Police Academy conducted three days of “anti-terrorist training” in early 2010, “the presenters attacked plaintiff and OHS, labeling plaintiff as a terrorist sympathizer. The presenters accused plaintiff of being a ‘suspect,’ alleged that plaintiff used his position within OHS to ‘connect with terrorists,’ and promised to ‘keep digging’ into plaintiff’s background to ‘expose’ him as a terrorist or terrorism sympathizer.”
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Portraying all Muslims as terrorists isn’t just stupid — it helps the real terrorists.
By definition a multicultural relations officer is a terrorist sympathizer. You can’t be one without the other.
Thats called trying to cut the baloney too thin.
Ha, ha.
There is more to this than article directly explains: “Information obtained through the public records requests was published online and used to harass plaintiff and pressure defendants to terminate plaintiff’s employment.”
This quote definitely means that OH Law Enforcement people HAVE found something so fishy in his background that it was worth hushing-up pressure. You can’t harass someone by publishing good news about them online. Lawsuit will bring it to the public eye in complete picture (hopefully).
dusanmal,
You sound like Joseph McCarthy. When you have more than innuendo, get back to us.
He was hired on a contract basis in November 2005 as its “multicultural relations officer,”
He should be dancing a jig considering he was able to keep this made-up job for so long – that he had a CONTRACT with state government to do totally non-essential, easily outsourced work for half a decade is shocking.
I doubt he would have been fired without cause – if law enforcement is harassing him unjustly, he’ll easily be able to retire after he files a civil case. Otherwise, he should start using those seven languages to do some freelance translations, and stop wasting everyone’s time.
This is a poorly written article. Obviously there are more moving parts here than are being reported. The guy who lost his job and the cops who harassed him are going to end up in career limbo for a couple years, but will eventually get back to working in the public sector, overpaid doing doing “pretty good” work.
#3 “There is more to this than article directly explains:”
No, there is not. Just more typical human paranoia and racism.
#5 If you find his ability to do a job for five years shocking, you are both easily shocked and completely oblivious to how government (especially state) works.
“#5 If you find his ability to do a job for five years shocking, you are both easily shocked and completely oblivious to how government (especially state) works.”
Guess you got me there. People who work outside of government seem to forget that public employees are formally evaluated often. The criteria and procedures of the evaluations are pretty rigorous, and it’s tied into professional licensing needed to retain work. It’s not like you can keep a lot of high-paying gov. jobs because your cousin knows a guy. Still, there’s always the line from Ghostbusters – “You’ve never worked in the private sector … they expect results!”
Read the whole article. The guy was fired for leaving work experience off his application, even though his administrators told him it was “OK” to do that. Big mistake. Even if the dude speaks seven languages, he’s no Will Hunting. Any civil case he files is nowheresville and he should have asked quietly for a reference instead of alerting the media. The dude might not really need money and is just falling on his sword to make a political point – which got picked up on obscure blogs read exclusively by crackpots. Bravo.
They were looking for a way to get rid of this guy because they were catching heat from the public and they found it.
Documentation is a wonderful thing, learned my lessons in the corporate sector decades ago. If he kept notes of meetings or the conversation they are basically screwed.
Alomari claims the reason Ohio gave for firing him was “that plaintiff purposefully omitted Columbus State Community College (‘CSSC’) and, therefore, lied on his employment application.”
Alomari claims that the defendants knew he had worked as a professor as CSSC from 1990 to 1996, that his work there was part of his background check, and that when he applied for a full-time position in 2006, for the job with OHS/ODPS, which he already had been doing as a consultant, “The HR representative advised plaintiff that he did not need to list every prior employment experience because the application was a ‘formality’ since he already held the position.”
People get fired for putting stuff on their resume that’s not true, not for leaving stuff off. Particularly a college teaching position that the employer already knew about.
Dream on, MBloomburger. Go ahead, admit it… you think all Muslims are terrorists. 😉
That Lego guy is hilarious.
“People get fired for putting stuff on their resume that’s not true, not for leaving stuff off.”
He falsely documented his work history in his job application – his employers wanted a reason to fire him and they found one. Mr. Alomari has no legal recourse to get his job back or collect unemployment, and when prospective employers google his name, they’ll be directed to an article that contains reports of him being accused of terrorism and lying on job applications. BTW, I speak 5 languages, all very poorly (except English, I’m awesome at English)
That being said, I think the guy was a sleeper agent for Serpentor, a cybernetically modified killing machine hell bent on destroying G.I. Joe and claiming central Ohio for Cobra.
Ya know this whole thing kind of reminds me of what happened at the start of WW2. I wasn’t there. But history reveals that the US went after most Asian Americans, as possible Japanese spies. Basically making them into the popular scapegoat of the war. Even though it was the Germans that started the war. And none of the Americans whose ancestors were German or Italian, were lock away in Interment Camps. Or demonized in the media as untrustworthy. So now its time to demonize all Muslims, for the propaganda value of creating an enemy, we have to spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars defeating. Isn’t the Military Industrial Complex, so clever at inventing enemies out of innocent citizens, to further its own careers and pad their bank accounts? Everybody’s a bad guy, if there’s money to be made from it. And this is pretty much how Hitler came into power. By demonizing a bunch of people, solely based on their religion. Aka, the Jews. Hitler’s scapegoat for taking power. Only now, its the Jews’ turn to do the same with the Muslims. Since the Muslims mostly oppose the state of Israel’s expansion into Jordan. So now is the perfect time to cancel out that opposition, by getting the allied powers to do all the dirty work.
Ya know we had IRA sympathizers and supporters in the US for decades. And nobody dared suggest that all Irish Catholics were evil terrorists. Something to think about.
#14 You were doing well until you said “Only now, its the Jews’ turn to do the same with the Muslims.”
Removing that line still leaves you with a valid argument without any chacterisations of “group X being a load of…”
Nowhere does it actually quote what the materials in question said, so we are left with some guy’s civil suit opening bluster. Ya’ think he might be exaggerating, or even outright lying?
It’s real simple guys.
People who don’t believe in God are commie atheists and a threat to America
People who do believe in God but aren’t Christians are terrorists and a threat to America.
Christians who are Catholics are in the pay of the Vatican (or are Kennedies) and a threat to America.
Protestants who aren’t Lutheran are trying to divide us and are a threat to America.
Lutherans who aren’t members of the second convection 1868 consensus (western branch)[reformed] are a threat to America.
The guy claims he was fired for doing his job. Law Enforcement used his likeness as a training tool against terrorism. Plus, LE harassed and investigated him beyond due reason. Yup, that sounds like he has a case.
Leaving a job off his resume or application, especially when the employer knew about it, will not influence the case UNLESS the State can show it was materially relevant. Since that job would generally be considered a asset, that isn’t likely. If the State tries to use it, they will look like they have no reason for the firing and are grasping at straws.
The really sad thing is why the DoJ isn’t investigating this for civil rights violations.
In #19 Mr. Fusion said: …really sad thing is why the DoJ isn’t investigating this for civil rights violation.
The DoJ has its head firmly shoved up its ass worrying about the coming default.
That means all those years pretending* to study law will go to waste.
If the debacle lasts long enough, just another two weeks, they may all be joining the rest of us on the unemployment line.
*) Doctors and lawyers are only ever said to practice in their field of endeavor because its not en exact science (though they charge like it wasn’t.)
Other=BAD!
If you voted for Bush or Obama you are a terrorist (i.e. use violence for political goals). If you support the Saudi, British, Pakistani, Burmese, Australian, Chinese, Canadian etc. etc. governments you are a terrorist. In that context it has lost much of it’s power. If you work for the government you fit the criteria, so ironically he technically is a terrorist just not in support of islamic extremists.
On a separate (and more relevant) point I would support people being able to assign their tax money to things they use or support (same amount, just allocated).
>Ya’ think he might be exaggerating, or even outright lying?
No way, he is a Muslim criticizing America’s and her law enforcement. He must be telling the truth.
Upon further research, it turns out the hole in the resume, is for a teaching position form which he was fired for violation of sexual harassment policy. Not so bad, just having affairs with students, though in this case he had a preference for married ones, and would try to get them to leave their husbands, and in one case did.
Also a problem was the listing of groups like CAIR as positive groups while DoJ and FBI consider them negatives. One of his reports had to be pulled for this reason.
Not surprising that NPR would run with this story. They were eager to take donations from people who said they wanted to implement sharia law.