 by Keith Johnson How do you wink at a Muslim? According to one Tennessee politician, you bring the butt of your 12-gauge shotgun to your shoulder and close one eye as you use the other to zero-in on the head of “them there” turban-headed jihadists. Apparently it helps if you’re a middle-aged white man with a five o’clock shadow and a cowboy hat. I personally take umbrage to that, because I’m a middle-aged Tennessean with a five o’clock shadow and a cowboy hat that doesn’t want to kill “them there” Mooslims. From the Tennessean: NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Coffee County commissioner’s Facebook post suggesting Muslims are best greeted from behind a rifle barrelis prompting demands for an apology. Commissioner Barry West’s post follows a string of anti-Muslim acts throughout Middle Tennessee in recent years, including at least four incidents of mosque vandalism. Opposition to a new mosque in Rutherford County was so strong it took federal Justice Department intervention to open it last year. West played no active role in any of those incidents. He just put an image on his Facebook page, which shows a man aiming a shotgun under the phrase “How to wink at a Muslim.” But even that put a chill through Muslims in Middle Tennessee…The Boston Marathon bombing prompted a nationwide uptick in invitations to violence against Muslims, said Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California Berkeley. Unfortunately, the Boston Marathon bombing has re-ignited fading tensions between Muslims and the rest of American society. From Crooks&Liars: Man Angry Over Boston Bombings Breaks Jaw of ‘F*cking Muslim’ Iraq War Veteran A 39-year-old Muslim cab driver who served in the Iraq war says that an executive from an aviation company accused him of being a jihadist and broke his jaw in what activists are calling a hate crime. Mohamed A. Salim told The Washington Post that Emerald Aviation President Ed Dahlberg attacked him after he picked him up at Country Club of Fairfax in Northern Virginia at around 2 a.m. on Friday. Dahlberg had been drinking and was told that he would have to finish his open beer before getting into the cab. Salim recorded audio of the encounter on his cell phone. Dahlberg can be heard asking Salim, who emigrated from Somalia, to define “jihad” and then lumping him in with “radical fucking Muslims blowing people up all over the world.” “Denounce those motherfuckers now!” Dahlberg demands. “If you’re a fucking Muslim flying jets into the fucking World Trade Center then fuck you. I will slice your fucking throat right now.” Continue Reading Just being identified as a Muslim is enough to put you in harms way. On April 27, state bomb investigators responded to a report of a suspicious backpack left at the home of a Muslim resident in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. From the Providence Journal (abridged): Nimer Ead, a 55-year-year-old design engineer, lives on the bottom floor of a three-family house with his wife and a stepson. He said a neighbor spotted a tan-and-black backpack in Ead’s back yard and called police. The backpack said “USA Bomb” on it, Ead said. Colorlines did a great story about anti-Muslim crimes in the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombings: On April 17, a white man harassed and punched a Palestinian woman in Medford, Massachusetts, calling her a “terrorist” and blaming her for the deadly bombing attack at the Boston Marathon. Hema Abolaban, a physician, was walking down the street with a friend when they were approached. Malden Patch reported:
Abolaban is not alone. The New York Post reports that a Bangladeshi man was beaten up by Latino men outside a Bronx Applebee’s restaurant. He, too, was blamed for the Boston bombing. Many Arabs, Middle Easterners, Muslims, South Asians, and those confused for any of the above have been bracing themselves for the discriminatory response since the bombing happened. Indeed, immediately after the race police questioned a Saudi student who was at the race. He’d been hospitalized with injuries he sustained during the attack, but very quickly, media set upon the student, announcing him as “the Saudi suspect.” Boston police later confirmed that the student was only a witness, not a suspect, but only after they searched his apartment for five hours and carted out bags of his belongings.
On Tuesday, an airplane leaving Boston’s Logan Airport was grounded this week after passengers reported that two men were speaking Arabic on the plane, Boston’s Fox 25 reported. We havebeen here before. Fueled by a hysterical demagoguery which has saturated the political climate, Islamophobic hate crimes have been a defining feature of life for South Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim communities since Sept. 11. |
