Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:39 pm
So after another mass shooting, and anticipating another round of funerals for innocent victims, President Obama said “Enough is enough…this is not normal. We can’t let it become normal.” At about the same time the President was making his remarks, a spokesman for the Washington D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ibrahim Hooper said, “The picture is getting increasingly bleak. There’s been an accumulation of anti-Islamic rhetoric in our lives that I think has triggered these overt acts of violence and vandalism.”
President Obama, in this case is wrong; this is normal and regardless what decent Americans want, as the Muslim spokesman said the picture is getting increasingly bleak and not just because there are too many guns in America. There are too many hate-filled conservatives and Republicans inciting violence against other Americans. And sadly there are enough angry white guys, with guns, who are going to do the Republicans’ bidding and start shooting innocent Muslims. That was the threat leveled at an Islamic Center in Kentucky and it was the latest result of Republican “anti-Muslim rhetoric” providing exactly the results Republicans intended; violence against American citizens who practice Islam.
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The threats of violence targeting the Islamic Center of Lexington Kentucky prompted the Imam, Mahmoud Shalash, to contact Lexington police and federal Homeland Security officials at about the time a maniac was killing innocents in a Colorado Springs women’s healthcare clinic. The death threat came by way of email saying, “I’m going to kill everyone I there (sic) you Muslim f–ks. Salabis is coming for you.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, requested stepped up protection from state and local law enforcement authorities for the mosque and its adherents.
No-one on the planet should be surprised at the escalation of violence and animus toward Muslims, whether they are American citizens or not. Republicans have made whipping up hate toward the Muslim community their current cause célèbre after spending no small amount of time and effort demeaning Hispanic immigrants ad nauseam. In fact, the violence targeting Muslims is no different than the violence toward Planned Parenthood and it is “Mission Accomplished” for Republicans inciting terror attacks against Americans they despise.
Although law enforcement officials are withholding information about the motive behind the Colorado Springs’ gun rampage, the city’s mayor said that people can make very accurate “inferences from where it took place.” Fine, then Americans can make a very accurate inference that Republicans have blood on their hands for inciting rage and more violence towards women’s healthcare providers; just like they are inciting violence against American Muslims.
CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper said what any decent American believes and was brave enough to say what Washington leaders are afraid will incite Republicans to abject rage; the GOP incites domestic terrorism. Hooper said,
“This clear terroristic death threat targeting a house of worship must be treated seriously by local, state and federal law enforcement authorities and the perpetrator should be apprehended and brought to justice. Our nation’s leaders must send a clear message challenging the rising Islamophobia that leads to such threats.”
To punctuate his point, Mr. Hooper cited a current FBI alert to New York City police about an armed anti-Islam extremist who is traveling across the country to “confront” Muslims. Hooper also noted that in Connecticut, the FBI and local police are investigating multiple gunshots fired at the Baitul Aman mosque. In Florida, two Tampa Bay-area mosques received threatening phone messages on Friday night and the FBI said the person also made threatening calls to the Islamic Society of St. Petersburg. In a suburb of Austin, Texas, the Islamic Center of Pflugerville discovered feces and torn pages of the Quran that had been thrown at the door of the mosque. Muslim leaders encouraged authorities to investigate the act as a hate crime and law enforcement is doing just that. Still in Texas, in a suburb of Houston authorities arrested a man accused of threatening on social media to “shoot up a mosque” and he was charged with making a terroristic threat, a felony.
CAIR attributes this latest spike in anti-Muslim terrorist incidents to remarks by political candidates and lawmakers in the run-up to the 2016 general election. In a statement, CAIR said the glaringly obvious;
Of particular concern is the extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric and falsehoods being espoused by leading Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson. Another contributing factor to this marked rise in Islamophobic hostility is state governors and lawmakers playing on public fears and spreading misinformation about Syrian refugees being resettled into the United States.”
The national director of CAIR said his organization has made official appeals to law enforcement officials to step up patrols at mosques and other Islamic institutions. “We urge public officials and presidential candidates not to scapegoat American Muslims and not allow Islam to be demonized by Islamophobes or by the anti-Islamic actions of terrorists. We have men, women and children who come to the masjid to pray every day, and since these attacks, they have reduced the frequency of their visits to the masjid with fear for their lives.” Republicans are likely damn proud of themselves for demonstrating how much they detest and oppose this pathetic country’s so-called freedom of religion by having a major hand in prohibiting the “wrong” religious adherents from worshipping out of fear for their lives; it is very ISIS-like.
Despite all the Republican-incited domestic terrorism against practitioners of a religion the evangelical right wants eliminated from America, the spokesman for the New York mosque that was shot up, Salaam Bhatti, said the shootings, vandalism, and death threats are “A teachable moment. As we do raise awareness of attacks in mosques, we will see mosques do not respond in violence. Islam teaches us to teach peace.” So does Christianity teach peace, but this is America and its most visible representatives of the neo-Christianity polluting this country have spent years preaching violence against Muslims as part of their drive to make America the most “structurally violent nation” on the face of the Earth. Sadly, they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams and with every new act of domestic terrorism, whether against women’s health clinics or American Muslims’ houses of worship, they get more blood on their hands. With all due respect to the White House, despite what President Obama says, these GOP-incited acts of violence are normal and it is all down to Republicans inciting terrorists to action against American citizens.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
