- Moderator
- #1
We are Americans.
We should not tolerate this or excuse it in our country or in our politicians and elected officials.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/u...-anew-for-their-lives.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
We should not tolerate this or excuse it in our country or in our politicians and elected officials.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/u...-anew-for-their-lives.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
In a news conference Friday, lawyers for Mr. Farook’s family cautioned the public against jumping to conclusions about the attackers’ motivations. One lawyer, David Chesley, said the F.B.I.’s claim that Mr. Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State on Facebook was “nebulous” evidence.
“Until there is absolute, clear evidence, every headline doesn’t have to say ‘Muslim massacre’ or ‘Muslim shooters,’ because it’s going to cause intolerance,” Mr. Chesley said.
However, Muslim Americans are now confronting the fact that to many Americans, Mr. Farook and other terrorists do represent Islam — especially since polls show that most Americans know no Muslims and little about Islam.
“My identity and everything that I am becomes erased every time one of these incidents occurs,” said Nabihah Maqbool, 27, a law student at the University of Chicago. “It all becomes collapsed into these senseless acts of violence being committed by people who are part of my group.”
Like many other Muslim American women, Ms. Maqbool said that she had considered taking off her hijab, or head scarf, out of fear of being victimized. She said that driving back to Chicago after celebrating Thanksgiving with her family, she had decided not to stop and pray on the grassy lawn outside an interstate rest stop, as she usually does.
“I just got so nervous that something could happen to me by any unhinged individual who saw me as someone who deserved violence,” Ms. Maqbool said.
The F.B.I. said it did not yet have data for hate crimes in 2015, and would not comment on whether there had recently been a rise in attacks on Muslims and their houses of worship. A chart provided by Stephen G. Fischer Jr., chief of multimedia productions for the F.B.I.’s criminal justice information service, showed that bias-related hate crimes against Muslims were at a peak in 2001, with 481 reported. In 2014, 154 such crimes were reported.
But in recent weeks, American Muslims have reported a spate of violence and intimidation against them: women wearing head scarves accosted; Muslim children bullied; bullets shot at a mosque in Meriden, Conn.; feces thrown at a mosque in Pflugerville, Tex.
Omair Siddiqi said he had been about to get into his car in the parking lot of a shopping mall in the Dallas suburbs last month when a man came up to him, flashed a gun and said, “If I wanted to, I could kill you right now.”
Mr. Siddiqi said he stayed quiet and the man walked away. Mr. Siddiqi called 911 and is now in the process of getting a concealed-handgun permit. “It’s very scary in times like this,” he said.
In a Dallas suburb, about a dozen protesters congregated outside the Islamic Center of Irving last month, some covering their faces with bandannas and carrying hunting rifles, tactical shotguns and AR-15s. The group that organized the protest posted on Facebook a list of the names and addresses of dozens of Muslims and what they called “Muslim sympathizers.”
Khalid Y. Hamideh, a spokesman for the Islamic Association of North Texas and a Dallas lawyer, called the mosque protest “un-American.”
“It would be unfathomable for that to occur outside a church or synagogue,” he said. “At the same time, we’re realists. We understand what’s going on around the country. We thank God for our friends in law enforcement and our interfaith partners.”
“Until there is absolute, clear evidence, every headline doesn’t have to say ‘Muslim massacre’ or ‘Muslim shooters,’ because it’s going to cause intolerance,” Mr. Chesley said.
However, Muslim Americans are now confronting the fact that to many Americans, Mr. Farook and other terrorists do represent Islam — especially since polls show that most Americans know no Muslims and little about Islam.
“My identity and everything that I am becomes erased every time one of these incidents occurs,” said Nabihah Maqbool, 27, a law student at the University of Chicago. “It all becomes collapsed into these senseless acts of violence being committed by people who are part of my group.”
Like many other Muslim American women, Ms. Maqbool said that she had considered taking off her hijab, or head scarf, out of fear of being victimized. She said that driving back to Chicago after celebrating Thanksgiving with her family, she had decided not to stop and pray on the grassy lawn outside an interstate rest stop, as she usually does.
“I just got so nervous that something could happen to me by any unhinged individual who saw me as someone who deserved violence,” Ms. Maqbool said.
The F.B.I. said it did not yet have data for hate crimes in 2015, and would not comment on whether there had recently been a rise in attacks on Muslims and their houses of worship. A chart provided by Stephen G. Fischer Jr., chief of multimedia productions for the F.B.I.’s criminal justice information service, showed that bias-related hate crimes against Muslims were at a peak in 2001, with 481 reported. In 2014, 154 such crimes were reported.
But in recent weeks, American Muslims have reported a spate of violence and intimidation against them: women wearing head scarves accosted; Muslim children bullied; bullets shot at a mosque in Meriden, Conn.; feces thrown at a mosque in Pflugerville, Tex.
Omair Siddiqi said he had been about to get into his car in the parking lot of a shopping mall in the Dallas suburbs last month when a man came up to him, flashed a gun and said, “If I wanted to, I could kill you right now.”
Mr. Siddiqi said he stayed quiet and the man walked away. Mr. Siddiqi called 911 and is now in the process of getting a concealed-handgun permit. “It’s very scary in times like this,” he said.
In a Dallas suburb, about a dozen protesters congregated outside the Islamic Center of Irving last month, some covering their faces with bandannas and carrying hunting rifles, tactical shotguns and AR-15s. The group that organized the protest posted on Facebook a list of the names and addresses of dozens of Muslims and what they called “Muslim sympathizers.”
Khalid Y. Hamideh, a spokesman for the Islamic Association of North Texas and a Dallas lawyer, called the mosque protest “un-American.”
“It would be unfathomable for that to occur outside a church or synagogue,” he said. “At the same time, we’re realists. We understand what’s going on around the country. We thank God for our friends in law enforcement and our interfaith partners.”
