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The latest wave of Islamophobia in the wake of the Paris attacks has been truly grotesque to watch. From the anti-Syrian refugee rhetoric to the Republican frontrunner’s apparent support for a national database of Muslims Americans to Marco Rubio’s call for a crackdown on mosques and other places Muslims gather, it has been vomit-inducing and frankly terrifying. I have seen way more of it than I anticipated from my own family on Facebook.
Had I not purposely broadened my horizons, had I stayed in my little Appalachian hometown, maybe I would have my own misconceptions about Islam. While in college, I developed lasting friendships with Muslims, a couple of whom, yes, came to the United States as refugees. I participated in Muslim Students Association events and learned as much as I could about their religion. A more welcoming group did not exist. And I’ll never forget that, in one of the very few incidents of anti-gay bigotry I personally experienced on campus, it was a Muslim friend who defended me. I couldn’t have asked for better friends. These are the people Donald Trump wants to put on a list and force to carry special IDs. And these are the people from whom so many Americans want to hear apologies for and condemnations of terrorist attacks. It apparently makes sense to my backward distant relatives, but having experienced firsthand who Muslims really are, it just sounds like an attack on my friends. Friends who have had to fend off this kind of bigotry all along, but face a heightened environment of fear every time Islamophobes decide to pull out their broad brush.
This kind of rhetoric has consequences, but I suppose manipulative racist fucks like Donald Trump know what kind of shit they’re stirring. Take, for example, a really disturbing incident that happened in San Antonio earlier this week that hasn’t gotten too much attention. Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but this is the kind of bullshit people like Trump foster and enable. From the The New Civil Rights Movement:
The hysteria over the prospect of Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS coming to the U.S. has many American Muslims on high alert, and if what happened in San Antonio, Texas, this week is any indication, they have reason to be concerned.
Witnesses told police a man wearing army fatigues and waving an American flag entered the Islamic Center of San Antonio where members were praying, and began wiping his boots on their prayer rugs. The worshippers tried to contain the situation, asking the man, who was wearing a backpack, to please remove his boots as a sign of respect. Muslims typically remove their shoes before entering a mosque to symbolize a "clean space" in which to worship.
The intruder, identified as 38-year-old Mariano Talavera, responded to the Muslims' entreaties by striding through the mosque into a prayer room reserved for women, wiping his boots on every mat he could while screaming obscenities and cursing Islam.
When police arrived at the scene, they asked Talavera what he was doing in the Islamic Center, who replied that he was there to worship. He was arrested on criminal trespass charges, and his backpack was confiscated. We still don’t know what was in the backpack. More from the San Antonio Express-News:
According to the Islamic Center’s website, San Antonio is home to about 10,000 Muslims. Sarwat Husein, the head of the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, put the figure at 30,000.
“This guy did more than just walk on the rugs,” she said of the incident Tuesday. “He was cleaning his shoes on them, shouting profanity at the people, profanity at God.”
Husain later called on police to increase patrols at the Islamic Center and review security with area Muslim congregations. Police did discuss safety measures with representatives of the center but they did not request patrols in response to the incident, SAPD spokesman Jesse Salame said.
The Islamic Center is adjacent to an Islamic school, which was closed the day after the incident because of obvious safety concerns.
According to Husain, this incident is part of a recent spate of hate incidents against Muslims and mosques in Texas in recent weeks. She told KENS 5 (video at link) that such hate crimes are often unreported for fear of retaliation. From Raw Story:
The president of San Antonio’s Council on American-Islamic Relations said vandalism and other crimes against Muslims have spiked recently in Texas.
Vandals hurled feces and a befouled Koran at the entryway to a mosque near Austin following last week’s Islamic State terrorist attacks in Paris.
Mosques elsewhere in the U.S. have also been targeted for threats or vandalism.
Solomon Hamide, president of the Islamic Center of San Antonio, said he and other mosque members did not wish to press charges against Talavera because they fear additional backlash.
I don’t know what exactly pushed Talavera to target the Islamic Center of San Antonio in this way. But for propping up and fueling an Islamophobic environment that leads to these assholes targeting Muslims for their faith, I point a finger squarely at Trump and others like him who feed off of infusing our politics with fear and hate, and at a media (looking at you, Chuck Todd!) that propagates and enables it. Rhetoric has consequences. Fortunately, again, those consequences weren’t as severe as they could have been in San Antonio.
On to the tops…
Top Comments (November 21, 2015):From a2nite:
I think this comment by lunachickie from Denise Oliver Velez’s diary Marco "Fascismo" Rubio one-ups El Trumpet is excellent and diary worthy:
I am beyond furious at the propaganistic nature of all of this, being roundly televised over and over and over and over again, by our allegedly “liberal” media. It is ALL ABOUT trying to scare us to death, enough to give up more of our rights.
And I’ve seen a lot of hate in social media, but just to give you all some hope, I’ve also run across the following on my timeline last night, and I think it’s worth sharing, particularly with family or friends that haven’t succumbed to the hate and are wavering:
(reprinting for those of you who refuse to click on FB, because this is awesome...)
I'm done with polite, apolitical vaguebooking right now. There are so many smugly hateful messages on my Facebook feed, and I'm not going to get into it with each and every one of you, but here is the bottom line:
There is no reason, not one single reason, why I deserve shelter, food, stability, safety, health, or your regard any more than any given Syrian refugee. Not one reason. My home, my education, my business; the way I look, the way I talk; the fact that I come home to a safe, whole, healthy family every day--every one of those things is a privilege that I fell into by the random circumstance of being born in this country to parents who valued academic achievement. I, or you, could have just as easily been born in Syria, or Burkina Faso, or Afghanistan. Do you really think that you're a different kind of human being than the refugees? Do you think your privilege is earned?
I know: you've worked hard for what you have. I have, too. But have we worked harder than the refugees worked for the lives that were destroyed? Do we love our children more than they do; would we grieve harder if a civil war took them away from us? And how long do you believe it would take for a bomb to destroy everything safe about your life?
Compared to most people in the world, you and I are rich with privilege, much of it just because we were lucky enough to be born in a country fat with it. I woke up early this morning and made organic, whole-grain muffins for my son, then dressed him in warm clothes, put sunscreen on his little face, strapped and buckled him into his bike seat and rode along peaceful streets to deliver him at his warm, nurturing preschool. There were so many levels on which I was able to protect him. Every breath of this morning was a privilege. Meanwhile millions of children who months ago had bedrooms and dinner tables and doctors and schools are sleeping directly on the ground, their parents unable to secure shelter or food for them, much less healthcare or education.
And no, that is not your fault. But that's not the same as it not being our responsibility. We have everything we need and then so much on top of that, and we can choose to exemplify to our own children one of two courses of action: we can open our clutched fists and share with our fellow humans all the abundance that exists here--or we can hoard it, greedy and bloated and fearful.
These are families like yours. Thinking they might have connections to terrorist factions is as rational as thinking you might be a terrorist because Timothy McVeigh was American. Half of the refugees are children. What is it in you that can close your eyes to other human beings, especially human beings that are small and hungry and cold?
I'm not asking you to give half of everything you have to help them, or to turn your backyard into a tent city, or to donate to causes that support efforts to protect these very vulnerable people. I'm asking you not to hate them because they need something you have. I'm asking you to recognize that the fear being built around the refugees is less about American security and more about American greed. I'm asking you to be a human being that understands every human being has basic needs and that the lucky among us can afford to share our luck to ease suffering. I'm asking you to stop thinking, posting, politicizing around the idea that we just can't help before we've taken care of our own.
Because there is no such thing as "our own." Every human is our own. Every hungry child, grieving mother, frightened husband, weary grandmother is our own. Nobody gets to pretend our world is a different world from the world that creates civil wars and bombs and hunger. We are all toeing this same precarious, shifting tightrope of a life. Anyone can fall at any time. All there is to catch us is each other.
From Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
In Hunter's diary Sarah Palin: Jesus would fight for our Second Amendment, bigtimecynic quotes from the Revised Nonstandard Version of the Gospels, and Alden offers the perfect response:
"Put your sword back in its place" said Jesus, "and use your Glock." — bigtimecynic
I think that was Indiana Jones — Alden
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