Fallout of Hate Is Spreading Across America from 9/11 Site by Joshua Holland

[Douglas Carpenter]

The hysteria over a planned Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan is only the tip of the iceberg.

snip:

In May, a man walked into the Jacksonville Islamic Center in Northeast Florida during evening prayers and detonated a pipebomb. Fortunately, there were no injuries. (If the man had been Muslim and the House of worship a Christian church, the incident would have garnered wall-to-wall coverage, but while the story got plenty of local press it was ignored by CBS News, Fox, CNN and MSNBC.)

It was the most serious of a series of incidents in which mosques far from the supposedly hallowed earth of Ground Zero have been targeted. A mosque in Miami, Florida, was sprayed with gunfire last year. Mosques have been vandalized or set aflame in Brownstown, Michigan; Nashville, Tennessee; Arlington, Texas (where the mosque was first vandalized and then later targeted by arsonists); Taylor, South Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Eugene, Oregon; Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Tempe, Arizona; and in both Northern and Southern California. A mosque in a suburb of Chicago has been vandalized four times in recent years.

In May, an Arab man was brutally beaten in broad daylight in New York by four young men. According to the victim’s nephew, "They used the bad word. 'The mother bleeping Muslim, go back to your country.' They started beating him and after that he don't know what happened.” A Muslim woman in Chicago was assaulted by another woman who took offense at her headscarf. A Muslim teacher in Florida was sent a white powdery substance in the mail. In San Diego, a man in his 50s became so incensed by the sight of an American of Afghan descent praying that he assaulted him after screaming, “You idiot, you mother f**ker, go back to where you came from."

snip:


In Tennessee, an elected official, Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, suggested that Muslims shouldn’t be accorded the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment. “Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it," he said. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, the House’s second-ranking Republican, said of the Ground Zero controversy, “America's built on the rights of free expression, the rights to practice your faith, but come on.” (Reporter Eric Kleefeld wrote that Cantor was invoking the "’come on’ exception to America's freedom of religion.”

snip:

It’s an extraordinarily dangerous game, not only for the American Muslim community but for U.S. national security as well. Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who has interrogated several dangerous terrorists, wrote this week that “when demagogues appear to be equating Islam with terrorism” it reinforces “the message that radicalizers are selling: That the war is against Islam, and Muslims are not welcome in America.” He added: “from a national security perspective, our leaders need to understand that no one is likely to be happier with the opposition to building a mosque than Osama Bin Laden. His next video script has just written itself.”

http://www.alternet.org/story/147920/fallout_of_hate_is_spreading_across_america_from_9_11_site?page=entire

[ixion]

1. We went down the rabbit hole on 911

and have never returned.

[Karenina]

2. It happened L-O-N-G before that.

9/11 was just the fuse. Batten the hatches! :hide:

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. unfortunately. 9-11 was the match that lit a lot of dry embers just waiting to burn

[Douglas Carpenter]

4. .