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Home Front: WoT

After Paris and California attacks, U.S. Muslims feel intense backlash

2015-12-05

You knew this article was coming. From WaPo. Way too long (and boring) so just the high points here. I'm only surprised that they beat the NYT to the punch...

American Muslims say they are living through an intensely painful moment and feel growing anti-Muslim sentiment after the recent Islamic State attacks in Paris and this week’s San Bernardino shootings, carried out by a Muslim husband and wife.

Does any of this anxiety cause you to turn in your crazy co-religionists to the police? No? How come?

The motivations of the California killers are still unclear,

No, WaPo reporters, the motivations were completely clear...

although authorities are investigating it as a potential act of terrorism. Muslims said they are bracing for an even more toxic climate in which Americans are increasingly suspicious of Muslims.

There are plenty of tolerant, decent, peaceful Muslims in the U.S. It sure would be great if they'd start ratting out the fools, crazies, and evil ones among them. We asked Irish-Americans to do the same during "The Troubles"...

Muslims say that Americans, like many in Europe, often do not draw a distinction between radical Islamist militants, such as those associated with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and the religion of Islam and its followers who have no ties to extremism.

It would help if you could give us some reasons why we should...

Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer who is working on a book on Islamophobia in the United States, said that headline was evidence of how people jump to conclusions about a suspect in a crime who is Muslim.

“When a Muslim American commits a murder, their religion is brought front and center,” he said. “With anyone else, [it’s] a crazy, kooky loner.”

You deliberately obfuscate, Mr. Iftikhar. The press was trying to blame this attack on anyone BUT Muslims, going so far as to point out that the attack occurred within a short commute to a Planned Parenthood center so that the press then could gratuitously attack conservative Christians.

Many Muslims said fear of Islam is being fueled by the heated rhetoric of Republican presidential candidates, particularly businessman Donald Trump, who has called for surveillance of some mosques and requiring Muslims to register with the government.

Did Trump say that or did reporters plant those words? We've seen the latter a couple times recently, haven't we...

That may be smart electoral politics: A 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 82 percent of Republicans said they were “very concerned” about the rise of Islamic extremism in the world, compared with 51 percent of Democrats.

So even Democrats are worried. Then again, even a flatworm can feel pain...

Estimates of the number of American Muslims vary from about 4 million to perhaps 12 million. The backlash against them has created a deepening sense of alienation. Talk of creating Muslim databases and noting Muslims’ religion on their IDs has echoes for many of the forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Recall that the response of many, many young Japanese men in that situation was to join the U.S. Army. They fought for America in the European theater and were among the most heroic troops we had. If you want to ally concerns, have your young men join the U.S. Armed Forces -- and be similarly heroic in defending America...

Many mosques have asked local police for more security.

“There’s a constant climate of insinuation of terrorism and disloyalty that creates this pervasive sense of being an outsider,” said Haroon Moghul, a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding in Washington.

That Institute is, of course, your typical progressive NGO and is always good for a quote for a reporter looking for something from a progressive NGO that has a neutral-sounding name...

Pew studies show that since the 9/11 attacks, Americans have become far more likely to think that Islam encourages violence more than other religions might. A Pew survey in March 2002 found that 25 percent of Americans held that view, and the number reached 50 percent by September 2014.

Why could that be? 9/11? London? Paris? Bedlam? Madrid? All the car bombings throughout the Middle East and North Africa? How on earth did Americans come to believe that violent Islamicists were violent?

Research by Pew and CAIR shows that apprehension about Islam has increased sharply with the rise of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, in the past two years, especially since the group’s highly publicized beheadings of foreign journalists and aid workers began in August 2014.

“After 2010, we had a few years where things seemed to be getting better,” said Corey Saylor, national legislative director at CAIR. But he said the beheadings “set us back down a darker path. . . . People of goodwill are trying to do work to bring people together, and it just takes a few moments of ISIS’s time to unravel all of that.”

Yes, beheadings do make people anxious, particularly when the hard boyz doing the beheadings wave the bloody scimitar at you and tell you that you're next...

Muslim leaders are also debating whether they need to apologize each time Islamic extremists carry out an attack, said Adem Carroll, a member of the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition in New York.

We don't need you to apologize. We do need you to clean out your communities. We'd ask that of any community that is sheltering crazies. So get on it.

Other Muslims think that moderate Muslims need to be more aggressive about denouncing acts of terror and rejecting the Islamic State’s call to establish a caliphate — a Muslim homeland ruled by sharia.

On Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, a group of American Muslims will announce the Muslim Reform Movement, calling on other American Muslims to reject the caliphate and advocate for the equality of men and women.

By jove, somebody's got it!

“We need to deal honestly with issues of extremism,” said Asra Nomani, an author and activist who is part of the group. “As long as Americans see denial and deflection, it feeds distrust.”

Muslims, Nomani says, need to directly address how extremist Muslims interpret the Koran and how that affects church-state relations.

“What we’re struggling with is on the far right, a lot of people who want to deal with Islam in a monolithic way, and on the far left, no one wants to acknowledge there’s a larger problem,” Nomani said. “The truth lies somewhere in the middle. There is an extremism problem. The majority of Muslims don’t live that way, and we have to reclaim a middle path.”

You need to put your words into action...

Posted by:Steve White

#10 Good.

Posted by: Crusader 2015-12-05 19:26

#9 Ebola and other viruses complained of a backlash against them after recent outbreaks.

Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2015-12-05 18:15

#8 According to a recent poll of Muslims worldwide, fully one third support the jihadist agenda. Must suck to be in the two thirds who are "cafeteria" Muslims....

Posted by: Sven the pelter 2015-12-05 16:28

#7 And their point is......?

Posted by: NoMoreBS 2015-12-05 15:36

#6 Muslims say that Americans, like many in Europe, often do not draw a distinction between radical Islamist militants, such as those associated with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and the religion of Islam and its followers

Truth be told, neither do Muslims.

Militant Muslim--Kills people, perpetrates terrorism.

Radical Muslim -- Finances, plans and organizes the attacks.

Moderate Muslim -- gets a tingle in their nethers when they hear about attacks, then complains loudly about how people are blaming Muslims.

Posted by: charger 2015-12-05 14:08

#5 Islamophobia claims are the entire point of the violence

the violence means nothing unless the PR machine can benefit.

These are two-pronged attacks. The violence just gets your attention to enable the culture war.

Goal - to push the muslim grievance narrative

it can be about anything - cartoons of mohammad, bombing in syria, war in iraq, or being the wrong kind of muslim

This is deliberate. If you can persuade the victim to accept the blame you have won, because retaliation requires a sense of injustice. If the victim accepts the blame they will turn their hatred towards themselves.

Imagine you are a military commander. After you kill civilians, the host nation blames itself, keeps looking among its own citizens and institutions for who did wrong and how it can do better.

You have won. You can just keep attacking until they capitulate

This is why it is SO important to stop pretending we can win this war with guns and bombs or spies and cops

we cannot

this is an ideological war and the only thing that can win it is telling the truth about jihad and political Islamism.

Blame political Islamism. blame theocratic fascism. dont apologise for profiling muslims. Uphold the rule of secular law and deny the religious the ability to tread on the human rights of others. Ban sharia. Declare the caliphate the enemy and use treason laws against its fans and the pushers of sharia.

These are the things that will win.

Posted by: anon1 2015-12-05 09:08

#4 Guilty consciences all around.

They know that deep down they are cheering their scum-brothers on and praying for the Caliphate.

Posted by: AlanC 2015-12-05 08:29

#3 So, they're feeling like any white male on America's campuses? Have they been forced to take ~~reeducation~~ diversity classes to face their privilege too?

Posted by: Procopius2k 2015-12-05 07:42

#2 "Muslims say that Americans, like many in Europe, often do not draw a distinction between radical Islamist militants, such as those associated with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and the religion of Islam and its followers who have no ties to extremism."

...Okay, then look at it from this point of view: almost without exception, the nice people who have attacked us on our own soil have been uniformly described as hard-working folks who for reasons apparently unclear (to their coreligionists, anyways) suddenly went all Jihadi. If the same thing was coming out of Catholic or Baptist churches, wouldn't the Muslims be just the tiniest fracking curious as to WHY, and be demanding some kind of action?

Mike

Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2015-12-05 06:50

#1 Lying to the infidel is a matter of policy in Koran. So anything one tells you is suspect.
Islam is the circus and the violent are the Muslim's monkeys. If they don't control them, then we will and if it is hard for us to tell the difference that's too bad. If you expect Obama and the DOJ to protect you he'll do just about as good a job of that as he has the populace of the US. You'll be living in the hell you made.

Posted by: Chaith Oppressor of the Lutherans1517 2015-12-05 05:21

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