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Islamophobia, Anti-Muslim Backlash & Domestic Terrorism

Islamic Center of Long Island
Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury. (Photo credit: Rashed Mian/Long Island Press)

More than two weeks have passed since explosions and gunfire erupted in the streets of Paris, and the world remains transfixed on how gun-toting extremists were able to evade dragnet security before wreaking havoc on the City of Lights, killing 130 people.

In the United States, the threat of terror has dominated the nation’s politics in an already bitter presidential campaign season. Presidential hopefuls seeking the GOP nod are flexing their muscles at the self-declared Islamic State in Iraq as well as at war-weary Syrian refugees fleeing the very same apocalyptic extremists these bellicose White House aspirants have pledged to defeat.

Those vying for the nomination have chastised President Obama for failing to do enough to weaken ISIS. Driven by fear of the unknown, politicians have publicly come out against Obama’s plan to welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country, despite the already rigorous, multi-layered screening process that already exists. Meanwhile, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said the United States should adopt a “religious test” so only Christian refugees would be permitted to enter the country, and Donald Trump has set his sights on Muslims at home, suggesting all Muslims carry IDs and be surveilled at mosques.

The billionaire real estate magnate also claimed he saw “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001—a claim that has been debunked over and over by New Jersey’s elected officials and his fellow Republican challenger, Gov. Chris Christie.

Aside from ISIS and Syrian refugees, it’s the millions of Muslim Americans—doctors, lawyers, professors, shop owners—who bear the brunt of rhetoric emanating from the stump, where the truth is often drowned out by grandiose proclamations, fist pumping, and enthusiastic roars from a sympathetic audience—an exercise in democracy that candidates from both parties enjoy. But since the Paris attacks, the backlash against Muslims in America has been swift and disturbing.

  • In Texas, armed protesters congregated near a mosque under the auspices of stopping the “Islamization of America.”
    • In Pittsburgh last week a Moroccan cab driver was shot after a passenger complained about ISIS.
      • The door of a mosque in Pflugerville, Tx was covered in feces and verses from the Koran were ripped from its spine.
        • In Cincinnati, a woman wearing a hijab was the victim of verbal attacks. Another woman in the same city was called a “terrorist” and nearly run over by an enraged driver before a group of people intervened and pulled her safely onto the sidewalk.
          • In St. Petersburg, Fla. authorities are investigating a profanity-laced threat directed at an Islamic Center.
            • A community forum in Spotsylvania County, Va. devolved into an anti-Muslim shouting match when a local engineer attempted to share designs of a new mosque to residents amid racist condemnations that “every Muslim is a terrorist” and “Muslims is evil!”

“We are tired of your (expletive) and I (expletive) personally have a militia that is going to come down to your Islamic Society of Pinellas County and firebomb you and shoot whoever is there in the head,” a man said in a voicemail left for Islamic Center of St. Petersburg in Florida. “I don’t care if they are (expletive) 2 years old or 100.” It’s that same fear of reprisal—for merely adhering to a religion that extremists have bastardized to justify unfathomable bloodshed—which Muslims have dreaded since 9/11.

Yet, in this country, it’s domestic terror that’s shattering lives.

On Friday, three people, including a beloved police officer, were killed during a five-hour long siege at a Planned Parenthood healthcare facility in Colorado. The alleged gunman’s motive remains unclear, but multiple news outlets have quoted an unidentified law enforcement source as saying the suspect mentioned “no more baby parts” in an interview with authorities. Law enforcement officials in Colorado have yet to confirm if a reference to fetal tissue was ever made. But Planned Parenthood suggested in a Tweet that the attack was politically motivated, and its supporters have characterized the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism.

Similarly, Black Lives Matters protesters in Minnesota said they too were victims of domestic terror, when five people taking part in a demonstration were wounded amid gunfire.

Tonight, white supremacists attacked the #4thPrecinctShutDown in an act of domestic terrorism. We need you here…

Posted by Black Lives Matter Minneapolis on Monday, November 23, 2015

Four men have since been charged in connection with the shooting. Authorities in Minnesota said some of the men were filmed making derogatory comments about blacks and one man’s cell phone contained “racist images.”

“They refer to African Americans in derogatory terms, say they are going to do some ‘reverse cultural enriching’ and ‘make the fire rise,’” according to a criminal complaint released in the case. In the video shot before the shooting, one of the men is seen brandishing a handgun and proclaiming: “Stay White.”

The most severe terror attack on domestic soil this year was in Charleston, S.C., where a gunman attending Bible study at a historic black church in June gunned down nine God-loving people. Investigators later found photos of the alleged suspect posing with a Confederate flag and wearing South African apartheid-era patches on his clothes. A manifesto purportedly penned by the suspect paints a portrait of a man unhappy with progress made by African Americans over the years.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, right-wing extremists have killed more people (48) than radical Jihadists (26), according to terror statistics compiled by Washington D.C.-based New America Foundation.

A report released by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to the Terrorism at the University of Maryland in July 2014 found that the chief concern among local authorities across the country was the right-wing “sovereign citizens” movement, not Islamic extremism, which ranked lower.

Despite the growing body of data, domestic terror has gone largely unmentioned by Republican contenders on the presidential campaign trail. Talk of potential attacks on US soil has been aimed mostly at Muslim Americans, despite Islamic groups across the country continuing to condemn atrocities in the name of their religion that 1.6 billion people follow around the world. One Muslim leader on Long Island said a week after the attacks that the Islamic State is an “illegal state” and does not represent Islam.

Trump recently lamented New York City’s decision to disband NYPD’s so-called Demographics Unit, which spied on Muslims in the five boroughs, New Jersey and on Long Island. When the unit was active, however, it did not open a single terrorism investigation on local Muslims.

Muslims groups and their supporters insist that anti-Muslim sentiment and negative comments about Syrian refugees only plays into extremists’ hands.

“We as Muslims strongly condemn these un-Islamic actions,” Dr. Isma Chaudry, president of the Islamic Center of Long Island, said one week after the Paris attacks. “This is not Islam. ISIS is not Islam. Muslims are not violent, barbaric people. This is a small group of criminals and we, by dividing ourselves, are making them big.”