Most of the anti-Muslim attacks have been dismissed as “the work of mentally ill individuals” [Getty Images]

Halting anti-Muslim violence

Many of the recent attacks have taken place shortly after well-publicised anti-Muslim hate speeches, argues author.

There has been a sudden uptick in the number of violent hate crimes where the victims are thought to be Muslim or “Middle Eastern”. Sunando Sen, a Hindu man originally from India, was shoved in front of an oncoming subway train in New York City, where he died. Cameron Mohammed, a Catholic American man whose parents are from Trinidad, was shot in the face next to a Walmart near Tampa, Florida. The suspect in Florida was apparently offended by seeing Mohammed walking with a white woman. He asked his victim whether he was “from the Middle East”, and then fired a pellet gun. He later told police that he didn’t care that his victim wasn’t Muslim, saying, “They are all the same”.

The New York and Florida attacks took place just days apart. They follow a shocking string of similar attacks in recent months: several Middle Eastern shopkeepers were murdered in New York City; a Muslim man was stabbed in the back in Queens; another man in Queens was brutally beaten after his assailants asked if he was “Hindu or Muslim”; there was a shooting at a mosque in Chicago and an acid bomb attack at a different Chicago-area mosque; two arson attacks destroyed a mosque in Joplin, Missouri; and there was the tragic mass shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin that killed six worshippers.

Most of these attacks have been dismissed as the work of mentally ill individuals, rather than symptoms of larger social problems. The lack of equal access to health care in the United States, especially mental health care, could very well be part of the explanation for the increase in hate attacks. But there is all-too-clear evidence that people who “look Muslim” are under deliberate attack in the US. Hate speech and racial/ethnic profiling must be understood as contributing factors in explaining the persistence of violent hate attacks.

Discriminatory policies

It’s too easy to dismiss any one hate crime as the work of a “crazy” individual. Racism is often disregarded as the work of a “few bad apples”, even though sociological research has shown time and again that racism exists within the structures of American society. While it’s true that some of the perpetrators in hate attacks suffer from mental illness, by itself that cannot explain the pattern of hate attacks.

Official FBI statistics on hate crimes published last month found that the number of hate attacks on Muslims remained high after a spike in 2010 that correlated with nationally prominent fear-mongering over the construction of a mosque in Manhattan. Many of the recent attacks have taken place shortly after well-publicised anti-Muslim hate speeches, sometimes coming directly from public officials.

Congresswoman Michelle Bachman (R-MN) even demanded a McCarthy-esque investigation of Muslim “infiltration” in the federal government, and she doubled-down on her comments after Republican leaders like Arizona Senator John McCain repudiated her.

Former Congressman Joe Walsh (R-IL) whipped up Islamophobic fear when he said that “Muslims are here trying to kill Americans every day” and warned without evidence of an impending attack in Chicago that would “make 9/11 look like child’s play”. Shortly after these statements, two mosques in the Chicago area experienced violent hate attacks.

Hate speech and discriminatory policies targeting Muslim Americans remain common in the US. A well-funded hate campaign is currently placing anti-Muslim billboard advertisements in prominent locations around the country, including in the New York City and Washington, DC, subway systems. Another sophisticated operation has promoted anti-Sharia hysteria all around the US, resulting in nearly half of the state legislatures taking up unnecessary “bans” on Sharia law.

The New York Police Department engaged in clandestine profiling of Muslim Americans in restaurants, mosques and college campuses all across the northeastern US. The Transportation Security Administration was accused by one of its own agents of engaging in “rampant” racial profiling at Boston’s Logan Airport, and despite promising to investigate there have been no changes.

The connection between this hateful rhetoric, discriminatory policies and the increasing number of violent hate crimes is easy to see. It is perhaps less easy to see the impact of long-term cutbacks in the mental health infrastructure. In 2011, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found massive budget cutbacks for public mental health services: over $1.6bn since 2009 alone. This is on top of continuous budget cuts over the past 10 years in most states. NAMI predicted that these cuts put “tens of thousands of citizens at great risk”.

Mental health infrastructure

The Kaiser Family Foundation found a huge shift away from inpatient care and a massive shift toward prescription drugs from 1985 to 2005. The roots of this shift actually begin with a 1963 law that sought to move treatment away from state-run facilities and toward private settings, but instead the “sickest patients have begun turning up in jails and homeless shelters with a frequency that mirrors that of the late 1800s” according to a recent analysis in the New York Times.

The good news is that the Obamacare programme places additional mental health requirements on health insurance providers, but much more work is needed to reverse the damage done to America’s mental health infrastructure. In looking for ways to prevent hate attacks, expanding access to mental health would be a tremendous step forward.

In addition, more work is urgently needed to shore up civil rights protection in the US. It’s difficult to even know the extent of hate crimes targeting Arab, Muslim, Sikh and South Asian Americans, in large part due to inconsistent and outdated practices by the FBI. The law governing the FBI’s collection of hate crimes data has not been updated since 1990.

One of the symptoms of the inadequate data is a lack of a category for hate crimes targeting Sikhs - so attacks like the shooting in Wisconsin are classified as “anti-other group” or perhaps even “anti-Muslim”. Federal hate crime statutes have been updated only twice since 1968, and the increased penalties for hate crimes apply only to federal cases. Additional protections and improved funding for educational and outreach efforts to prevent hate crimes should be urgently approved.

Finally, perhaps the most promising avenue for change comes through holding elected officials and other public figures accountable for their hate speech and support of discriminatory policies. Several prominent anti-Muslim members of Congress lost their seats in the 2012 election, although Congresswoman Bachmann managed to win re-election by a slim margin.

Efforts by civil rights advocates to “name and shame” hatemongers have stepped up in recent months, and the Council on American Islamic Relations in Chicago has begun a campaign to reclaim the word “jihad”. Muslim American political activists in Chicago have successfully run for public office in recent years. Building on successes like these should help to curtail hate speech, discriminatory policies and hate crimes.

Erik Love studies civil rights advocacy in the United States. He is a professor of sociology at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

Follow him on Twitter: @ErikLove

Jewish, Hindu and Muslim leaders condemn attack at Queens mosque

By Joe Anuta

Jewish, Hindu and Muslim leaders from Queens gathered with lawmakers to denounce the possible hate crime committed at a Kew Gardens Hills Mosque earlier this month, and city Comptroller John Liu suggested some of the NYPD’s policies could make bias crimes more common.

“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” said Imam Shamsi Ali, of the Jamaica Muslim Center, who gathered religious leaders from around Flushing in the wake of the Nov. 18 attack.

At about 5 a.m., 57-year-old Bashir Amad was opening the doors of the mosque for morning prayers when he was beaten, bitten and stabbed by a suspect police described as a 6-foot white man between the ages of 35 and 45 and weighing 180 pounds. According to the NYPD, the man shouted anti-Muslim statements before ambushing Bashir outside the house of worship, at 72-55 Kissena Blvd. As of press time Tuesday no arrests had been made.

Liu condemned the incident and called for justice, assuring everyone that the NYPD was following all possible leads to find the attacker.

But he also contended that policies, like the NYPD’s practice of monitoring Muslims or barring Sikhs from wearing religious headwear while on the job, sends the message that it is acceptable to discriminate against these groups.

“Unfortunately, when Muslims are singled out for profiling, surveillance and other discriminatory actions, hate crimes such as this are more likely,” he said.

Liu was referring to the NYPD’s controversial practice of infiltrating and monitoring mosques and student and business groups, even though the intelligence did not produce any indictments.

The Police Department and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have defended the practice as essential to protecting the city from terror attacks.

To show solidarity after the Kissena Boulevard attack, Ali called leaders from other houses of worship who gathered to decry the possible hate crime.

“Let’s not pretend we are all the same,” said Dr. Uma Mysorekar, of the Hindu Temple Society of North America. “We are different, but let’s respect those differences.”

Mysorekar stood with Amad and other members of the mosque, along with Rabbi Michael Weisser, of Flushing’s Free Synagogue, who also encouraged tolerance and understanding between the different faiths.

“No act like this will drive us apart — eventually that will only draw us closer together,” he said.

Bashir gave conflicting reports to various media outlets in the aftermath of the incident, telling some newspapers he did not hold a grudge against his attacker, but telling the New York Post, “If I see him again, I will kill him from 20 feet away.”

Reach reporter Joe Anuta by e-mail at januta@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.

Original post: Mosque attacker still on the loose: NYPD

Members of a role-play team after their act at a local community event in London, on June 26, 2011. The play explored many problems that young Muslims face (right) and how they can live a better life by following the examples of ancient Islamic leaders (left).

To view all the images click on the link right below:

The Silence of Others: Exploring Islamophobia Through Images 

By Jared T. Miller

“Osama! Osama!”— yelled a pair of complete strangers, as photographer Bharat Choudhary walked to his apartment from the University of Missouri campus in 2009, where the photographer was pursuing a Master’s degree in photojournalism. Islamophobia is a personal issue for Choudhary, who is an Indian Hindu.

“I had a big beard at that time,” adds Choudhary, who used the incident as inspiration for his current project, which documents Muslim life in the United States and England. Titled The Silence of Others, the series captures similar situations and their effects on the project’s participants, as well as the lives of young Muslims and the communities to which they belong.

Choudhary traces the origins of the idea back to his time as a student in India, where he worked with CARE India in Ahmadabad in 2004. The organization provided rehabilitation to victims of ethnically charged violence, who lost limbs or were paralyzed in the 2002 riots in the Indian state of Gujarat. The images he saw there formed an experience that Choudhary says “will always be there with me.”

He began working on the project in the Midwest, where he documented stories in small towns across Missouri and Illinois, as well as larger cities like Chicago. Choudhary is continuing the second phase of the project in England, broadening the geographic reach of the body of work and expanding it as a platform to help Muslims and non-Muslims understand each other.

Though the growing body of work represents a variety of life stories—a Missouri couple’s efforts to establish the state’s first Mosque, a Caucasian woman’s conversion to Islam and the development of Muslim communities in Chicago, London and elsewhere—Choudhary says he has found similar themes of alienation and ostracism of his “Others” on both sides of the Atlantic. But it’s precisely the challenge of breaking through their silence that captivates Choudhary and pushes him to continue the project.

“It’s finding the right kind of people who would be willing to talk and be photographed—that is one thing that keeps me awake all night,” Choudhary says. “It’s been quite an interesting journey so far.”

Bharat Choudhary is a photographer based in London, England. The Silence of Others is currently supported by a grant from the Alexia Foundation for World Peace and Cultural Understanding. Select images are on display at ”Moving Walls 19,” an exhibition opening at the Soros Foundation in New York on Dec. 1.

"Your Yoga Instructor For Eternity"

(via. What If they were Muslim?)

“Why should we look for other alternatives to exercise and search for peace? Yoga could cause (Muslims) to stray from their faith because its movements are according to the style and traditions of Hinduism.”

Robert Spencer cites crackpot mythistorian on Hajj

Robert Spencer is failing to convince America that Islam itself is a threat to national security. Americans are waking up to the fact that the universal values that bring Americans and Muslims together are far more numerous than our differences. But Spencer has spent the last several years trying to “prove” that Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, was a war-monger, a fanatic, a woman-hater, a pervert, (insert evil cliché here), etc. For example, one of his top books is, “Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion.” All of his arguments are predicated on the fact that Muhammad existed in order to found Islam. Jihadist terror didn’t come from nowhere, right?

Well, these arguments just won’t cut it anymore. People can only be fooled for so long by a handful of cherry-picked verses and facts. Perhaps Islam does have something in common with Judaism and Christianity, Spencer’s readers might think. These are dangerous thoughts in Spencer’s profession. So he has moved on to a new strategy: Muhammad didn’t exist. Islam is, in fact, an extension of Hinduism. How did he reach such a conclusion and for what purpose?

Spencer receives an e-mail from the mysterious “Arnaud” allegedly an “Islamic scholar who writes from Switzerland” with a strange theory about how Hajj (pilgrimage) and Salat (ritual prayer) are actually Hindu in origin. He posts the article, the purpose of which is to “debunk” the two pillars of Islam:

Islam is like a special table that needs 5 legs (so-called “5 pillars”). Displace two of them and the table would fall, wouldn’t it?

At some point Spencer must have realized that it was simply the junk history of “mythistorian” and “crack pot” Purushottam Nagesh Oak. The article is riddled with so many factual errors that Spencer takes the post down. He must have thought that anything with a negative angle on Islam deserves the benefit of the doubt. Post first; ask questions later.

Yet Spencer depends upon his audience perceiving him as an authoritative “Islamic scholar.” He has to maintain some pro forma standards of objectivity. Damage control is needed. So he rewrites the article, taking out the most egregious misinformation (just enough to appear somewhat scholarly), crediting an unnamed “European researcher” (not Arnaud), and publishes it on Pam Geller’s site as a part of his new-found effort to prove that Muhammad never existed.

What does this little sidetrack into mythistory have to do with Jihad and “Islamic” terrorism, the focus of Spencer’s work? Nothing at all, which plainly demonstrates what we’ve been saying all along. Spencer is an intolerant fundamentalist, a religious polemicist, NOT an expert on security or terrorism. He cares about sustaining his career on the back of Islamophobic prejudice, even if that means drawing upon every crackpot theory he receives from fellow internet goons. No need for his allegations and theories to be logical or internally consistent, so long as the target is Islam. The ends justify the means.

Honestly, this is quite bizarre coming from Spencer, a man who has sold himself for so long as the “politically-incorrect” Islamic scholar willing to speak hard truths about the “intolerant” Muhammad, the prophetic figure allegedly at the heart of Jihadist terrorism. Now it seems he’s willing to completely change his tactics and develop other theories to attack Islam. Whatever Spencer ultimately believes about the nature of Islam, it must be profoundly negative and foreign. He sees no “universal moral values” in Islam that Muslims can share with other religions (see Politically Incorrect, Ch. 6).

Yesterday, Muhammad was a fire-breathing infidel-slayer. Today, he is a Hindu myth gone wrong. Tomorrow, I imagine he’ll be something else, perhaps the first Nazi. Wait, that’s been done. Oh well. If the old stuff doesn’t work anymore, you’ll think of something new, right Bob?

Remember the Muslim man who behead his wife? It was all over the news and Islamophobes made big hay out of it. Turning a tragic case of domestic violence into a Crusade against Islam. Bill Maher also attributed the act to Islam.

Now we have a case of a man named Bijendra Kumar, likely Sikh or Hindu who beheaded his girlfriend in front of her classmates. Will we blame Sikhism or Hinduism now? No, that would be wrongheaded and illogical but just imagine if he were Muslim!

hat tip: Daniel

Bijendra Kumar, India Beheading Suspect, Accused Of Cutting Girlfriend’s Head Off With Knife

(Huffington Post)

PATNA, India — Police say that a man armed with a large knife beheaded an 18-year-old woman at her school in front of her horrified classmates in eastern India.

The attacker later told police he was in love with the victim but her parents wouldn’t allow them to marry.

Police official Pravin Kumar Singh said Thursday that officers arrested Bijendra Kumar on suspicion of killing Khushbu, who uses only one name. He allegedly attacked her a ceremonial curved weapon called a khukri as she was leaving her classroom Wednesday in the eastern city of Ranchi.

Authorities say the blade sliced her head off and she died instantly. Kumar was quickly mobbed by the other students and handed over to the police. Singh says Kumar told the police that he had also intended to kill himself.

In my opinion the work Ruth Pfau is doing is greater than Mother Theresa because she is attacking the root of the problem and not just helping people cope after the fact. (hat tip: Leonoroa)

Pakistan’s ‘Mother Teresa’ saving flood victims

By Mark Lobel (BBC)

A tiny, frail lady – her silver grey hair tucked under a white head scarf with a red floral trim – stands defiantly at a relief camp she set up for minority people displaced by Pakistan’s recent deadly flooding.

Eighty-one-year-old German nun Ruth Pfau is surveying the needs of hundreds whose homes were washed away.

Two months since they sought shelter in Hyderabad, on disused land by the side of a busy road, she and her team have provided them with tents, food, water, medicine and a school.

“We need blankets,” many of them shout at once. Then they complain the dry rations they received did not include sugar, milk, salt or chilli.

For a split second Dr Pfau is taken aback and winces, before noting down their concerns.

Her arrival has been a Godsend for them, the forgotten of the floods.

Immense stamina
“We only go into these camps where, for some reason or other, nobody else is willing or able, or ever thought of helping them,” Dr Pfau explained.

Dr Pfau has established leprosy clinics across Pakistan
She is one of the very few helping the flood-affected Hindu minority.

Dr Pfau’s service to Pakistan’s most neglected began more than 50 years ago.

She took on the country’s leprosy problem, rescuing children holed up in caves and cattle pens for years as their disfiguring and suffering worsened, abandoned by distraught parents terrified they were contagious.

She trained Pakistani doctors and attracted foreign donations, building leprosy clinics across the country.

“Working with Dr Pfau is very, very difficult, because she has such immense stamina, that I don’t think anyone can match,” said Mervyn Lobo, the organisation’s national co-ordinator, who has travelled with her for more than 11 years.

Born in the German city of Leipzig in 1929, Ruth Pfau grew up fearing for her life as first Allied forces bombed her town during the Second World War, then Russian forces ran amok.

She saw her younger brother die, was forced to steal wood and coal for heating food and risked her own life escaping East Germany.

“If I give any sense to these years, it is a preparation to be ready to help others,” she explained.

After completing a medical degree and joining a French Roman Catholic Order, she decided to leave for India.

But diverted to Pakistan while waiting for her visa in 1958, she was to stumble upon leprosy, a disease she had never heard of in a country she did not know existed.

“Well if it doesn’t hit you the first time, I don’t think it will ever hit you,” she recalled, after first seeing leprosy during a visit to a makeshift dispensary built on a disused graveyard in Karachi.

“Actually the first patient who really made me decide was a young Pathan.

“He must have been my age, I was at this time not yet 30, and he crawled on hands and feet into this dispensary, acting as if this was quite normal, as if someone has to crawl there through that slime and dirt on hands and feet, like a dog.”

Tears of happiness
Soon after, the clinic was moved from the makeshift dispensary to a two-storey nursing home in Karachi, which became Dr Pfau’s new headquarters.

Dr Pfau’s compassion for people like Bundu Sheikh have drawn comparisons with Mother Teresa
The Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre is now eight storeys high, staffed by former patients and children of patients and houses a hospital.

Sitting in the corridor, 31-year-old leprosy patient Shabana, the wife of a rickshaw driver, awaits a check-up.

“I was ill with fever and severe fits so I went to the civil hospital and they sent me here. Dr Pfau’s clinic paid for all my tests and treatments. I could never have afforded them myself,” she said.

“After seven months, I am now much better.”

On the outskirts of Hyderabad, Dr Pfau received a warm welcome from a former leprosy patient Bundu Sheikh, during one of her visits.

Covered in dust with bright, dyed-orange hair, he greeted Dr Pfau with a huge hug and raced out so fast he forgot his shoes.

He is now a cleaner with a deformed nose and no feeling in either leg, living in a makeshift shack on the roadside.

When asked how important Dr Pfau has been in his life, he cried tears of happiness.

“Without her,” he said, “I’d be in the hands of God.

“She is not just a doctor, not just an ordinary person, not just a mother, but a Messiah.”

‘Pakistani marriage’
Key to Dr Pfau’s huge success in saving people’s lives and bringing leprosy under control by the mid-1990s was winning over Pakistan’s leaders.

Dr Pfau has transformed the lives of thousands of people in Pakistan
They were hesitant to help at first but soon appointed her the country’s federal advisor on leprosy.

She said the government was an essential partner.

“We are like a Pakistani marriage. It was an arranged marriage because it was necessary. We always and only fought with each other. But we never could go in for divorce because we had too many children.”

Having won over the establishment and created such a strong and widespread network of doctors, Dr Pfau used the opportunity to tackle tuberculosis and partial blindness.

She has also assisted the country’s many forgotten displaced people and rescued victims from the 2005 earthquake and floods of 2010.

Her determination and selfless service explain why many see her in the same light as another European-born nun – Mother Teresa, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her services to the poor and dispossessed of India.

Dr Pfau said that, though she greatly appreciated and admired Mother Teresa, in reality the similarities between them were few.

She said her focus was on removing the root of the problem – not just dealing with its symptoms – the same ethos that has served her so well over the years in Pakistan when dealing with poor, displaced and marginalised people.

“The most important thing is that we give them their dignity back,” she insisted.

Shantaram Naik

A Muslim Indian MP has said that rape after midnight is not a crime…no wait a second! He isn’t Mooslim!!

A Goan Hindu MP has said that if tourists get raped after midnight it shouldn’t be considered rape. What if he were Muslim? This would be news all over the media, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller would be adding it to their litanies of look at what “Islam” is doing. Of course we wont hear a peep out of them about this. (hat tip to our indelible reader: Retaane)

Goa MP says Rape after Midnight not a Crime

An Indian politician has sparked outrage after he suggested that cases when a woman was raped after staying out past midnight should be treated differently to other sexual attacks.

Speaking before the country’s parliament, Shantaram Naik, an MP from Goa from the ruling Congress Party, reportedly made a series of “contentious” comments referring to the British teenager Scarlett Keeling, who was raped and murdered in Goa last year, and a Russian woman who alleges she was recently the victim of an assault by a state politician.

“An alleged rape of a lady who moves with strangers for days together even beyond middle of the night is to be treated on different footings,” said Mr Naik, as opposition MPs shouted their disapproval.

He then turned his attention to the media, accusing it of sensationalising and over-reporting such attacks. “If we go by electronic media coverage of recent times, it appears that nothing happens except incidents of rape,” he added.

Mr Naik’s comments were also criticised by the Russian consulate in Mumbai, which wrote to the state government saying it intended to advise Russian visitors not to stay out past 10pm if it was not safe for them to do so.

“Essentially the Russian government is concerned about the safety about its citizens,” Vikram Verma, a lawyer representing the consulate, told the Times of India. “If [the state authorities] feel that Russians should not be out late in the night, we would [be] happy to give them any advisory which would improve their safety and security.”

The darker side of Goa, which has long attracted visitors from around the world, has received no shortage of publicity following a series of killings and assaults on tourists – among them Devon teenager Scarlett Keeling in February 2008. An initial investigation by police concluded she had drowned but after the intervention of her mother, it was shown the 15-year-old had been murdered.