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

Gabriela Saucedo Mercer is a favorite to win the GOP primary in Arizona’s 3rd district. In the height of loony irony, Mercer herself an immigrant to the USA doesn’t want Middle Easterners to enter the country, legally or illegally. (h/t: Jawad)

Many of my latino comrades would be dismayed and embarrassed by Mercer:

by Nick R. Martin (TPMMuckraker)

Gabriela Saucedo Mercer hasn’t even won the Republican primary for Congress in Arizona yet, but she is already facing attacks from the Democratic Congressman she is hoping to unseat in November over some incendiary comments she made in the past about Middle Eastern immigrants.

In an interview with a conservative website last year, Saucedo Mercer talked in depth about her views on immigration. A Mexican immigrant herself who became a U.S. citizen, she said the issue was important because people from places other than Mexico were among those coming across the border illegally.

“That includes Chinese, Middle Easterners,” she said. “If you know Middle Easterners, a lot of them, they look Mexican or they look, you know, like a lot of people in South America, dark skin, dark hair, brown eyes. And they mix. They mix in.

“And those people, their only goal in life is to, to cause harm to the United States. So why do we want them here, either legally or illegally? When they come across the border, besides the trash that they leave behind, the drug smuggling, the killings, the beheadings. I mean, you are seeing stuff. It’s a war out there.”

Saucedo Mercer was facing fellow Republican Jaime Vasquez in Tuesday’s primary in Arizona’s 3rd congressional district, with the results due later tonight. But her supporters and opponents both clearly expect her to win.

She has been endorsed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who is scheduled to attend a fundraiser for Saucedo Mercer on Sept. 12 in Tucson, Ariz. She was also facing attacks from the campaign of Rep. Raul Grijalva, the Democrat she is trying to unseat.

Read the rest…

Whatever gave Mr. Gonzalez the idea that all Middle Easterners are responsible for all the terrorism in the world?

NYPD Daily Blotter

A homeless man slashed three Mott Haven workers with glass shards in 9/11- fueled hate crimes against Muslims, police sources said yesterday.

Alejandro Gonzalez, 19, claimed he was “fighting terrorism” when he attacked three Middle Eastern men in two stores, sources said.

The first assault took place at 9:30 p.m. on June 6, when Gonzalez confronted Adam Zandan in a bodega on Courtlandt Avenue and cut the victim’s face, court documents allege.

A day later, the attacker walked into a pizza parlor on East 158th Street and sliced Salem Salim across the forehead, then slashed Bilal Alsayedi on the right arm as Alsayedi came to Salim’s aid, the documents state.

The victims were treated for non-life-threatening wounds. Gonzalez was arrested on June 8.

Manhattan

Zimmerman targeted a co-worker of Middle Eastern decent (h/t:Dawud Walid):

AUDIO: Witness Says George Zimmerman Repeatedly Bullied Him At Work, Targeted Him With Racist Jokes

(ThinkProgress)

Among the evidence in the Trayvon Martin case released by the Florida state prosecutor yesterday was a 15-minute interview with a former work colleague of George Zimmerman. The man, who is not identified by name, says that Zimmerman relentlessly bullied him at work.

Zimmerman, according to the witness, targeted him because he was Middle Eastern. He repeatedly called the man a “fucking moron” and mocked him using the voice of “Achmed the terrorist.” Zimmerman’s stories about the man would involve “bombing,” “I’ll kill your family” and other “jokes” about “Middle Eastern stuff.” According to the man, this went on “for days and days.”

Listen:

After a few months, Zimmerman was terminated. According to the witness, “he was fired for calling HR hotline so many times…he would complain about each and every manager and employee.”

Zimmerman is currently being investigated by the FBI, who reportedly may charge him with a hate crime.

Arvinder Singh, who has been attending Des Moines mosques over the past seven years, was revealed to be an FBI informant.

FBI Betrayed Us: Iowa Muslims

IOWA – The Muslim community in Iowa is frustrated and angry over FBI’s sending informants into mosques to spy on worshippers, seething with a sense of betrayal that has undermined trust between American Muslims and security agencies.

“That was really surprising, very sad that somebody would come or the FBI or Homeland Security would send somebody here to pretend to be Muslim and try to find out what goes on here,” Dr. Hamed Baig, president of the Islamic Center of Des Moines, told CNN on Friday, February 3.

“I feel there is no need for that.”

In Des Moines, Iowa, a small yet diverse Muslim community is divided into four mosques from Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, among other nations.

Frustration among members of the Muslim community began after 42 year-old Arvinder Singh, who has been attending their mosques over the past seven years, was revealed to be an FBI informant.

Charged with “selling or transferring precursor substances for an unlawful purpose” in March of 2002, Singh said he was approached by FBI officers who told him, “‘You look Middle Eastern, and we need your help for the war against terror.’”

Singh, currently in Hardin County Jail in Iowa, where he’s been awaiting deportation, said the FBI came to him with a simple tradeoff:  We’ll help you get your citizenship if you help us get some terrorists.

Having no information about Islam, Indian-born Singh was surprised to be approached by FBI agents.

“I was surprised. I said, ‘Me? I have no idea about this’ And they said ‘We’ll train you. You’ll get used to it. We’ll make you go and do some work for us.’”

Later on, he assumed a Muslim identity, Rafik Alvi, and went into the mosques pretending to be interested in converting.

He says sometimes the FBI gave him pictures of persons of interest and he would confirm that they were at the mosque.  On a few occasions, Singh says he taped his conversations with congregants.

“They wanted me to go investigate some people in the area,” Singh told CNN in a jailhouse interview.

“See what they’re doing, who they’re meeting. Who’s their family member, who’s attending them, what they are talking about. That kind of work.”

Anger 

The mosque infiltration has angered Iowa Muslim community, saying that the FBI just took a step backwards in building trust with the Muslims in his community.

“To know that somebody made an intrusive entry into the masjid for purpose other than prayer, or other than socializing or taking care of anybody who is in need makes me very much nervous and embarrassed, too, that I belong to a community where we have a member who has come for some other purpose,” Anis Rehman, executive board treasurer of the Islamic Center of Des Moines and a college professor, told CNN.

“But later when we saw that he was not actually a member but a pretender then it made me more angry,” Rehman said.

Rehman says the idea of a FBI informant in their tiny mosque is not only offensive but baffling.

“I find that to send an impostor into our community which is so small where not only we know each other but (where) the law enforcement agents can perhaps pick each one of us by name and by family, I don’t think that the incident [on] 9/11 could warrant such action in a small community like ours.”

Since 9/11, Muslims, estimated between six to seven million, have become sensitized to an erosion of their civil rights, with a prevailing belief that America was stigmatizing their faith.

FBI tactic of sending informants into mosques have deteriorated relations with the US Muslim community over the past few years.

In 2009, Muslim groups threatened to suspend all contacts with the FBI over sending informants into mosques.

US Muslims are particularly wary of the FBI’s history of targeting members of their community.

Basim Bakri, another Iowa Muslim, noted that if Singh’s claims are true, the FBI has just destroyed any chances of building trust with the Muslims in his community.

“I think the FBI owe[s] us an apology because they did violate our civil rights,” Bakri said.

“It wasn’t right at all, it wasn’t right from the beginning and they have no right to do that.”

Yesterday, I wrote the following:

Instead of mourning the dead, Pamela Geller–Breivik’s “spiritual benefactor”–is now bad-mouthing the innocent dead.  She calls the victims of the terrorist attack “anti-semites,” arguing that the summer camp is an “antisemitic indoctrination center” where they play “antisemitic war games.”  Blares the insane and lunatical Pamela Geller:

Utoya Island is a Communist/Socialist campground, and they clearly had a pro-Islamic agenda.

Aha! So, Pamela Geller’s comrade-in-arms Robert Spencer was just blowing smoke when he claimed that Breivik’s choice of victims just didn’t jive with the “counter-jihadist” ideology.  In reality, these dirty communists/socialists “had a pro-Islamic agenda.”  They were communists and pro-Islamists–that’s a two-for-one bag of hate for right-wingers.

And just like any good right-winger, Geller transitions swiftly between Communist references and Nazi/Hitler references, likening the victims to Hitler youth:

Glen Beck was not far off when he compared it to the Hitlerjugend or Young Pioneers.

The Young Pioneers was the youth organization for the Soviet Union, once again exhibiting how crazy right-wingers like Pamela Geller can move from Islamists to Nazis to Communism all in one breath.

More disgustingly, Pamela Geller mockingly and sarcastically refers to the young kids (who were the victims of the Oslo attack) as “little dearies:”

I saw at least one article that had photos of previous summers with the little dearies and their handlers assembling Israel-bashing displays.

Then she mentions something about “red diaper[s]” (wtf?)–I guess a reference to raising kids as communists.

And then we have Pamela Geller coming dangerously close to justifying the shooting, saying:

Breivik was targeting the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole… all done without the consent of the Norwegians.

Don’t you get it?  Anders Breivik killed people who were enabling violent gang rapes!  He killed rape-enablers!  Is that even a crime?  Shouldn’t he get a medal for that?

Can anyone imagine the reaction had Norwegians (or Muslims!) mocked the victims of 9/11 in this way?

I neglected to mention one of the most disturbing parts of Pamela Geller’s post, something which she had written but then had deleted before I viewed her site.  Some of our readers did point this out to me, but it was only yesterday night that I got a chance to read comments.  Apologies for the delay in posting this.

So, for those of you who haven’t read about it yet, Geller included the following caption under a picture of the youth camp:

“Note the faces which are more MIddle [sic] Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.”

Realizing that her caption would (rightfully) be seen as unadulterated racism, Geller quickly deleted it. Luckily, a screenshot was saved (available on ThinkProgress.com):

Do you notice the Darkies and the Sand-Niggers in the photo?  I think I even see a Raghead in the front row.

So, you see, these weren’t “pure Norwegians” or pure whites that were targeted and killed–they were just Darkies, Sand-Niggers, and Ragheads.  They were budding terrorists–they were at minimum terrorist sympathizers.  They had it coming.

ThinkProgress notes that it was within 24 hours of the attack that Pamela Geller made this disturbing comment.  Can you imagine the depravity and bigotry of this lady that she had the morbid nature to say such of the dead even before they were laid to rest?  I don’t know about you, but I don’t do a race check when I read news of people dying.

Although I was not at all surprised that Pamela Geller would say something like she did (after all, her anti-Muslim views are just racism by another name), I am always impressed by her impetuous nature: she has no filter and just posts whatever comes to her sick mind, and then curses herself as she tries to delete and cover up what she said just a few hours earlier.  Pam, here’s a tip: think before you type.  Remember: you can’t be so obvious about your racism.

In any case, all of this shows that Geller is coming dangerously close to justifying Anders Behring Breivik’s terrorist attack: in her mind, the victims were socialists, Communists, rape-enablers, jihad-enablers, pro-Islamists, Hitler Youth, Middle Eastern, and mixed race (and thus impure)–so they really just had it coming.