American Muslims unabated;
political rhetoric not help, ) December 9,
2015
Story highlights
On Tuesday, Islamic relations groups received
some half-dozen reports of violent incidents
against American Muslims
Political rhetoric against Muslims after extremist
attacks is helping fuel hate crime incidents
American Muslims appear to be facing a
perfect storm of hate.
Ever since the Paris attacks, carried out by
extremists hiding behind religion, xenophobic bile
has poured out against peaceful, law-abiding
Americans who practice Islam.
Then came San Bernardino, and after it anti-
Muslim rhetoric from the Trump campaign, and a
steady stream of hateful incidents came rolling
in.
A pig's head thrown at a mosque, and bodega
owners assaulted by attackers decrying their
religion: Those were just a couple of about half a
dozen reported Tuesday.
"It's just pretty regular now that we're getting
reports of incidents," said Ibrahim Hooper from
the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Acts of violence
Early Monday, a red truck drove past a
Philadelphia mosque. On its second pass,
someone tossed something out the window.
What looked like a pig's head rolled up near the
mosque's door.
Given that pork is forbidden in Islam, the gesture
is particularly offensive.
Police are investigating whether the incident has
any connection to a voicemail the mosque
received last month, in which a male voice said:
"Are you happy about what happened in France?"
"God is a pig!" and "God is Pork!"
That phone call wasn't the only insult connecting
peaceful people with ISIS or terrorism.
In New York, at least one victim took a beating
recently, allegedly because he was a Muslim,
Hooper said. Sarker Haque walked away with
bruises, a black eye and cuts, after a man
punched him saying he was going to kill
Muslims, according to local media reports.
Sana Rashid wasn't beaten but verbally assailed
while at work as a pharmacist, Hooper said. She
was wearing a hijab. A man called her a terrorist
and told her to get out of his country, CNN
affiliate WPIX reported. Rashid defended herself
as a patriotic American, and told the man that
she loved her country, too.
Then there is the trickle of threatening phone
calls that come into mosques around the
country. This week, Hooper heard about a threat
phoned into a mosque in New Jersey.
Phone threats to CAIR
CAIR also gets threatening calls, Hooper said.
One threat against CAIR's office in St. Louis was
so bad that police arrested the caller.
"We got so many threats lately," Hooper said. He
sighed in resignation. He has quit counting them.
The anti-Muslim rants oozing with hate on social
media -- they are innumerable.
Hooper had hoped it all might abate sometime
after the Paris attacks.
But after radical extremists -- admirers of ISIS --
opened fire in San Bernardino, California, with
long guns last week, killing 14 people at a
holiday luncheon, that hope vanished.
Hooper thinks that the political vitriol that
followed the attacks has stoked the flames of
hate even more than the attacks themselves. "It
may not be so much San Bernardino but Donald
Trump keeping it going," Hooper said.
A lawmaker from Indiana has received a death
threat because he practices the Muslim faith.
Rep. André Carson believes Trump's rhetoric
may have encouraged them.
Trump's rhetoric
After the shootings, Trump called for temporarily
banning all Muslims from entering the United
States, warning there would be new terror
attacks, if the country did not follow his advice.
"You're going to have many more World Trade
Centers if you don't solve it -- many, many more
and probably beyond the World Trade Center,"
Trump told CNN's Chris Cuomo in a contentious
interview on "New Day."
Hooper is afraid Trump won't stop the anti-
Muslim rhetoric -- because it is paying off for
him in opinion polls -- and that anti-Islamic
attitudes in America are running so deep, they
may take root for a long time.
"We don't see anything that is going to make the
trend line curve in a positive direction," he said.
Even Muslims who have felt very safe, believing
they could never be attacked are starting to see
things differently. "Even this segment of the
community is going, 'Yeah, you're right,'" Hooper
said.
What's worse is that it's exactly what ISIS
wants -- for Muslims in the West to feel so
threatened where they live that they either desert
their faith or become open to radicalization,
Hooper said.
ISIS is chalking up Islamophobia in the United
States as a win for them.
An earlier version of this report included a
reference to an incident at a New York City school
that does not appear to have been part of a
backlash against Muslims.
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