Terrorism has strained traditional American notions of individual responsibility. While such attacks fortunately remain rare in our country (data shows that out of 14,000 murders in the United States, a few dozen per year are motivated by religious or political ideologies of any persuasion), violence by a Muslim is often attributed to the entire American Muslim community.
Sometimes, it is accompanied by calls for sending them home or clamping down on them in various ways. Even before police identified Ahmad Khan Rahami as the person suspected of setting off the bomb that exploded in New York on Saturday night, social media was awash with anti-Muslim slurs and threats. A Twitter campaign launched to support Muslims was hijacked to spread fear and hatred instead. [276 comments]
[TOP RATED COMMENT 196 votes] According to the survey mentioned above, there were 196 anti-Islam hate crimes in the 20 states which were studied, and 67 anti-Arab crimes.
Over the same period, there were 502 crimes classed as anti-Semitic, and 416 classified as anti-white.
One hate-crime is one too many, but if muslims really are "bracing for the backlash" they are over-reacting.
[2ND 191] "... remember our common humanity"
Kind of hard to do that when followers of a certain religion are taught by their holy book that non-believers are less than human and are to be converted or killed.
[3RD 177] What a surprise. No concern for the injured victims, only for the supposed backlash against the ideology responsible- which hasn't even happened as far as today's news shows.
[4TH 163] The so-called anti-Muslim backlash is a myth. The problem we've got is radicalised idiots pandering to extremist wahhabist propaganda trying to murder people and blinkered idiots trying to tell us it's not happening and look the other way.
[5TH 160] I sometimes wonder how Muslims would react if, say, a small minority of Mormons launched a terrorist campaign directed at them.
One thing I'm sure of is that "we mustn't blame all Mormons" would not be part of it.
[6TH 151] But we've been told (or rather beseeched) that this man has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.....
Nothing at all.
It's all a coincidence.
[7TH 146] Trump has said some very daft things in the presidential race.
However, his policy proposal on immigration from Islamic countries is not one of them. [Guardian Cif] Read more
