SAN FRANCISCO: A week after the Boston Marathon attack that left three people dead and scores injured, the rise of anti-Muslim sentiments have taken off across the United States. Reports from all levels of American society show the country's citizens have begun to do exactly the opposite of what President Barack Obama urged: don't jump to judgements. Over the weekend Republican Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, called on the government authorities to boost surveillance of Muslims in the country, citing the alleged Islamic ties of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnev, who was arrested on Friday after a day of lockdown in Boston. Police must “realize that the threat is coming from the Muslim community and increase surveillance there," the New York lawmaker told National Review. King, who is known for his anti-Islam stances, spearheaded controversial hearings on the radicalization of Muslim-Americans in 2011 and also told CNN that “we can't be politically correct. I think we have to see, has radicalization extended into the Chechen community?" Tsarnaev, 19, was taken into custody on Friday night in Watertown, Mass., after a day-long manhunt following an early-morning shootout with police in which his older brother, Tamerlan, 26, was killed. The two are suspected of planting bombs that killed three people and injured more than 170 near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday. The ethnic Chechen brothers came to the U.S. in 2002 after fleeing the war-torn region. The two were born in the former Soviet territory now known as Kyrgyzstan. The younger brother became a citizen in 2012, while Tamerlan had a green card and was reportedly hoping to become a citizen. King is not the only one to speak out against Muslims, even though both brothers had lived in the United States for the past 11 years, which could tell more about their angst and frustration with the current economic, political and social situation in the country they were living in than their alleged faith. But that doesn't seem to bother our political leaders from speaking hate against Muslims as a whole. South Carolina's Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Saturday that the Tsarnaev brothers were on a “jihad mission." “Radical jihadists are trying to attack us here at home," the South Carolina Republican told Fox News. “Every day we face threats from radical Islamists and they are coming through our back yard and trying to radicalize American citizens." On Friday, an incident at San Francisco's BART showed just how dangerous the anti-Muslim sentiments can go when two boys refused to give up their seats allocated for senior citizens because the woman had on a higab – headscarf – denoting she was Muslim. They told the couple, “seats taken." Looking around, the car was nearly empty, but these boys refused to move. One of them, loud enough for the woman to hear, exclaimed, “won't give up my seat to a terrorist." Thankfully another passenger intervened before I got there and booted them off the next stop. I asked the couple as they took up their spots where they deserve their feeling. It was one of embarrassment, the husband said. “How long do we have to live like this?" he asked. “Every time something happens, whether a so-called Muslim does it or not, we all are to blame. This is not the America I knew growing up." It is the America of today. One of hatred toward Muslims. We can discount the 30,000 gun related crimes that exist annually, the school shootings – done by … “radical Christians” – and violence that this culture has engendered. Instead, when a bomb goes off the anti-Islam train begins to come to town. So much for unity. But it unfortunately gets worse. King, that gloriously elected official, has called for 30 days of “unlimited interrogation” against the remaining suspect. He is basically calling for American authorities to use whatever “tactics” (read: torture) against the man, even as other “terror” suspects in recent past talked, including Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. King acknowledged that once Shahzad started talking “he didn't stop," but added, “I don't want to give this younger brother, a terrorist–I don't want to give him the option to decide whether or not he's going to cooperate or not cooperate." My problem with this anti-Islam sentiment is that it is unfounded. It's a myth that has been created because of September 11, 2001. Certainly, it was understandable then, but today, over 11 years on maybe it is time to look at who is really killing the majority of Americans and who are the terrorists. The American government has been responsible for the deaths of over one million Muslims in the past decade, and drone attacks authorized by Obama continue to murder families in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Is that justification for violence, no? The school and theater shootings that we have witnessed in recent months killed more people and should be labeled terrorism. It it takes a bomb to be called a terrorist, then we have misunderstood the word. When white people kill, they are mentally unstable. But when Muslims kill they are crazy, or as King would likely say, “just Muslim.” BN
