Jehron Muhammad: Muslims: Guilty Until Proven Innocent
The two extremes of blatant fear-mongering of the world's Muslim population by such serial Islamophobes as presidential hopeful Donald Trump and the more reasonable sounding Bill Maher have reached a fever's pitch.
Since the brutal killing in San Bernardino, Calif., that left 14 dead, America and its increasing mass shooters - 462 lives taken so far this year - have taken a back seat, as Maher recently tweeted, to the far more dangerous terrorist.
Trying to get out in front of the media's assumption, according to salon.com, that "Muslims are guilty until proven innocent" and that there might be some kind of flaw in Islam that causes Muslims to revert to violence to settle perceived grievances, Islamic organizations like CAIR (Council On American Islamic Relations) feel obligated to hold a press conference to show Muslim remorse and to somehow explain away these increasing tragedies.
During one such press conference, CAIR hired attorneys David Chesley and Mohammad Abuershaid, for the family members of the alleged shooter Syed Farook, who took the western press to task for its "cookie cutter" approach trying to "superimpose it on a situation just because that person is of the Muslim faith," said Chesley.
"When a Christian goes to shoot up a planned parenthood (facility), or an extremist Catholic goes and bombs an abortion clinic," Chesley said, "all the headlines don't say extremist radical Christian or Catholic."
This double standard is worth noting and reminds me of the events of 1862. Just before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a New York Times headline proclaimed: "What Should We Do With The Negro." The growing question, during this presidential race, increasingly appears to be, "What should we do with the Muslims?"
According to Trump's latest outrage, it includes a database system for tracking all Muslims, and a call to block members of the Islamic faith from entering the United States. The fact that his numbers in the polls continues to increase, making him far out front of any Republican rival, suggests that his anti-Muslim remarks are gaining traction.
The fact that anti-Muslim attacks are on the increase suggest that Trump and his ilk have tapped into the defective underbelly that reunites us with America's history of scapegoating various racial, ethnic and religious faiths.
"Recent vandalism and threats at mosques… (are) coming in so fast and furious," reported USA Today, "that they are impossible to track." Muslims across the United States are so concerned with the country's anti-Islamic atmosphere that Muslim women that this author spoke with are changing their daily routines. One woman went to open her place of business and found a bullet-ridden Quran at her door step. Responding to recent threats, a Philadelphia Masjid has sent out a robo-call to its members, for fear of adding "gasoline to an already raging fire," saying to not give statements to the press.
Lost in this increase of mass killings and "Islamic radicalization" is that the Republicans ignore the fact that while this nation suffers through yet another bloody massacre, the following day every Senate Republican except Mark Kirk of Illinois voted against legislation preventing persons on the FBI's consolidated watch-list from purchasing guns or explosives.
And to add insult to injury on the same day as the San Bernardino massacre a group of doctors, dressed in white coats, descended on Capital Hill and delivered 2,000 physician signatures urging Congress to lift the 20-year congressional ban on federally funded gun-violence research.
As Public Radio International reported, the House Appropriations Committee voted to reject an amendment in June that would allow the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to study the relationship between gun ownership and gun violence.
What should we make of all of this? President Obama said his remarks after yet another mass shooting are becoming "too common." This past summer, the Congressional Research Service report said that mass shootings are becoming "more common, more deadly," and the frequency between these incidents has substantially narrowed.
These mass public attacks like the shooting in a church in Charleston that left nine dead and the three killed at an abortion clinic in Colorado, as the report stated, suggest the randomness of these mass shootings.
To indict the religion of 1.5 billion Muslims when mass killings have more to do with America's fascination with guns, then terrorist attacks, means, as the Quran says, "the consequences of your actions," in this case inaction, "are sealed."