In light of news that the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings were from predominantly Islamic Chechnya, students and professors at Boston University said U.S. citizens should not create harmful generalizations about the Muslim community and violence.
“Violence doesn’t necessarily belong to Muslim extremism any more than it belongs to any other form of extreme behavior,” said College of Fine Arts professor André de Quadros, a member of the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations. “We, in this country, are victims of violence even to people who are not Muslim.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two suspects, has been described as an Islamic extremist by various media outlets in the days following the attacks. Tamerlan, who was killed after a shootout with police in Watertown, was the older brother of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is now in police custody.
The relationship between extremist Islam and violence is a complex one, and as such, students must be wary of jumping to conclusions, Quadros said.
“The most dangerous thing that can happen is, once again, that Muslim students, that Muslim peace-loving people, are targeted for hate or exclusion,” he said.
Religion professor Kecia Ali said generalizations that equate the Muslim community with violence stem from the urgency of Americans to understand the attack on Boston on April 15.
“People want to make sense,” Ali said. “When one looks for explanations, simple explanations are often the most compelling.”
She said the media has focused on terrorist events associated with Islam, such as the Tsarnaev brothers’ alleged association with Islam, and other instances of mass violence in America, such as the Colorado theater massacre in July and the Newtown shootings in December.
Ali said since the Marathon bombings, students on campus have had conversations about the way society views violence in America.
“Just as after 9/11, just as in the wake of the Park 51 controversy about building a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center, there are people on campus who are engaged in ongoing dialogue,” she said.
The most powerful tool students have in combatting stereotypes, particularly those directed toward members of the Muslim community, is caution in how they make associations and ask questions, Ali said.
“It’s not necessarily about the answers we give to questions — it’s about the questions we choose to ask and the connections we choose to draw,” she said.
Although she said she does not know exactly how Muslim students on campus are directly affected by prejudices against Islam, Ali said many student groups fight against stereotyping by supporting religious tolerance.
“At BU, student organizations such as the Interfaith Council and others have been really integral to starting ongoing dialogues about integration, coexistence, commonalities, difference and the ways in which religious students from a variety of religious traditions have things in common,” she said.
Ahmet Selim, a sixth-year Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student who identifies as Muslim, said it is not uncommon to see unfair reporting of the brothers’ association with Islam, even in the mainstream media.
“We are seeing an immediate spike in identification of all of American Muslims … as somehow guilty [of the bombing],” Selim said.
Stereotyping can be combated through media and education, he said.
“Muslim organizations … have programs to reach out to the larger public to rectify misunderstandings about Islam and emphasize the point that these radical types are basically the minority,” he said. “But, it is also a civic duty for everyone to stand against hate speech toward American Muslims.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
Every time there is a jihad terror attack or foiled plot, the mainstream media fills up with stories about Muslims worrying about a “backlash.” The “backlash” never materializes. In reality, the steady drumbeat of false stories about (alleged) fears of “backlash” are maliciously designed to deflect attention away from jihad attacks and create false sympathy for the attackers.
David J. Rusin noted in National Review last January, “a detailed analysis of FBI statistics covering ten full calendar years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks reveals that, on a per capita basis, American Muslims, contrary to spin, have been subjected to hate crimes less often than other prominent minorities. From 2002 to 2011, Muslims are estimated to have suffered hate crimes at a frequency of 6.0 incidents per 100,000 per year – 10 percent lower than blacks (6.7), 48 percent lower than homosexuals and bisexuals (11.5), and 59 percent lower than Jews (14.8). Americans should keep these numbers in mind whenever Islamists attempt to silence critics by falsely invoking (alleged) Muslim victimhood.”
American academics have a duty to stop uncritically parroting the factually discredited propaganda taqiyya that offers aid and comfort to Islamo-supremacists.
You nailed it pard.
Hate Crime Stats Deflate ‘Islamophobia’ Myth
by David J. Rusin
National Review Online
January 11, 2013
http://www.islamist-watch.org/12057/hate-crime-stats-deflate-islamophobia-myth
Manufacturing ‘Islamophobia’ at UC Berkeley
by Cinnamon Stillwell
FrontPage Magazine
January 25, 2013
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/12786
Letter I wrote in response to above “Hate Crime Stats” article:
Letter Re Murtaza Hussain Al-Jazeera Article 1-3-13
“Anti-Muslim violence spiralling out of control in America”
“This includes a string of murders specifically targeting Middle Eastern storekeepers”
I went to the “Middle Eastern” link Hussain hi-lites in his article.
In the picture of those at the funeral; What are those things those people are wearing on their heads? Gee, they look like those Marmaluke hats the Jews wear… …oops. Sorry. “Yarmulke” or “Kippah”.
And what do the cops say in the article?
“NYPD spokesman Paul Browne was hesitant to link the killings to a bias against Middle Easterners, saying the evidence so far does not support the theory.”
And what’s this?:
“Vahidipour, 78, a devout Jew from Iran”
And this:
“On Aug. 6, Isaac Kadare, 59, also from Egypt but of Jewish faith, was discovered shot in the head and slashed in the neck in his Bensonhurst store, Amazing 99 Cent Deal.”
I don’t see that fact that Jews were murdered in this article.
And the picture they have of the suspect; Is it… …I’m not sure. Is that a White Supremist Skinhead? With a swastika tattooed on his face? Nooo. Gee. It looks like a black guy.
And I’m wondering how well adjusted mentally this guy will turn out to be. Like the deranged woman who pushed that man in front of the commuter train. Who was obviously MENTALLY ILL!!!!
It’s incredible how… ….wait a minute. Let me check this out. Nope. Had to make sure; I was wondering if he cited Anders Brevik like so many Looney Toons. And Al-Jazeera being LoonWatch’s big brother well…. ….at least he didn’t stoop that low.
Anyway THAT’s the example he chooses to use as THE example of “out of control anti-Muslim violence.” (It’s that “violence” part that really cracks me up.)
Let’s see; Hussain sites “FBI statistics” through his link “nearing record highs”. Which is nothing but a link to another biased article with this quote:
“FBI’s latest statistics show anti-Muslim crimes in 2011 dipped only slightly from that recent peak”
Which, when I hit the link, has NO mention of “anti-Muslim crimes”. (See what’s happenin’ here?) If you’re going to “quote” something, at least have THOSE WORDS at the end of the link.
As it happens I did go to the links for 2002, 2010 and 2011 on the FBI site.
This is what I found as I spot-checked the “crimes against” catagories:
In 2002 statistics showed that in 2002 there were:
170 crimes of bias against “Islamic” victims.
And 1,039 bias crimes against Jewish victims.
In 2010 of the 1,552 victims of “Hate Crimes” 67% were Jewish and 12.7% were Islamic.
In 2011 of the 1,480 victims of “Hate Crimes” 63.2% were Jewish and 12.5% were Islamic.
Who are the real victims here… …statistically?
While looking up “Yarmulke” in Nathan Ausabel’s “The Book of Jewish Knowledge” I came across some information on Jewish “martyrdom”. Now here are some horrific “statistics. All through history Jews have been hounded and tormented. And it’s the Muslims who have inflicted some of the worst attrocities. Read “Slavery, Terrorism and Islam” by Peter Hammond. He’s got a few statistics in his book as well. Regarding this thing called “jihad”.
I’ll let you work out the “out of the hundreds of millions of Americans” so on and so forth.
The thing is, yet again, it’s not “hate-mongers” or “Islamophopes” who give us reasons to distrust Muslims. It’s Islam itself! Because all they can do is lie and hype anything that MIGHT be the truth. The bottom line is that this entire article is a fraud. Whenever someone starts screaming about “anti-Muslim” this or that I keep thinking about those others who try to mislead you by ommiting those inconvenient facts; like there were JEWISH victims who were murdered by a BLACK GUY!!!
Or that Jews are ten times more likely to be a victim of a “hate crime” than Arabs will ever be.
And to quote The Southern Poverty Law Center about anything… ….puh-leeeeze!
Here are some books. That’s if I get by the Al-Jazeera Censors.
Oh, but before I do that:
Islamists Project Islam’s Worst Traits onto Christians by Raymond Ibrahim
raymondibrahim-com/9669/islamists-project-islam-worst-traits-onto
Muslims Project Islam’s Worst Traits onto Israel and the Jews by Raymond Ibrahim
raymondibrahim-com/8348/muslims-project-islam-worst-traits-onto-israel
My “Islamic” education:
The Haj by Leon Uris
The Source by James Michener
Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld, (CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood), That’s Conspiring to Islamize America by Gaubatz and Sperry
Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America by Brigitte Gabriel
Slavery, Terrorism and Islam, (and Holocaust in Rwanda), by Peter Hammond
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism by Andrew G. Bostom
The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew G. Bostom MD
A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden
The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America by David Horowitz
Ivory Towers On Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America by Martin Kramer
Indoctrination U: The Left’s War Against Academic Freedom by David Horowitz
Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores by Michelle (the hottest woman on the planet) Malkin
Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington by Paul Sperry
American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us by Steven Emerson
The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America by Andre C. McCarthy
Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance by Pamela Geller
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The Book of Jewish Knowledge by Nathan Ausubel
Justice Not Vengeance by Simon Wiesenthal
The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia by Tim Tzouliadis
The New Moody Atlas of the Bible by Barry J. Beitzel
The Al Qaeda Reader by Raymond Ibrahim
Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law
Sahih al-Bukhari (With Sheikh Humaid’s article on Jihad and plug by Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid)
The Koran: Pickthall
Quran: Yusuf Ali: Translated by Prof. Syed Vickar Ahmed
Holy Qur’an with Commentary: Maulana Muhammad Ali
The Second Message of Islam by Mahmoud Mohamed Taha
“The relationship between extremist Islam and violence is a complex one, and as such, students must be wary of jumping to conclusions, Quadros said.”
Really? You could have fooled me. It seems pretty straight forward.
Mohammed – as recorded in the Quran, Hadiths and Sunnah – commands his followers to wage violent Jihad until non-believers submit to Islam. What could be more simple than that?
Of course, the fact that we see examples of this happening every day throughout Asia, the Middle East and North Africa should help make this point clear but maybe Quadros chooses not to ever read the news.
“Stereotyping can be combated through media and education, he said.”
Or stereotyping can be combated when Muslims stop killing, gang-raping and torturing people throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, Bali, London, Spain, Boston, Russia, China and elsewhere.
Oh, wait, when is a stereotype not a stereotype? When it is a reality.
Oh noes! Even Europeans scoff at the American Left’s pernicious “backlash” nonsense.
UK-Telegraph: “Where is the mob of Muslim-hating Americans going crazy after Boston? It’s a figment of liberals’ imaginations”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100213507/
“…Time and again, Left-leaning campaigners and observers respond to terror attacks in the West by panicking about the possibly racist response of Joe Public – and time and again, their fears prove ill-founded and Joe Public proves himself a more decent, tolerant person than they give him credit for. What this reveals is that liberal concern over Islamophobia, liberal fretting about anti-Muslim bigotry, is ironically driven by a bigotry of its own, by an deeply prejudiced view of everyday people as hateful and stupid. The anti-Islamophobia lobby poses as the implacable opponent of bigotry, yet it spreads a bigoted view of ordinary white folk as so volatile, so brimming with fury, that they are one terrorist bombing away from transforming into an anti-Muslim pogrom. Yes, some prejudiced things have been said about Muslims post-Boston; but far more prejudiced things are being said or implied about ordinary Americans.”
/spot on
The preponderance of evidence clearly demonstrates that Islamo-supremacism (specifically, Chechen-Wahhabism) motivated the “COEXIST” bombers.
These professors’ feigned inability to evaluate evidence and arrive at rational conclusions is not “complex”– it is merely childish evasion that is likely motivated by Candorphobia.
FACT: Most Leftist media speculation focused on how the bombings appeared to be the work of “right-wing extremists” or “Tea Partiers.”
Today, will all those Leftists who offered similar analyses apologize their orchestrated media smear campaign? They almost certainly will not– and even worse, they will not be held accountable. No matter how often journalists are wrong, they never get questioned or jettisoned.
Q: What’s the Chechen word for “Quisling”?
A: Quadros
Oh, puhleeze stop insulting our intelligence with this craven nonsense. We all know that Islam IS inherently violent, that it teaches its adherents to hate non-believers and to subjugate women, that it is responsible for the deaths of some 270 million people globally since its inception, and that it was begun by a warlord said to have had sex with a nine-year-old girl and the slaves he made of the wives of the men he killed in battle.
WTF is wrong with the American intellectuals who pretend to know Islam but who obviously do not? Are they all paid off? They need to be fired from their positions and driven into irrelevance for their disgraceful opinions.
TIME FOR HONESTY, PLEASE.
Plan one: Educate non-muslims about Islam
Plan two: Muslims stop bombing/honor killing/rapine etc
Which plan do you think would work best to boost the public’s outllook on Islam?
Actually, the more people who are educated about the hate, violence, homophobia, misogyny, murder, oppression, pedophilia, deception, and cruelty that is clearly spelled out in the Islamic literature from the Koran to the Hadiths — all of which are enshrined in the constitutions of Muslim countries — the more the public in the modern, advanced, free world will grow to hate and despise and block the advancement of sharia law (which is, by definition, Islam). So what you’ve posed is a trick question. Isn’t it?
Save your educating for the Muslims who are doing this. We aren’t tarring all Muslims with a broad brush. The reality of Islam is the problem; what Islam ‘IS’ is so obvious we cannot hear rationalizations to the contrary.
Instead whitewashing a fascist religious ideology called islam, maybe the media should educate the people about the dangers of islam and tell women (and men) NEVER to marry a muslim unless you want a life of oppression, abuse, intimidation, beating and death threats. I am liberal myself which is why I have the duty to fight and oppose islam and muslims wherever I meet them. Islam is intolerant, violent, homophobic, anti-semitic, christianophobic, backward, bigoted and a threat to every non-muslim, no matter what that person’s religion is.
All non-muslims should unite and defeat islam for good.
“(the murdering in Boston the name of Islam)…should not create harmful generalizations about the Muslim community and violence.”
Here’s your assignment for the week: Research all the passages of violence and murder and oppression against non-Muslims, women, and those who try and leave Islam that you will find in the Koran. You can stop when you get to 100. Then take those 100 exact quotes and research on the internet how many times those quotes end up in the mouths of Islamic supremacist terrorists. This will take some time. A lot more than a week. After all, there have been over 20,000 fully documented deadly jihad attacks across the world since 9/11 and in virtually every instance the killers were shouting “Allah Akhbar” and often quoting the Koran and the hadiths on the net before they started murdering for Allah.
You know what? You won’t do it, will you? No — you won’t educate yourself because you don’t want to. Let me tell you, willful ignorance is no way to go through life. And neither is listening to the lies and deception (taqiyya is the word to use here — Islamic lying to deceive and advance Islam) or those who are only appealing to what you want to hear. What are you going to university for? Think about it. Get an education while you’re there. Question. Really start questioning.
Many Muslims are guilty of infidelophobia. I’d like to see education and media address this.
The professor does not know that much about Islam,
read sura 5:14 of the Quran,there Allah curses CHRISTIANS “until de DAY of RESURRECTION”.The same in sura 5:64,
JEWS are cursed by Allah “until the DAY of RESURRECTION”.
If I said that about black and brown people you would condemn me and call me bigot,racist,a hater.So the Quran has to be condemned as hateful.It doesn t curse only some at a certain time and place but UNTIL the DAY of RESURECTION.
Stereotyping of muslims can be combated through education?
First of all, I am most grateful that my professors were educated and rational men.
Second, the entirety of the 1400 year history of Islam is one of violent aggression against non-muslims, to spread the authority of Islam. When in power, it is the history of misogyny and oppression. Every recognized Islamic authority is in complete accord with the interpretations of anti-Islamic critics. All eminent philosophers and scholars educe the same view. All four colleges of Sunni Jurisprudence, and the single Shiiah uniformly support Jihad, the subordination of women, the dhimmlitude of all non-muslims. Every holy writing, the Q’uran and the Hadiths, Sura’s five and nine coming later supersede the instructions in the earlier parts of the book, comprise at the core of Islam Slavery to god, a canonized bigotry against Jews, Christians, polytheists…
The sad truth is, that the biggest lie in all of this is, that good and moderate muslims may well be the best of people, but they are lousy Muslim. The supposed fringe element that is said by western apologists to be usurping the peaceful Islam, which numbers from some Five-hundred Million to over a billion depending on how you look, are the ones who follow their precepts of Islam, and the commands of their Prophet, including the order to lie about anything that might be an embarrassment to islam. This is why debates and discussions with western apologists result inevitably in personal attacks against critics. They have no evidence supporting their side. They certainly can’t cite the actual criminal statistics.
Every time Islamist groups insist that there will be a violent backlash against Muslims over this, it is just another way to accuse the west of being bigoted, and sliding the toes of the Jihad just a little further into our culture. Screaming Islamophobia does the exact same thing. Never forget, though, that if innocent muslims are targeted by actual bigots, and not just those who justly criticize the supremacist, jihadist, and political cores of Islam, our laws and our good people will act to marginalize those bigots very quickly. We don’t need to tolerate being called bigots to do so, given the history of the american people in acting to aid others in genuine need.
So exactly what education are they talking about? Was it merely that they couldn’t spell indoctrination? Do my taxes and fees pay these professors (may Allah be pleased with them.), to educate my children? I promise you, I will be looking into that tomorrow.
CoffeyC
The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America by David Horowitz
Ivory Towers On Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America by Martin Kramer
Indoctrination U: The Left’s War Against Academic Freedom by David Horowitz
See the rest of my suggestions above.
If universities still sought after the truth instead of leftist propaganda these professors would never have got tenure. Thankfully, due to the internet, these leftist black holes are becoming irrelevent. We have had irrefutable evidence of islam’s reality for some time. Start using your knowledge to influence those around you. With reasoned argument and facts you will open their eyes to the reality they are living in, even if the mainstream media continues to hide it. Start voting for those who are closer to your views and encourage others to do the same.
Depending on the analysis you choose, about 60% of the Qur’an is malevolent content. Why ‘academics’ cannot see, or refuse to see, this point is either based upon stupidity, ignorance, or outright denial and deception (taqqiyah).
As a nation, we first directly faced the Islamists during the Barbary Wars (1801-1815). If you look up the historical accounts, the descriptions of Islamists of the day, you’ll see that very little has changed 200 years on. The violence that is committed by Islamists today is no different than the violence that was practiced than, and going back 1400 years.
Islam is an socio-religio-political ideology. At it’s core is the spreading of Islam and the word of Muhammad, the conquering or conversion of all non-Muslims, and death to any who refuse to believe in their “God”. Anyone who tries to put modern Islamic attacks in the context of modern events is simply lying to themselves and everyone else, or is simply delusional.