At a meeting with White House advisers on Monday, the leader of a Muslin group urged the federal government to prosecute violence against Muslims as hate crimes, citing an uptick in incidents since the Paris terrorist attacks.
“We believe the level of hate violence has reached a crisis point, and that’s why it’s crucial that the federal government needs to send a message to the public, in the strongest terms, that these hate crimes will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group in San Francisco, told the New York Times after the meeting.
Khera told the Times that Muslim Advocates has seen 50 attacks on Muslims reported since the Paris attacks — an average of two per day.
About a dozen Muslim leaders met with White House senior advisers on Monday to discuss an uptick in violence against and hateful rhetoric about Muslims, according to the Times.
“They were expressing a genuine concern about the environment of anti-Muslim hate and violence, and really wanted to hear from the community about the impact and what the federal government can do,” Khera told the Times about the White House representatives comments during the meeting.
She said the group discussed a plan for the Education Department to give guidance to school on how to handle anti-Muslim bullying.
Since the shooting in San Bernardino, Muslims and mosques throughout the U.S. have been targeted with vandalism, threats, and violence.
The problem is that the president is as unable to stop the back lash, as he was to stop the original lash. As stupid an trite as it is to say, things happen. The best we can do is to be charitable ourselves and encourage others to do likewise.
MUSLIms Should BE BARRed FROM the US for THEIR OWN safety. LIKE TRUMP Said. -TRUMP 2016!!
I am so ashamed of America these days. I thought we were better than this. Those Republican politicians are frightening. We should be taking lessons from Canada, who welcomes refugees.
It should be a hate crime because that is exactly what it is. These attacks are pro-hate as much as they are anti-Muslim.
The mean streak that runs through the Republican Party just lies in wait for whom or what to go after next.
The dumbass Repubs will keep pushing until they get attacked back and then they’ll play the helpless victim crap as per the norm and the plan.
If the Muslims were the boogeyman that the ®s fear, they would’ve already stole their lunch money and eaten their babies.
The hate from the right has thus far not begat hate back from their imagined enemies.
In the case of the Republican Party, hate begets disgust and hate begets disdain.
Love will win without even trying because it is the bigger and better side of all things!
I am so glad that I have not been reading (at least on sites like this one) calls to “fix it”.
There is a collateral wave which will be associated with the Islamic world in this “backlash”. People who are Muslim. People who appear to be Muslim. People who are Muslim and not eyeballed as such (but are just as concerned as those who are thought to be Muslim).
This especially affects those of the Indian subcontinent, as well as Latin Americans.
The other complicating factor is that we are talking about co-religionists, which assumes a greater importance than simply point of origin.
Finally, the additional murkiness of the value of socialization into a culture as opposed to an overriding alternative socialization…all within the same individual.
I cannot say that the dynamics coming into play with the emergence of ISIL would have been appreciably slower to develop had it not been for the G.W. Bush Iraq War. But I will say that it certainly did not help the situation.