When you preach hate and intolerance, getting blamed for acts of violence due to hate and intolerance is the obvious conclusion. And today, after two Muslim men were shot in Queens New York, Donald Trump is being blamed.
A Queens, NY imam and his assistant were both shot by a lone gunman on Saturday as they left prayer services at the Al-Furqan Jame Masjid Mosque in Ozone Park.
The New York Daily News reported that both men were shot in the head at around 1:50 p.m. in broad daylight. Police have not released the victims’ names, only reported that one man is dead and the other is seriously injured.
Outside the mosque a group of congregants gathered to grieve and commiserate.
“That’s not what America is about,” said resident Khairul Islam to the Daily News. “We blame Donald Trump for this…Trump and his drama has created Islamophobia.”
Witnesses said the two men were walking together when a single gunman walked up to them and opened fire. The shooter is described as “tall and dark-skinned, carrying a large handgun, and wearing a dark blue shirt and short pants.”
“People being shot in the head in broad daylight is unheard of,” said Millat Uddin, a 25-year resident of the neighborhood to the Daily News. “Killing people brutally, like they’re an animal.”
“All of a sudden I heard five shots,” said a witness, “I knew it wasn’t firecrackers. And then the commotion of the emergency (vehicles), and that’s when I knew…When I came here, they were doing CPR to both of the people on the ground.”
Rosa Parks sat down at the front of a bus and received the wrath of the racists among her. Rose Hamid stood up at a Donald Trump rally and received the same wrath from the racists among her. Two different incidents at two different times in American history, same racist outcome.
Rose Hamid, a 56-year-old flight attendant, told CNN that she went to the rally wearing a t-shirt that read “I come in peace” because she “figured that most Trump supporters probably never met a Muslim so I figured that I’d give them the opportunity to meet one.”
When Trump claimed that Syrian refugees fleeing violence in Syria were affiliated with ISIS, Hamid and a friend stood up from their seats. Soon enough, security came to escort her out. The crowd, as it is wont to do at a Trump rally, saw the opportunity as a pulpit to better explain their candidate’s foreign policy ideas, telling Hamid to “Get out” and shouting “You have a bomb, you have a bomb,” she says.
“The crowd got this like, hateful crowd mentality as I was being escorted. It was really quite telling, and a vivid example of what happens when you start using this hateful rhetoric and how it can incite a crowd, where moments ago [it] was very kind to me.”
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And somewhere in the United States, hearing this news will obviously fill some people with excitement. Their party and its leaders are getting their wish to apply a religious test for Muslim-like people wishing to come to America. To hell with the Constitution, save the Second Amendment!
The Guardian identified one of the British travelers as Mohammad Tariq Mahmood, who said he was headed to Disneyland with his brother and nine of their children.
The group, according to the Guardian, was “about to embark on a dream holiday for which they had saved for months, were approached by officials from US homeland security as they queued in the departure lounge and told their authorisation to travel had been cancelled, without further explanation.”
“We were devastated,” Mahmood told the British TV station ITV. “We’d planned this trip for two months — the kids were excited — and all of a sudden some person just comes and says ‘you’re not allowed to board the plane,’ with no explanation.”
“We were alienated,” he added, “the way we were just taken out the room.”
Mahmood said the children were “devastated” and had “tears in their eyes.”
In an interview with the BBC, Mahmood said he was taken aside by a British border control official just before his family was due to board the flight — and that the children knew almost instantly what was happening.
“We were the only family that were Asian, Muslim appearance. It was embarrassing that we were the only family that were taken out,” he said. “When they saw me shaking my head, the younger ones started crying. They knew straight away.”
No American officials told them why they weren’t being allowed to enter the United States, Mahmood told the Guardian, but he said the reason was “obvious.”
“It’s because of the attacks on America — they think every Muslim poses a threat,” he told the newspaper.
President Obama used his weekly address to once again address the terrorism fears in American and worldwide, and the steps his administration has taken and will continue to take, in fighting the terrorist threat.
This week, Americans across our country have shown what it means to be strong in the face of terrorism. In San Bernardino, even as the community continues to grieve, people are refusing to be ruled by fear. Across the county, dedicated public servants are on the job – and more will be returning to work this week. Faith communities have come together in fellowship and prayer. Families lined the streets for the annual children’s Christmas parade—because we can’t let terrorists change how we live our lives.
Meanwhile, our men and women in uniform are stepping up our campaign to destroy ISIL. Our airstrikes are hitting ISIL harder than ever, in Iraq and Syria. We’re taking out more of their fighters and leaders, their weapons, their oil tankers. Our Special Operations Forces are on the ground—because we’re going to hunt down these terrorists wherever they try to hide. In recent weeks, our strikes have taken out the ISIL finance chief, a terrorist leader in Somalia and the ISIL leader in Libya. Our message to these killers is simple—we will find you, and justice will be done.
This week, we’ll move forward on all fronts. On Monday, I’ll go to the Pentagon. And there, I’ll review our military campaign and how we can continue to accelerate our efforts. Later in the week, I’ll go to the National Counterterrorism Center. There, I’ll review our efforts—across our entire government—to prevent attacks and protect our homeland. And this week, the Department of Homeland Security will update its alert system to ensure Americans get more information, including steps that you and your communities can take to be vigilant and to stay safe.
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This is Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani woman who traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet the man who will later become her husband and partner in crime, Syed Rizwan Farook. Farook, born in America but also of Pakistani descent, brought Malik to the United States on a K1 visa and married her. Days ago, the husband and wife suited up and went to a facility in San Bernardino that specialized in catering to the disabled and murdered 14 people at a Christmas party. Another 21 people were injured.
Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook were both shot and killed hours later by police. The FBI has since classified the massacre in San Bernardino as a terrorist attack, claiming that evidence suggests one or maybe both shooters were “radicalized” by external forces.
The investigation continues.
I came across this video while browsing YouTube. I had to share.
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In a video message done in French, the hacktivist group Anonymous vowed to avenge the deaths and murders of the souls lost at Charlie Hebdo. “We can not fall to the ground. It is our duty to react,” the group said.
The group vowed to fight for the “inviolate and sacred right to express opinions in any way” and said those who opposed freedom of expression can expect “a massive frontal assault from us, because the struggle for the defense of these freedoms is the foundation of our movement.”
“We are declaring war against you, the terrorists” and vowed to close accounts on social networks linked to terrorists. He wore a Guy Fawkes mask to disguise his identity.
Republicans. They call themselves the party of inclusiveness. This is apparently how they grow their membership.
Gavin Ellzey, the vice chairman of the Kansas Republican 3rd Congressional District Committee, advised on Twitter in early July that “offending Muslims is the duty of any civilized person.”
Ellzey added, “Especially with a .45.”
In an interview with The Star, the Overland Park resident acknowledged writing the tweet in response to television news reports about Christians being “crucified” overseas.
“Sometimes you overreact,” Ellzey said.
“I’ve had folks call me,” he added. “I’m not trying to offend anybody. I sure wouldn’t shoot anybody. I don’t even own a gun.”
He said he later deleted the tweet.
A 12-year-old Brooklyn boy says in a lawsuit that he was barred from boarding a city bus after the driver heard the youngster reciting a Muslim prayer and branded him a “terrorist.”
The unidentified plaintiff was searching for his MetroCard as the B36 Bus pulled up on Sheepshead Bay Road last October, according to the suit, filed Friday in Brooklyn Federal Court.
He began reciting a Muslim prayer: “I stand in the name of God the most merciful, the most beneficent,” the suit states. The driver became alarmed, called the boy a “terrorist” and slammed the door shut, the boy’s lawyer, Hyder Naqvi, told the Daily News.
“The driver said ‘Get off!’” and used the T-word,” Naqvi said, referring to the word “terrorist.”
The lawyer said the boy was so hurt afterwards that he was didn’t want to use public transportation, but later he became angry and is resolved to right the wrong.
“He was two days shy of turning 11 when this happened, but he’s old enough to know what it feels like to be discriminated against,” Naqvi said.
Dumb people come a dime a dozen and for some strange reason, ten of the dozen comes from the Republican party. Here’s an example:
A radio host in Sacramento is asking his listeners to post negative ads and comments about Islam and their leader, Prophet Mohammed. I guess the killing of innocent Americans in Islāmic countries and the fact that deployed troops would be in danger means nothing to these wing-nuts if the outcome of their rants is havoc in the world and an opportunity for them to blame President Obama for that havoc.
Jack Armstrong on KSTE’S Armstrong & Getty show asked his listeners to post negative ads about the prophet Mohammad.
“Some of you people that are good with the computer make an anti-Mohammed ad post it to Al Jazeera. We need to swamp them with ads until they grow up,” said Armstrong.
“We just ask for you to respect other faiths just as in the Muslim faith we don’t insult Christians and Jews and other prophets,” said Sacramento area Muslim Tawfiq Morrar. “Couple hundred in the streets of Afghanistan do not represent the 25 million residents of Afghanistan. That said, we know that Jack Armstrong does not represent the majority of Americans.”
Thanks to a certain “news” station, President Obama’s Faith is still a puzzle to many Americans… or maybe they prefer to keep it a puzzle. Although there are well documented examples of the President’s Christian belief, there are still people out there who think Mr. Obama as a Muslim and others claim they simply do not know what his religion is.
We will chalk up this dumbing down of Americans to the good ole boys over at Fox News. With News stations like Fox, who needs a propaganda machine?
Forty-nine percent of voters identify President Obama as a Christian, a new poll says, and the others say that they don’t know or that he is a Muslim.
“Nearly four years into his presidency the view that Barack Obama is Muslim persists,” says the survey from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.
According to the poll on religion and politics, 17% say Obama is a Muslim, while 31% say they do not know his religion.
“Fewer say Obama is Christian — and more say he is Muslim — than did so in October 2008, near the end of the last presidential campaign,” Pew reported. “The increase since 2008 is particularly concentrated among conservative Republicans, about a third of whom (34%) describe the president as a Muslim.”
