And Yet Another One

[paft.livejournal.com]

From Thinkprogress: Often, the hate crimes against Sikhs originate out of misdirected Islamophobia: Sikh men can most easily be identified by their long beards and turbans, which they wear according to religious doctrine. Assailants will mistake these men for Muslims. According to a report by Reuters, Sikh groups have seen huge spikes in hate crimes since September 11th, 2001, right at the same time when anti-Muslim sentiment in the country began to grow rapidly.

This time it was a place of worship attacked by some nut wielding a legally purchased semi-automatic pistol. Yesterday, a white supremacist named Wade Michael Page apparently walked into a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek Wisconsin and opened fire with a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. The alleged gunman killed six before he was himself killed by a police officer returning fire.



As Thinkprogress has pointed out, Sikhs have sometimes been targeted by Islamophobes under the mistaken assumption that they are Muslims. This ugliness is likely to continue as right wing becomes more and more overt in openly attacking Muslims simply for being Muslims. Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachman has initiated what can only be described as a modern McCarthyite attack on Muslims like Hilary Clinton Aide Huma Abedin, and has been joined by Reps Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Tom Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland. Mosques have been vandalized and firebombed, their very right to exist under attack, not just by thugs with gasoline cans and spray paint, but by local groups seeking to stop new mosques from even being built. From the Louisiana congresswoman who thought Muslim applicants wouldn’t be included in proposed funding bill for religious schools, to the people in Tennessee outraged by the fact that a single Muslim student prays in an empty room during lunch:

Currently one Muslim student at Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro is allowed to pray in an empty room during lunch, said James Evans, spokesman for Rutherford County Schools.

Evans pointed out that Christian students hold a lunch Bible study at the same school and that a Christian club there called First Priority has several hundred members.

(Pete) Doughtie (owner of a local free newspaper) said Muslim students should assimilate to Christian culture. Rather than allowing Muslim students to pray, he’d rather see all students take part in a Christian prayer each day at school.

…these people are apparently unable to grasp that the religious freedom granted in our First Amendment applies to everyone – even nonChristian religions they dislike.

Oh, by the way, a Mosque burned down this morning in Joplin Missouri. It had been targeted by arsonists twice, once by someone burning a sign, more recently by a man spotted on security camera leaving incendiary material on the mosque’s roof in an attempted arson that fortunately did little damage.

The most recent fire destroyed the building. It has been deemed suspicious.

Just remember -- they're all isolated incidents. They couldn't possibly have anything to do with easy access to guns combined with incendiary political rhetoric and the increased mainstreaming of raw racism and bigotry. Isolated incidents.

No matter how many of them pile up.

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

Comments

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

They couldn't possibly have anything to do with easy access to guns

It seems like at least 4 out of 5 of them didn't.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

Also, since he was apparently a white supremacist, and the Sikhs were apparently all Indian, why is it assumed that he mistook them for muslims? And are people who attend neo-nazi events really all that influenced by anyone in Congress?

[paft.livejournal.com]

Because, as the article I linked to makes clear, Sikhs have frequently been targeted under the mistaken assumption that they are Muslims. Because Nazis like the alleged shooter tend not to be the sharpest, most well informed knives in the drawer, and because acceptance of bigotry at the top tends to heighten a sense of impunity for bigots throughout a society.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-xaipe-/]

It's assumed that he mistook them for Muslims because 1) he's obviously a fucking tool and 2) Sikhs are mistaken for Muslims all the time. People are idiots.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Because he did and this is a pattern that's actually recurred as far back as 2001? But that would require doing actual research which for all your complaints about calling Uzis automatics you're evidently not willing to do on this topic.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Here's evidence to prove that this is a very common pattern, but I predict in the usual fashion that it will be rejected for reasons not stated due to factors not mentioned because you say so:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/06/timeline-a-history-of-violence-against-sikhs-in-the-wake-of-911/

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/cnn-sikhs-unfairly-mistaken-for-muslims

http://punjabnewsexpress.com/news/5635-Mistaken-as-Muslims-Sikhs-have-faced-over-700-attacks-in-USA-since-911.aspx

Of course it never works to provide any evidence for assertions to certain people because they'll find a grocer's apostrophe and claim it invalidates an entire argument.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I believe the influence works the other way around. Neo-Nazis influence congressional representatives.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Which incidents do you havein mind?

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

The five you listed.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Well if they were muslims it would have been ok!

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

+1 for this sentiment.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Here is a song by the gunman's rock group. It talks about shooting "monkeys" for fun. I do not think religion mattered as much as did race in this case.

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

WaPo needs to hire a better researcher. Their latest article said the gunman let loose with a spray of bullets from automatic weapons fire.

Like an uzi. Or something.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

While it's unlikely it was an automatic weapon, both an uzi or a modified tec 9 can be considered 9mm handguns :P

[usekh.livejournal.com]

Because you know, that's what's important here.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Actually, considering the narrative that some people want to present, accuracy is important.
Most people on this forum are probably too young to remember Richard Speck who killed 8 student nurses in Chicago, armed with only a knife.

The thing is that some people (more so on other forums) want to make it more about the weapon than the actual dead people. Which I believe was kayjayuu's point.

[mausbern.livejournal.com]

Actually it is important. Because if someone wants to modify gun laws to better protect the public then they ought to know what kind of guns are most dangerous.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Technically speaking it does tend to call into question credibility of gun control advocates if they don't know what the fuck kind of guns they want banned in the first place. It's like going into the wilderness with some guy who mistakes a Pekingese dog for a Kodiak bear..

[telemann.livejournal.com]

If you read further down, they identified the weapon as a semi-automatic.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

That certainly changes everything in the story here...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Honestly, the way some of these people react the only difference between them and the old lynch mobs is that today's "conservatives" piously condemn them out of one side of their mouth and encourage them with the other when in the past they were the ones leading the lynch mobs and race riots.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And I can't wait to see how Badlydrawnjeff claims playing in white supremacist bands and being a member of a white supremacist organization doesn't make one racist and how we can't judge this based purely on allegations.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

…these people are apparently unable to grasp that the religious freedom granted in our First Amendment applies to everyone... - I could say the same for these people:



The alleged gunman killed six before he was himself killed by a police officer returning fire. - Well I'll be damned - it's a good thing that cop had a gun!

Often, the hate crimes against Sikhs originate out of misdirected Islamophobia... - A simple Wikipedia search would have stopped the misdirection dead in its tracks.

I just hope that people learn to knock it off with the knee-jerk reactions as to what some psycho's political affiliation is when it comes to mass shootings. Notice no one asked whose side James Holmes was on when it came to the Aurora shooting. Oh, wait...they did?

Editor's Note: An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted.

I feel sorry that Sikh's are being targeted falsely. I hope that more people educate themselves on what they're all about. As far as Muslims, not all of them are bad people. As with politics, religion has its fringe element.

[paft.livejournal.com]

d: s a good thing that cop had a gun!

...and was trained in its use and in how to react in a situation like this. Guns make it much easier to seriously injure and kill someone from a distance.

To hear some people talk, you'd think the cop would have done just as well with a knife.

d: Editor's Note: An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted.

Which is a vivid illustration of the difference between how ABC reacts to spreading false information and how Fox News does.

d: I just hope that people learn to knock it off with the knee-jerk reactions as to what some psycho's political affiliation is when it comes to mass shootings.

So you figure politics had nothing to do with the killings at the Sikh temple? Seriously?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

If Person B sees a media story about Person A shooting some people from ethnic group X and decides that's a good idea and goes out and does it too, that doesn't make the two incidents connected, no matter how many times you say it. Yes, no matter how many of them pile up, they will still all be unconnected, even if one influences another.