Another year. Another Sept. 11 anniversary. Another opportunity for grievance-mongering Muslim agitators to decry the imagined "epidemic" of "Islamophobia."
South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) convened with Mad Maxine Waters and other House Democrats in Washington, D.C., to mark a somber occasion this week. No, not the coordinated jihadi mass murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people of all races, nationalities and religions on 9/11. Instead, they lamented Sept. 12 -- "the 16-year anniversary of the day that South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Arab, and Middle Eastern Americans woke up to a new political reality in which the safety of our lives and the security of our homes were irrevocably compromised."
For left-wing zealots, the bloody lash of worldwide Islamic terrorism pales in comparison to the so-called "backlash" against Muslims. SAALT disseminated prefab tweets and declarations naming President Trump, outspoken anti-sharia activist Brigitte Gabriel and her grass-roots group, ACT for America, as well as "law enforcement, immigration enforcement, vigilantes," and "white supremacists" as their enemies.
They're all the same to the tolerance mob.
And "backlash" is a catchall trash can for everything from sideward glances to off-color jokes to offensive cartoons to unresolved crimes to actual acts of intimidation or physical violence. Mixed in with two shootings and a stabbing over the past year classified as hate crimes, SAALT noted that in August, "a Minnesota mosque was firebombed in what the governor rightly declared an 'act of terrorism.'"
One of those things is not like the other. I contacted the FBI this week to ask about the Minnesota mosque incident. It is unsolved after more than a month, and a $30,000 reward for information remains unclaimed. An agent based in Minneapolis acknowledged to me that "it's always a possibility" that the crime may be a hoax.
That's what the Sept. 12 gripers want you to forget: People lie. And too many Muslim opportunists deceive in order to distract and divide.
Just two weeks ago, an alleged hate crime fell apart after a 22-year-old Muslim man admitted he had "exaggerated" an assault in a Durham, Ontario park restroom. Canadian police dropped charges against a 57-year-old man whom the Muslim man claimed had shouted anti-Muslim epithets and punched him in the face.
"We could have charged him with obstructing police or mischief and he was cautioned for those two offences," a police official told the Toronto Sun. But the faker escaped without punishment.
In late August, Indiana State University professor Azhar Hussain received one year's probation for fabricating anti-Muslim threats and an assault. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of obstruction for justice and harassment after lying to cops this spring about being attacked and sending anti-Muslim hate mails to the school.
"Based upon the investigation, it is our belief that Hussain was trying to gain sympathy by becoming a victim of anti-Muslim threats, which he had created himself," the campus police chief concluded.
In June, a small fire at a Des Moines, Iowa, mosque generated national headlines -- until a young Muslim woman was arrested for starting it.
"Security cameras in the mosque showed a woman, later identified as Aisha Ismail, 22, pouring lighter fluid on the carpet and then starting the fire," police reported. "It doesn't appear that she was trying to burn the place down," the local chief said. "It seems like she was trying to make a statement."
In Houston, a "suspicious" fire at a Houston mosque in 2015 turned out to have been set by one of the center's own worshipers who prayed there five times a day for five years. The unindicted terror-funding co-conspirators at CAIR-Houston had clamored for law enforcement authorities to "investigate a possible bias motive for this fire" due to "the recent spike in hate incidents targeting mosques nationwide."
That same year, New Yorker Kashif Parvaiz was convicted of murdering his wife in front of his child after police debunked his cover story of being attacked by a group of bigots who called the family "terrorists."
For every rare and bona fide act of "Islamophobia" in North America, there are multiple acts of Islamo-faux-bia ginned up to stir attention, milk public compassion and generate unfounded fear.
It's bad enough when the Islamo-faux-bists operate any other time of year. It's downright disgusting when they exploit the true horrors of 9/11 to hype their delusions of systemic post-9/12 oppression and collective victimhood.
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