9/21 terror

The date was September 21, 2011, ten days after the 9/11 terror attacks by Islamist followers of Osama bin Laden:

Stroman was on a shooting spree, targeting people who appeared to be Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent. Stroman is due to be executed July 20; Bhuiyan, the only survivor of the attacks, is fighting to save his life.

When Stroman entered the gas station, Bhuiyan initially thought it was a routine robbery.

"I opened the cash register, offered him the cash, and requested him not to shoot me," Bhuiyan tells weekends on All Things Considered host Laura Sullivan. "In reply he asked me, 'Where are you from?' And the question seemed strange to ask during a robbery. And I said, 'Excuse me?' And as soon as I spoke, I felt the sensation of a million bees stinging my face, and then heard an explosion."

Bhuiyan required medical attention for years after the attack. The bullet hit him on the right side of the face, leaving severe injuries, particularly to his right eye.

This story was highlighted a couple weeks ago on NPR because Mr Bhuiyan is trying to save the life of his attacker:

"According to my faith in Islam, there is no hate, no killing. It doesn't allow anything like that," says Bhuiyan. "Yes, Mark Stroman did a horrible thing, and he brought a lot of pain and disaster, sufferings in my life. But in return I never hated him."

Bhuiyan has created a website called World Without Hate to educate others about hate crimes as a means of preventing them. He's also working with Amnesty International and Stroman's defense attorney, who has filed several appeals on Stroman's death sentence.

"I strongly believe executing him is not a solution. We will just simply lose a human life without dealing with the root cause, which is hate crime," Bhuiyan says. "In Islam it says that saving one human life is the same as saving the entire mankind. Since I forgave him, all those principles encouraged me to go even further, and stop his execution and save another human life."

I am strongly opposed to capital punishment, even for people we know are guilty of the crimes they've been convicted of. But were someone to kill a loved one of mine, I honestly wouldn't know how I'd feel. Here is a man whose life was forever altered when he was shot in the face by a killer who singled him out because of his looks and his faith.

Here also is a man who takes his Islamic faith and goes in a completely different direction from the hirabi who killed thousands on 9/11.

Orange County Muslim leaders cheer bin Laden's demise

Imam Sayed Moustafa al-Qazwini, founder and director of 
the Islamic Educational Center of Orange County in Costa Mesa

Yup. So the next time you hear how the Muslims all cheered when the towers went down, remember this:

"Bin Laden was never a Muslim leader. ... The attacks on our people on Sept. 11 were the result of his twisted ideology," said Ameena Mirza Qazi, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles.

Muzammil Siddiqi, religious director of Islamic Society of Orange County said: "Islam is totally against terrorism, totally against violence," and bin Laden's death has "brought a sense of relief for all of us.

"We hope this chapter that began 10 years ago will close and a new chapter will begin," he added. "We want to live together in peace and harmony."

And of course, informed Monster Island readers know that there are fatwa against terrorism.

Today in stupidity

• On an upcoming visit to India, US President Barack Hussein Obama won't be visiting a famed Sikh temple because the head covering he'd be required to wear might stoke rumors he's a Muslim.
  
  Again, the elitist Obama is treating the American people like they're stupid, as if they can't tell the difference between Sikhs and Muslims. (Oh, by the way, I'm being sarcastic.)

• The Republican candidate for Delaware's US Senate seat, Christine O'Donnell asked "Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” After being told it was the First Amendment that bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O’Donnell replied with (faux?) incredulity, "You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?"
  
  Clearly the First Amendment, which bars Congress from making "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," contains the principle of "separation of church and state. But it appears she was going with the notion that the First Amendment does not contain the actual wording "separation of church and state." From various right-wing sites I've read, this is a popular notion aimed at demonstrating how liberal interpretation of the Constitution has led the country down a God-hating path. They note also that the Constitution does not contain the word "privacy" nor does it say anything about abortion.
  
  But if that's what she was going for, then she tripped up on her own wording. She should have asked, "Where in the Constitution are the words 'separation of church and state'?" Because the principle is right there, even if that phrasing is just shorthand for it. I guess this disconnect is why so many people think nothing of the government blocking a mosque or Muslim prayer center where a mainstream church or synagogue would be allowed.

• Sarah Palin was warning her supporters not to get complacent, telling them by tweet not to "party like it's 1773 just yet." Assuming that that date was yet another brain fart on the part of would-be Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012, the Daily Kos guy and PBS's Gwen Ifil (a Kushibo favorite) chided her for not remembering the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. What Ms Palin meant was that the eponymous Boston Tea Party occurred in 1773. Egg... on... faces.
  
  The Boston Tea Party, of course, was a major historical event in which local citizens who felt powerless tried to strike a blow against the perceived elite and forge a political force by scapegoating an unpopular ethnic minority. Much like today's Tea Party. (I kid! I kid! I kid because I love... to kid!)

Islamaphobia and the law of unintended consequences

I'd been getting a lot of traffic today to this post, an April 2009 piece addressing some of my concerns about factory-farmed meat that included this picture of a pig waste lagoon somewhere in the American South (North Carolina, I think).

[UPDATE: in Georgia. That's right: Even I don't read my own posts.]


The traffic was coming from a Russian-language site, so I had to Google-translate it.

Lo and behold, apparently they were discussing ways of hemming in Muslims, such as by burying pig ashes and pig waste in places you wanted Muslims to vacate or otherwise be Muslim-free zones. I guess someone came up with the idea of having these giant pools of shit in America shipped off to Islamaphobic regions that wish to employ this idea.

For the record: Kushibo does not endorse this plan whatsoever.