Author: Michelle Malkin
Publication: Townhall.com
Date: May 29, 2003
Do you believe that a "post-Sept.
11 backlash" has resulted in a nationwide wave of violence and bigotry
against Muslims in America? The hype artists and book-cookers at the Arab-American
Anti-Discrimination Committee want you to think so. The group's new report
purports to document "a massive increase" of hate crimes targeting Arab-Americans.
But in order to concoct a Muslim
hate-crime epidemic, the ADC report lumps together faulty citations, dubious
anecdotes and grossly over-inflated claims.
As an example of a typical post-Sept.
11 campus hate crime, the ADC report highlights an alleged incident in
Tempe, Ariz., where "a Muslim student was pelted with eggs at Arizona State
University." Where did the information about the incident come from? The
ADC refers to a student op-ed piece in the Sept. 17, 2001, edition of the
Arizona Daily Wildcat, which attributes the egg-pelting incident to a "National
Public Radio report."
What the ADC is not telling you:
Of two egg-pelting incidents involving ASU students logged by campus police,
one was a complete hoax and the other was a non-racial, non-religious juvenile
prank.
As I reported in a column back in
October 2001, ASU student Ahmad Saad Nasim lied to cops about being assaulted
and pelted with eggs in a parking lot while assailants screamed "Die, Muslim,
die!" Nasim confessed to fabricating the attack when cops interviewed him
after he attempted a second hate crime hoax - in which he locked himself
in a library restroom with the word "Die" written on his forehead, a plastic
bag tied over his head and a racist note stuffed in his mouth.
Bill Fitzgerald, spokesman for the
Maricopa County Attorney's Office, told me last week that Nasim recently
pled guilty to two counts of providing false information to police. His
punishment? A measly one year's probation, 50 hours of community service
and an order to seek psychological counseling.
The other egg-pelting incident at
ASU involved two 18-year-olds and two juveniles who threw an egg at an
unidentified, 31-year-old ASU student. ASU spokeswoman Nancy Neff told
me it was never classified as a hate crime by police. No racial or ethnic
slurs were allegedly uttered, according to a police account. "It was a
bunch of guys on a joy ride," Neff said.
The ADC researchers' approach to
creating the myth of the Muslim hate-crime epidemic is simple: throw in
everything plus the kitchen sink. The ADC report trivializes a few truly
heinous, violent attacks - such as the post-Sept. 11 murder of Sikh gas
station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi in Mesa, Ariz. - by mixing in unverified
reports by school kids who say classmates made fun of their Arabic names,
gave them "dirty looks" or pulled off their head coverings. Obnoxious behavior,
for sure. But "hate crimes"?
The report cites a female student
complaining that someone told her to "go back to wherever she came from."
I get one or two idiotic e-mails expressing the same sentiment every week.
Small-mindedness can sting. But should it be a reportable physical offense?
To further pad the hate crimes report,
the ADC decries the "hostile commentary" of Middle East scholar Daniel
Pipes, terrorism expert Steven Emerson, syndicated columnists Mona Charen,
Jonah Goldberg and Ann Coulter, Washington Post columnists Richard Cohen
and Charles Krauthammer, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Weekly
Standard, National Review, and jewishworldreview.com - not to mention talk
radio and the entertainment industry, as part of an orchestrated "campaign
of racism."
The ADC report suggests that every
expression of support for law-enforcement profiling, every analysis of
how the Muslim terrorist network has infiltrated American universities,
mosques, prisons and charities, and every condemnation of radical Islam,
qualifies as "defamation" that leads to widespread anti-Muslim crimes.
Herein lies the real agenda of the
ADC and other apologists for Islamic extremism: to liken outspoken critics
to murderers, to equate speech with violence and to exploit victimhood
status in a cynical attempt to distract attention from the true sources
of terror in America.
