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13
Jun
2021
Sunday June 13, 2021
Last Sunday evening, a young man who doesn’t deserve to have a name aimed his black pickup truck at a family taking their evening walk along a sidewalk in London, Ontario. He bounced over the curb and smashed into them.
They were Muslims. The women were wearing hijabs and traditional shalwar kameez -- loose, pleated trousers with a long shirt. “They were visible,” said a family friend.
The grandmother died on the spot. Father, mother, and daughter died in hospital. Only the boy, nine years old, survived his injuries.
What that young man did seems abundantly clear. But the motive for his actions remains (as I write this column) unclear.
Why?
Why them?
Why there, at that particular time?
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Muslims, Islamophobia, London killing
24
Mar
2019
Hate strikes again! In New Zealand/Aotearoa of all places. The whole country has less than ten gun-related murders a year; only 35 murders in the whole of 2018.
Then in a single afternoon, 50 people dead. Another 40 or so injured, some requiring amputations to save their lives. And hundreds who will suffer post-traumatic stress for months.
Just because they were Muslims, worshipping at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.
As I write these sentences, one suspect has been arrested – 26-year-old Brenton Tarrant.
In a 74-page manifesto, Tarrant declared himself to be a right-wing white supremacist. I’m almost grateful to him for being honest. I’ve long argued that the primary threat to peace does not come from left-wing radicals, but from the far right. Even the FBI, long obsessed with Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist paranoia, now admits that fact.
Tags: Muslims, New Zealand, Christchurch, hate, Buber
26
2017
If you want to invest in a growth industry, consider hate crimes. London police report a five-fold increase in attacks on Muslims – particularly Muslim women – since the terrorist attacks on London Bridge, the Westminster parliament, and the Manchester concert.
But the increase is not limited to Britain, where the reaction might be understandable. Here in Canada, Statistics Canada indicates that attacks on Muslims more than tripled over three years, from 45 in 2012 to 159 in 2015. During 2015 alone, according to a CBC report, hate crimes against Muslims soared by 60 per cent.
No doubt attacks on Muslims are a form of retaliation for acts attributed to Islamic extremists. But if so, why single out women? Not one of those acts was committed by a woman.
Or are women simply easier to identify by their head scarves?
Tags: Jesus, Muslims, Islam, Darren Osburne, Kinsbury mosque, Golden Rule