I was just at the Ad:Tech NY earlier today, when I saw several tweets in my feed talk about a shooting that happened at Fort Hood in Texas, which left 12 dead. After thinking to myself what a horrible act this was, I thought to myself, “please don’t let the shooter be Muslim or have any ties to Islam”. It’s sad that these are some of the first thoughts that come to mind, but it’s reality. Islamophobia is still very rampant in America and acts like this don’t help the negative stigma.
So when I got home, I put on CNN and of course, it happened to be that the gunman’s name is Nidal Malik Hasan. Not only was he Muslim, but he also shares the same last name (Hasan) as me! And not surprisingly, the media keeps highlighting the fact that he’s Muslim. They’re saying things like, “the gunman, a Muslim named Nidal Malik Hasan was shot dead”. Why does the media have to focus on the fact that he’s Muslim? It’s obviously expected, and I don’t blame the media…but then again I don’t remember the media ever saying things like “Bernie Madhoff, a Jew, scammed billions of dollars from other Jewish investors”? As this story develops, I’m really interested to see if Nidal Hasan’s motives are found or revealed.
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Tabish: Just as you, a Muslim, are sensitive to comments that assume Muslim names mean Muslim faith, and Muslim faith = terrorism, I as a Jew was probably more sensitive to you to the repeated media references to Madoff’s Jewish faith, how he screwed Jews more commonly than non-Jews, etc. The media falls back on stereotypes of Jews as deceivers, a throwback to the Judas legend, and Muslims as terrorists. But here’s the difference – Jews of good conscience today reacted to the killers name with “God, I hope he’s not a terrorist, it will feed the nation’s anti-otherness penchant.” We defend your rights because in their violation, we see risk to ours. Not by coincidence is the ACLU largely composed of Jewish lawyers – and that we defend your women’s rights to wear the hijab as we do for our males to wear kippah (religious caps). We are in this together, Tabish.