Sharia Scare: Jihad against Islam

Keeping our promise to bring you more on the ‘Sharia Scare’ in the United States, here is a nice piece from the Southern Poverty Law Review.  In case you are not familiar with this organisation, it has a great track record of standing up for justice and fighting hatred.

The full version is available on their site.  Here is an excerpt:

Rarely has the United States seen a more reckless and bare-knuckled campaign to vilify a distinct class of people and compromise their fundamental civil and human rights than the recent rhetoric against Muslims.

. . . . .

“As an American Muslim, what is of most concern to me is that it is no longer only a small cadre of dedicated Islamophobes who are expressing bigotry and even hatred towards the American Muslim community — but sadly, also many among our elected representatives and government officials,” Sheila Musaji, moderator of the website The American Muslim, wrote in an E-mail to theIntelligence Report. “It provides a veneer of respectability and reasonableness to what would otherwise be more easily perceived to be outright bigotry.”

And that bigotry has consequences. Recent news reports strongly suggest a spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes. In May 2010, for example, a bomb exploded at an Islamic center in Jacksonville, Fla. In August, a manslashed the neck and face of a New York taxi driver after finding out he was a Muslim. Four days later, someone set fire to construction equipment at the future site of an Islamic center in Murfreesboro, Tenn. This March, a radical Christian pastor burned a Koran in Gainesville, Fla., leading to deadly riots in Afghanistan that left at least 20 people dead. Hate crime statistics for 2010 won’t be released by the FBI until the fall, but it appears certain they will show increasing violence against Muslims.