Does Public Bigotry Encourage Lunatic Fringe?

[Civicsman]

One has to wonder whether the current widespread public display of bigotry and prejudice regarding the Park51 Center, and Islam in general, has contributed to two events of which no thinking person can be proud.

1. A New York City cab driver was attacked by knife, simply because he is a Muslim. After learning that the driver is a Muslim, Michael Enright allegedly claimed, "Consider this a checkpoint", and stabbed him in the neck and arms. Enright was a film-school student with a project film entitled, "Home of the Brave".

2. Omar Rivera allegedly walked into a Astoria, NY mosque, yelled anti-Muslim slurs, claimed that those present were "terrorists", and urinated on prayer rugs.

These are outrageous acts, performed by sick individuals and should be condemned as such. However, I wonder whether the current prejudicial environment causes some on the lunatic fringe to think that others might "have their back", so to speak. Are they correct? Will we see more of this?

Civilized people must decry such uncivilized acts. Watch carefully to see who does so.

[KSagal]

According to the New York Times article, which I did not read originally, says in paragraphs 28 and 29:

"Mr. Enright is also a volunteer with Intersections International, an initiative of the Collegiate Churches of New York that promotes justice and faith across religions and cultures. The organization, which covered part of Mr. Enright's travel expenses to Afghanistan, has been a staunch supporter of the Islamic center near ground zero. Mr. Enright volunteered with the group's veteran-civilian dialogue project.
Joseph Ward III, the director of communications for Intersections, said that if Mr. Enright had been involved in a hate crime, it ran "counter to everything Intersections stands for" and was shocking."

And Times Article, Paragraphs 19 and 20 report that cops believe Enright was drunk, though that wasn't Sharif's impression. Paragraph 21 gives us some background about Sharif, including that he opposed the Ground Zero mosque on the basis "that there was no need to put it there."



I find it that while it was buried very deep in the article, it needs be clearly stated that this heinous act was done by a pro-mosque person who stabbed an anti mosque person. AND, there is a clear link to Islam, but the link may not be exactly what has been intimated.



The second topic, Omar Rivera, seems to be a simple act of a drunk, just outside a mosque. According to this news article, and the people in the mosque, it was not anti Muslim, it was public drunkenness.

ASTORIA, N.Y. (WPIX) — An intoxicated man is accused of urinating outside a Queens mosque Wednesday night during a prayer session, according to New York City police.

The disturbing incident unraveled at the Iman Mosque on Steinway Street in Astoria when witnesses say Omar Rivera "came in with a beer bottle in his hands" and was "clearly very intoxicated."

The mosque released a statement Thursday refuting claims Rivera shouted anti-Muslim slurs.

They said they believe the incident was an unintentional act of intoxication and wasn't directed against the mosque or Muslim community. In addition, they claimed Rivera was not charged with criminal trespass and was instead charged with pubic urination.

Two men in the prayer group were able to subdue the man and brought him into a back room before calling authorities.

Police took Rivera to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Officials at the mosque said they are offering Rivera any help he may need.


I believe in many ways, people will easily find what they are looking for. IF you start with the presumption that there are mean and ugly people out there conspiring to do a thing, you can find news articles that will support that view, especially if you are willing to ignore some of the inconvenient truths.

I believe that both of these news items are horrible, and are not defensible in any way. But that does not mean they are part of some bigger movement, or the result of the insensitive actions of the people supporting the Cordoba House (or Park 51) or opposing it.

[Civicsman]

I knew I could count on KSagal to "refudiate" my original post.

I find it that while it was buried very deep in the article, it needs be clearly stated that this heinous act was done by a pro-mosque person who stabbed an anti mosque person. AND, there is a clear link to Islam, but the link may not be exactly what has been intimated.

In the knifing attack, KSagal brings the question of who supported Park 51 (the "mosque") into the issue. However, a careful parsing of his quote from the NY Times article shows that it is Intersections International that supports Park 51. The quote says nothing whatsoever about the perpetrator's beliefs on this particular subject. Thus, KSagal's statement that the knife attack was performed by a "pro-mosque" person is not substantiated by the NY Times article, or any other article that I have found on the subject.

The bigger question, posed in my original post, was whether the attacker was bolstered by general Islamophobia. According to the driver, the attacker asked if the driver was Islamic, then yelled, "This is a checkpoint!", and attacked him. Readers can decide for themselves whether this was a hate crime, or was perhaps a dispute about cab fare.

The second topic, Omar Rivera, seems to be a simple act of a drunk, just outside a mosque. According to this news article, and the people in the mosque, it was not anti Muslim, it was public drunkenness.

Defending this as the "simple act of a drunk" seems particularly curious coming from a man who literally carried a sign advocating "Personal Responsibility" at a Tea Party rally. Minimizing the incident as the actions of a drunk causes me to wonder, again, about where the limits of that "personal responsibility" might be, and whether those limits change depending upon who they are being applied to.

Further, the story quoted from WPIX differs significantly from the story in the New York Post. The Post, as you will recall, is a sister to Fox in the Rupert Murdoch media empire. The Post named witnesses who said that the man came INTO the mosque, went over to where people were praying, and urinated on the prayer rugs. MSNBC also named and quoted a witness who said the perpetrator called worshipers "terrorists". Now, the charges are apparently for something less than what actually occurred.

I believe in many ways, people will easily find what they are looking for. IF you start with the presumption that there are mean and ugly people out there conspiring to do a thing, you can find news articles that will support that view, especially if you are willing to ignore some of the inconvenient truths.

I agree with this completely! Take, for example, an individual who ardently believes the worldwide scientific community is being paid by governments or is cahoots with the UN to perpetrate a hoax on global warming, or that an "elite group of self-assigned overlords" is trying to assert control over large masses of people. Such a person would go out of their way "to find news articles that will supported those views, and would be willing to ignore some of the inconvenient truths". Right? Karl?

[KSagal]

Actually I believe that both acts (and likely many more) were indeed acts that are wholly unsupportable on any scale. There is no excuse for either of these acts at all, and both people should be held to account for their actions.

I do feel that they are responsible for their actions. I simply said there are news articles to refute that original premise of the original post, that perhaps "current widespread public display of bigotry and prejudice" may be partially to blame.

I do not blame anyone by the two individuals involved. I do not blame some other thing at all.

I will here correct a statement that I did make. While the stabber student was somewhat bankrolled and clearly a volunteer in the Pro-Cordoba house organization, it is truly unclear if he personally supported the mosque at that site. I just don't know, but generally if you know the views of people whom a person CHOOSES to associate with, then it may give you a reasonable guess.

The drunk at the mosque aught to pay for his disrespect. He aught to be charged with what he did, not something else. If he was charged with trespass, I would be more likely to believe that version of the story, but it does not matter how drunk he was, or even how disrespectful he was. He should pay for his misdeeds, and be personally held responsible for them. Again, it is not the fault of some larger "current widespread public display of bigotry and prejudice", it is the fault of the drunk.

The misinterpretation of my post #2 was not that it was something to be minimized, nor have less value, nor that the action was not be be accounted to the individuals involved, but rather that the OP was wrong and they ARE to be held accountable, individually and personally.

Just to add a bit of clarity to my position. I happen to feel that McDonald's food is too fatty and too salty for it to be good food. I do not feed it to my family or myself very often for this reason. We do eat there occasionally, however, because it is convenient, and the kids like the food (and the toys)

But if a fat person were to eat there 3 meals a day or feed that food to their children too often, and they get fat and all have health issues, I believe it is in no way the fault of McDonald's. It is the fault of the people who make poor choices in diet. Even if they get a large settlement from McDonald's, they are likely to buy other fatty and salty foods from somewhere else, unless they change their own eating habits. Then when they finally realize they have to change their diet, and do, then it proves that McDonald's never was at fault.

[Civicsman]

I agree that the individuals in question are personally responsible for their actions. However, the McDonalds analogy is not a very good one.

A more accurate analogy might be a person in the middle of a crowd. The crowd is angry. Bolstered by the mob mentality, some individual does something particularly stupid. Is he personally responsible for that action? Absolutely. Would he have done it if he were not in the middle of that crowd?
Maybe not.

Both of these guys had apparently been drinking, perhaps heavily. They were likely loonies before, and their judgment after consuming alcohol was pretty likely worse than it normally is. They are personally responsible for their actions, but my question stands:

Does public bigotry encourage the lunatic fringe?

Personally, I believe the answer to that question is pretty clearly yes. Xenophobic hate is expressed at many website, (some of which are referenced or contributed to by posts made on this forum), and one only has to watch almost any TV news program to see some hate-monger peddling their wares.

Such behavior is uncivilized and should not be tolerated. Just this weekend I had a chance encounter with an older couple with whom I am acquainted. These people live in a small town, probably 100 miles from the nearest mosque. Yet, in the first 5 minutes of seeing them, they were railing about Muslims "taking over". Readers get one guess which news feed got them pumped up about this.

I pointed out that their xenophobic perspective is misplaced (without calling it that). If they are frightened about the potential loss of white Christian supremacy, there are shorter term concerns than Muslims "taking over". Needless to say, the conversation ended quickly. This was perfectly acceptable to me. They were wearing their bigotry on their sleeve and they tried to wipe it on me.

Effectively, I told them that I found their bigotry unacceptable and I don't want to hear it. I think it is un-American to do anything less.