Me too. What particularly resonated with me was this part of the article. In fact, this part almost made me cry because it's like....wow....finally, a white non-Muslim sees how we feel in these moments and put it so eloquently:
(3) One
continually encountered yesterday expressions of dread and fear from Arabs and Muslims around the world that the attacker would be either or both. That's because they know that all members of their religious or ethnic group will be blamed, or worse, if that turns out to be the case. That's true even though leading Muslim-American groups such as CAIR
harshly condemned the attack (as
they always do) and urged support for the victims, including blood donations.
One tweeter, referencing the earthquake that hit Iran this morning, satirized this collective mindset by writing:
"Please don't be a Muslim plate tectonic activity."
As understandable as it is, that's just sad to witness. No other group reacts with that level of fear to these kinds of incidents, because no other group has similar cause to fear that they will all be hated or targeted for the acts of isolated, unrepresentative individuals. A similar dynamic has long prevailed in the domestic crime context: when the perpetrators of notorious crimes turned out to be African-American, the entire community usually paid a collective price. But the unique and well-grounded dread that hundreds of millions of law-abiding, peaceful Muslims and Arabs around the world have about the prospect that this attack in Boston was perpetrated by a Muslim highlights the climate of fear that has been created for and imposed on them over the last decade.
The Boston bombing produces familiar and revealing reactions | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
To illustrate this point, when we first saw the news, I was like, "Oh no, people at a marathon of all places were hit." But right away or maybe even before that, I had a slight knot in my stomach and I was thinking, "Oh God, please don't let it be a Muslim. Please, please, please God."
I didn't say it out loud, but family members did. I looked at them and said, "Isn't it sad that this is what we have to think about? That we can't JUST think about the victims, we have to be scared of the public and how they react towards us? When we should be concerned for the victims, we also become concerned for us (and for good reason)."
It's sad that we hold a collective breath during tragedies until it finally comes out that (more often than not) it was some white Christian guy. But then ethnicity or religion don't matter...they had only mattered when people thought the person COULD be a Muslim and/or foreign.
I remember when the Aurora shooting happened, we breathed a sigh of relief when it was discovered that it was a non-Muslim. Same with the Sikh temple shooting. Same with Sandy Hook. I almost feel guilty that this is our reaction, but there is a reason that this is how we react. I wish that the only emotions we felt were horror at the acts and sadness over what took place and the damage inflicted, but the public reaction towards us has made us into this.
I mean, look at how the Saudi national was treated even though he was among the injured. Imagine the outrage if any of the other injured had the same treatment that he got just because they didn't look the right way and were running away (which many were!). He was interrogated for 5 hours as if he's a suspect, the feds raided his room with a dog, and THEN say that he's a witness not a suspect. I'm guessing they will treat all witnesses this way, then?
