The Anti-Muslim Attack In San Diego

Below is something I submitted to the daily Camera a week ago about the 5/18 attack on a San Diego mosque. It probably won't be published at this point. You should read a CNN.COM article here. It basically says that an effort was made to deny mosques DHS funding for security about a year ago.

 

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For decades I have been worried about anti-Muslim bigotry in this country, especially since 9/11. I’m not sure how often I have done something really significant about it- unless expressing support for the Palestinians counts, in which case I have done a lot (including at least one very visible effort). I think that yesterday’s attack in San Diego might be the first fatal attack on a mosque here. There have been many other manifestations of anti-Muslim bigotry in America, including some deadly violence. Trump has done a lot to fuel that bigotry here, especially with his first-term Muslim travel ban and his second-term suggestions that it would be appropriate to get Palestinians to leave Gaza permanently and that it would be appropriate to destroy, as in commit genocide against, the Iranian nation-state. And there’s been tons of smaller stuff as well.

I’ll be honest, in the same spirit of saying that all white people are at least a tiny bit racist, as a Christian I have had occasional anti-Muslim thoughts. It’s so minor it’s barely worth mentioning, but since I am writing this, I should say that I think that in recent years I may have slightly or significantly discounted the progress made in the Muslim world when it comes to how women are treated by men and male-dominated institutions. In the last few years I have been pleasantly surprised by how many news articles quote Gaza women (for example)- to be honest, I DID think they would be discouraged by men and other women from speaking to the media. People who are much worse than flawed Christian allies of America’s Muslim population should consider that Sharia has been mentioned enough already.

I’m embarrassed by that oversight of mine for at least a few reasons and one of them is that I have read, at least once, the argument that anti-Muslim bigotry in America today resembles the anti-Catholic bigotry that occasionally surged and retreated in this country over the decades until about the 1940s (I think it has surged a little bit since then in terms of left-wing ignorance about Catholic politics). I used to be Catholic (I’ve sort of started converting to the Episcopalian Church) and I experienced anti-Catholic bigotry in this country at least two or three times (I also kind of experienced it in Northern Ireland twice).

I could be better equipped to do this- although I set out to read the Koran about 6 and 1/2 years ago, I only read about 5% of it and then the pandemic distracted me. The part I read didn’t contain anything I found offensive. I get the impression there’s a fair amount of politically good stuff in that book, just like there is in the Bible. We need to remember a handful of facts- Muslims believe that Christ was an important prophet and the Angel Gabriel appears in both books. Many people use the term “Abrahamic” to refer to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and I believe strongly that we all pray to the same God.

Would I say that non-Muslims should never criticize certain tendencies (sexism and homophobia) in the Muslim world in order to avoid encouraging religious bigotry? No. But we should blend critical statements about them with positive ones about Islam and the Muslim community. We should make more efforts to build bridges in every sphere of life with Muslims. We should understand that the Palestinians have very legitimate national grievances and aspirations and reject the Israel lobby’s demonization of them. We should ask the US military if they would act the way they did in Iraq 2003-2008 if they found themselves policing a rocky Peace Process in N. Ireland.

We need to stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters at this time and in general and whenever hatred for them raises it’s ugly head.

Law and Order Reviews J

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Pride” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

This is basically about homophobia and I think it’s a fairly good reply to the homophobes.

“Savages” Season 6. See this for a plot summary.

The Death Penalty 

This episode is about the death penalty, but the main characters, collectively, have mixed opinions about it. I won’t bother describing or analyzing those statements with two exceptions. First, it’s stated that (possibly looking just at NY state and it’s death-penalty situation) there was some kind of trend where the suspension of the death penalty saw a decrease in capital crimes or something like that.

One of the main characters (the senior detective) in a practical but not principled way opposes bringing the death penalty back to NY and says that it will create more desperation among criminals who might become more willing to shoot cops when police try to arrest them if they’re already facing charges that could involve the death penalty.

I am generally against the death penalty. To some small degree you could say this is partly inspired by or reinforced by the fact that my Church opposes it (until very recently I was a Catholic and I am now converting to the Episcopalian church that also opposes the death penalty). I know that the statistics indicate that independent of the thoughts of judges, prosecutors, and jurors, it’s application really is racist and classist. I believe there’s no reason to say that it deters serious crime.

I am open-minded about it being used in one situation. If someone is already serving a life sentence in prison with no chance of parole, where life means life, and they are convicted of a serious crime (murder (and maybe rape should also be included)) and there is no other way to significantly upgrade their sentence to reflect the new conviction, maybe they should get the death penalty. I am not sure how often murder and rape happen in prison, but it might possibly happen less often if what I just proposed was an option for judges and/or juries.

“Jeopardy” Season 6. See this for a plot summary.             

First, the Wikipedia summary is REALLY bad. The dead brother’s business had created a financial vulnerability for his family’s business. There were no rival businesses and there was no stealing of clients.

This is a type of episode that I have only inconsistently high-lighted until recently, but my plan for 1-3 years now has been that I’ll make a brief note about this when it comes up. First, the defendant is a wealthy businessperson who doesn’t seem political at all (i.e. he’s not made to look bad because he’s liberal or progressive, since he’s neither as far as we know- he’s made to look bad because he’s the kind of powerful person who thinks the rules don’t apply to him). Second, his even wealthier Mom uses her wealth-created power to subtly BRIBE the judge who gets the case and then rules in favor of the defendant a few times.

“Angel” Season 6. See this for a plot summary.

There’s 2-3 parts where racism towards Puerto Ricans in NYC is illustrated. The first time, I have to admit, the police don’t seem too offended. That doesn’t necessarily exclude the thing I want to highlight as anti-racist. After a well-attended Coleman-organized press conference is basically told that at that point the police are looking for a Puerto Rican man, the police get flooded with tips. One of the two detectives, while answering calls to the tip line, says to his supervisor: “Since the Colemans’ town meeting every nut job in the city who ever got a bad taco is pointing the finger.” It could be a better objection to what is happening to their investigation- it’s sinking into the muck of popular racism- but the detective is basically caricaturing that racism, saying that any White person who had a negative experience with a “hispanic” person is making false allegations about Puerto Ricans and the disappearance of the baby and are doing so in a way that doesn’t distinguish between different “hispanic” racial and ethnic groups. It turns out that the baby's White mother killed the baby.