Saaliha Khan scrolled through her Facebook feed and pored over posts expressing sadness, dismay and disapproval, the kind of messages that always appear after an attack carried out in the name of Islam.
It was just past midnight on Monday, and two Muslim gunmen had been killed about six hours earlier in a shootout outside a controversial cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, which featured images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
“If you want to defend the honor of the Prophet, do so in a way that is consistent with prophetic manners and ethics, not violence,” Omid Safi, director Duke University’s Islamic Studies Center, wrote less than 12 hours after the shooting.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations sent out an email: “Bigoted speech can never be an excuse for violence.”
But to Khan, the denunciations, though necessary and important, wouldn’t make a difference.
Indeed, among the Twitter messages flying through cyberspace after the failed attack was one radio personality Wayne DuPree sent to his more than 79,000 followers:
“Don’t expect @CAIRNational 2 care about Americans and condemn attack by terrorist thugs. Why are they here anyway #garland #garlandshooting.”
The pattern repeats itself again and again, said Khan, a 23-year-old communications and projects manager in Los Angeles for NewGround, an interfaith group. Muslims denounce terrorism, and then get lambasted for failing to denounce terrorism.
“Sometimes you get so frustrated you just want to go to sleep and get away and you think, ‘Again this is happening?’” Khan said.
Since Sept. 11, Muslims in the United States have sent out statement after statement decrying extremist violence. The condemnations have become so common that they have spawned parodies, including a Tumblr blog called “Muslims Condemning Things.”
Read more:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-muslim-condemnation-20150509-story.html
