Even a doll mocking Muslim women in US can prove dangerous

It’s a testament to the American spirit that the Boston bombings didn’t send people into fits of hysteria every time they saw a Muslim walking down the street. A couple of ding-dongs get it into their heads that marathon runners, university students and 8-year-old boys are responsible for their messed up loser lives so they set off bombs with a cover story that the United States has somehow hurt the Ummah.

Yet there was nary a beep from Bostonians about the whys and what-fors. They understand that murderous idiots unleashed their insecurities on the community and they expect justice to prevail in the end.

There are the inevitable hijab-haters and mouth-breathers that mistake Sikhs for Muslims and vent their own insecurities. But, really, can anybody really say there has been fallout that has affected the American Muslim community. I haven’t seen it. I just wish the Council on American-Islamic Relations and every Western media-friendly imam would stop going on television and condemning terrorist attacks. Why is it that we are the only religious/ethnic group that must articulate our revulsion for terrorism for the cameras when there is zero evidence that the Muslim community as a whole had anything to do with these incidents.

It must be kind of a letdown for the professional bigots like Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer that the citizens of Boston didn’t unleash their fury on Muslims. But Mr. Spencer can take heart that there are more insidious ways to generalize and condemn Muslims as terrorists without ripping off some woman’s hijab in public or punching a Sikh in the face.

Take the new birthday card being sold in Chicago that depicts a young girl wearing a hijab who will “blow your brains out.” The front of the greeting card also has “She’ll Love You to Death” and the inside reads, “Hope your birthday is a BLOW OUT!”

The card is sold in a novelty shop and appears to be a parody of “Aamina, the Muslim doll,” which is a talking doll that teaches basic Arabic phrases like “Asalam Alekum” and “InshaAllah.” So, it basically mocks and denigrates Muslims — Muslim children in this case — and furthers the dangerous stereotype that Muslim girls and women who wear the hijab have terror on their minds 24/7. It only emboldens individuals who feel justified in attacking women on the street with verbal abuse or assaults.

Although I don’t think that Spencer commented specifically on the doll controversy (I’m sure he will get around to it), it fits with his continuing theme that producing hijab wearing terrorist doll greeting cards is a “free speech” issue. There are two types of free speech. One that allows the media and individuals the right to say or publish anything they want because free speech is vital in a robust democracy. This category is in line with Voltaire’s “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Then there is the second type of free speech favored by the professional Islamophobes: “The First Amendment of the Constitution allows me to spew my bigotry without consequences or concern that it might hurt other people.”

The greeting card does not foster a robust democracy nor does it help develop a better understanding of other segments of society. It’s designed purely to humiliate a specific group of people and create a hostile environment. The primary aim of the second type of free speech is to create hostility, which often leads to violence. Anti-Muslim propaganda, led by Spencer, helped Anders Breivik achieve his murderous goals in the 2011 attacks in Norway that left 77 people — mostly young adults and teens — dead.

According to the FBI, 157 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported in 2011, down from 160 recorded in 2010 at the height of the Islamophobe campaign against the Park51 mosque project near Ground Zero in New York. The number of anti-Muslim crimes is relatively low compared to hate crimes against Jews, in which 771 incidents were reported in 2011, down from 887 in 2010.

It’s easy to dismiss the terrorist girl greeting card as insignificant because it appears limited to one specific geographic location and sold at novelty shops. And, as Muslims are often told, we should be able to take a joke. But the greeting card is part and parcel of a larger anti-Muslim campaign to marginalize Muslims and ultimately create an environment that encourages violence. The card is just one more tool for the bigots.

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