Boston Bombing:Thank goodness it wasn’t . . . fill in the blank!

A worth reading article by Kathleen Parker in Washington Post. After the bombing, every ethnic group was praying and hoping that the perpetrators do not belong to their group. The author writes;

“As the manhunt for the Boston bombers reached its climactic conclusion, Americans of all hues and backgrounds heaved a sigh of relief. Thank goodness it wasn’t . . . fill in the blank:

● a white Christian from the South;

● a dark-skinned Muslim foreigner;

●an illegal Latino immigrant.

Thank goodness.

The marathon bombers, officials say, are of Chechen background. Huh? Is that, like, in Czechoslovakia or something?

. The mere fact that the brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were connected to Islam was sufficient for some to justify holding all Muslims in suspicion.

The relief, meanwhile, was that “our” demographic group wouldn’t this time be blamed. Even darker-skinned Muslims, familiar with group demonization following 9/11, reportedly were relieved.

Whom do we hate when the enemy is a composite of our own diverse ecosystem? When “them” is “us?”

Even a tiny percentage of 1.5 billion Muslims, or 21 percent of the world’s population, who have embraced jihad is enough to give pause. Moderate Muslims share that pause

Once we begin to discriminate in the assignment of rights to citizens and legal residents based on their thoughts, religious affiliation, assemblage — or our own assumptions — we risk becoming our own worst enemy. Click link below for full article;

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kathleen-parker-the-terror-of-not-knowing/2013/04/23/ee4c4f58-ac46-11e2-b6fd-ba6f5f26d70e_story.html

Posted by F. Sheikh

 

“Them & Them” Battle To Survive in Ramapo

A worth reading article on our next door neighbour district, Ramapo, N.Y where a struggle to survive is going on between Hasidic community and other School district residents. Can it spill over to other neighbouring school districts ? ( F. Sheikh )

Up in Ramapo, the immigrant community and the growing population of Hasidim had eyed each other with increasing wariness. Then the Orthodox took over the public schools and proceeded to gut them.

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

One morning in June 2005, a team of real-estate agents left Manhattan and drove an hour north to the western part of Rockland County to ­repossess a house. The home, in a village called New Square, had long since fallen into delinquency, and the bank had sold the property. The new owners, investors, had offered a cash settle­ment to the occupants as an enticement to leave before the formal eviction, but that offer had been refused. The agents had been told that New Square was a Hasidic village, but they had not given that fact much thought. Arriving, accompanied by the police, one of the agents noticed that the village had a gate and that the gate was attended.

In retrospect, that gate seems like a portal. Inside, young men and boys seemed to be everywhere, dressed alike. One of the agents was a woman in business clothes, her hair uncovered, and as the group passed through the village, her colleagues noticed a Hasidic woman covering a young boy’s eyes. At the house, the owner answered the door and the eviction began. The agents took a look at the place—a yellow house divided into four units, a small structure in the yard, no great prize.

The phrase “all hell broke loose” conjures an ancient kind of chaos. Perhaps it applies. Dozens of Hasidim arrived, forming a crowd, some just curious but some very upset. Villagers took photos of the police, of the agents, of the license plates on the agents’ cars, of the possessions being piled on the lawn. One Hasid stuck a microphone in the lead agent’s face and yelled questions at him, as if he were a corrupt politician. A group of workmen had been hired to help with the physical eviction; they had rocks thrown at them.

Things seemed unstable enough that afternoon that the police decided to patrol the property overnight. By the second night, there was no police protection. Soon after, someone fixed cables to the house’s pillars, tied the other end to a car, then revved the vehicle into drive. The pillars gave way and the house’s deck collapsed. The local paper, theJournal News, reached one of the agents, a man named Alain Fattal. He was outraged. “This is no longer about a real-estate deal,” Fattal told the reporter. “This is about my constitutional right to own property. I will not be intimidated.” The police could not figure out who was responsible for demolishing the deck. They tried to interview neighbors and got nowhere. But to the agents the case was clear: The villagers had destroyed the property rather than let outsiders move in. Click link below to read full article;

http://nymag.com/news/features/east-ramapo-hasidim-2013-4/

WHY ALL THIS MATERNAL SYMPATHY FOR DZHOKHAR?

Hanna Rosin in Slate:

In this image released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on April 19, 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19-years-old, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing is seen.

In the past week and a half I have not been to a school pickup, birthday, book party, or dinner where one of my mom friends has not said some version of “I feel sorry for that poor kid.” This group includes mothers of infants and grandmothers and generally pretty reasonable intelligent types, including one who is an expert on Middle Eastern extremist groups.

Many of them mention that ubiquitous photo of Dzhokhar with his hair tousled and too few hairs on his chin to shave. Some bring up the prom photo with the red carnation or the goofy video of him wrestling with his friends.* Some mention the “I love you, bro” tweets from his many friends. Some just seem anguished by the vision of that “poor kid” alone in the boat by himself, bleeding for all those hours. All of this sympathy stems of course from the storyline that coalesced early: a hapless genial pothead being coerced into killing by his sadistic older brother. As with such storylines, all evidence to the contrary gets suppressed.

Probably the correct moral response to this misplaced maternal sympathy is the one mySlate colleague had, which is to say: “People, please. Cut that shit out. He’s an adult and a mass-murderer.” There is evidence that he was not just a pot smoker but a dealer, and also like his brother, he was a fan of jihad. Also the photos of him at the actual bombing site are not so heartwarming, as they show him surveying the crowd he is about to blow up. Click below for full article;

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/04/29/maternal_sympathy_for_dzhokhar_tsarnaev_what_s_it_about.html.

( Posted by F. Sheikh)