Are Muslims in America Treated Unfairly?

posted at 12:59 pm on March 11, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Islam ]   

To hear Rep. Keith Ellison tell it, Muslims just can’t cut a break in this Islam-hating country. We are so busy “stereotyping and scapegoating” members of his adoptive religion, a blubbering Ellison told the House Committee on Homeland Security in testimony yesterday, that they are automatic suspects any time an act of terrorism is perpetrated.

That’s not how voters see it, according to the results of a new Rasmussen poll. A telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted on March 8 and 9 reveals that only 17% of Americans think Muslims are unfairly treated. Most also feel that Muslims in this country need to be more vociferous in their condemnation of potential domestic terrorist attacks.

It will come as a surprise to no one that the view on the treatment of Muslims in America was split along ideological lines, though it should be emphasized that even then, fewer than half of liberals claim there is a bias against Muslims.

In any case, Ellison, who is the first Muslim elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, might want to check the facts against his claims regarding knee jerk reactions to acts of terrorism. If anything, the administration and news media—including this writer—have bent over backwards to avoid pointing an accusatory finger at Muslim extremists, this despite their virtual ownership of domestic terrorist acts in the years since 9/11.

Consider a specific case:

• When news of the failed attempt to detonate explosives in Times Square broke on May 2 of 2010, this column reported the bare-boned facts precisely as they were communicated by the mayor of New York City and then-state governor David Paterson. The words Muslim and Islam appeared nowhere in my article.
• When police apprehended a suspect in connection with the bombing effort two days later, I reported the suspect’s name, Faisal Shahzad, and the fact that he was apprehended at JFK airport attempting to board a flight to Dubai. Again, despite the man’s Arab-sounding name, I didn’t so much as hint at his religion.
• I even remained circumspect in my treatment of the suspect’s faith on Day 4 of the investigation, when authorities discovered he was a devotee of the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
• In fact, it was not until a week after the botched attack took place that I intimated that the attacker was a Muslim, by which time the U.S. Justice Department had confirmed that Faisal Shahzad was working in concert with the Pakistani Taliban and that his goal was to kill as many Americans as possible.

If anything, it is Ellison’s colleagues on the left who are in denial. In the case of the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, both the White House and Justice Department were reticent to posit the role Islamic extremism played in both incidents long after the connections were obvious. At least to everyone other than Keith Ellison.

Related Articles

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• Suspect arrested in connection with Times Square bombing attempt
• Deadly car bomb in Times Square fails to explode

Cross-posted at the Examiner. Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

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