“What do you think the prison sentence should be for a Muslim-American man who stood outside of a Christian church on Sunday during Mass and yelled at worshippers, “I’m going to kill you all!” Before you answer, let me add some more facts.
Assume this same Muslim man, a short time before going to that church, had posted horribly anti-Christian statements on his Facebook profile and called for Christians to be eliminated from America. He even posted photos of a homemade bomb on his Facebook page.”
Obeidallah adds, “Oh yeah, one more fact. The police went to that Muslim man’s house and found a device that police described as looking like ‘a possible homemade explosive device,’ which they detonated.”
So if a Muslim threatened to carry out this terrorist attack, how long would it take for an arrest to be made—and would they make it to the jail alive? It took two weeks before Celli was arrested. The judge set bail at more than $500,000 noting that “this is a hate crime.” One would think Celli would get at least a year or more in prison. That didn’t happen. Instead, Celli was offered a plea deal of only 90 days in jail with three years probation—which of course he took. The targeted Muslims were not even made aware of the plea deal. To make this injustice even worse, Celli will probably only have to serve about 46 days. This is someone who threatened mass murder, posted hate speech on Facebook along with a bomb image, and had a possible explosive device in his home.
As for mainstream media ...
“Scary Muslims get ratings and are used as props by politicians to score points. But when Muslims are the victims, we garner little media coverage. We even hear Republicans claim that anti-Muslim hate crimes and bigotry are exaggerated.
You get a sense that to many, Muslim lives simply don’t matter.”
Can any of us even imagine the fear Muslims and their children are living with every single day in this country? And where can they go? It’s like a bad dream. We helped create the ISIS terrorists with Bush/Cheney’s Iraq war, and now we are instilling terror upon innocent human beings because of the color of their skin and their religion. What will happen if Trump or Cruz gains the power of the presidency?
If there ever was a time to speak out and vote, it’s now—now in an era that will go down as one of the most shameful in American history.