It’s no different than burning a cross on someone’s lawn:
Philadelphia police, the FBI and the city's human relations commission launched investigations Monday after a worker at North Philadelphia mosque found a severed pig's head outside its door.
Surveillance video outside the Al Aqsa Islamic Society mosque, on Germantown Avenue near Jefferson Street, showed a red pickup truck that drove twice past the building just before 11 p.m. Sunday.
A red pickup truck. Too bad for them, they were caught on video:
The first time it crept along slowly near the curb. On its second pass, the video shows, someone extended an arm from the passenger window and tossed something that rolled to a stop near the mosque's front door.
What cowards. Al-Aqsa, by the way, is home to not only a Mosque, but a Kindergarten through 10th grade school and an interfaith center. Of course, pigs are considered unclean in the Islamic faith, and most practicing Muslims do not eat pork. So there’s no doubt of the intent here.
You know, I can’t prove the jackasses who did this were prompted by Donald Trump and the rest of his hateful Republican Party and its media organs like Fox News, constantly vilifying everyone with a Middle Eastern or Muslim background, but it seems like a fairly good bet that they were. Otherwise it would just be an awful strange coincidence, considering the timing and the fact I’ve lived in this town 28 years and have never heard of anything quite like this happening before.
This isn’t a prank. Someone put some serious thought into cutting off a pig’s head (It was cooked by the way) and depositing it there. Someone whose aim was to threaten and intimidate. Someone who's been fully infected by the media circus of bigotry and its number one hatemonger of the hour, the one who draws cheering crowds to himself every time he raises the ante on spewing his poisonous bile. As the Washington Post reports, this particular Mosque has never been targeted before, even after 9/11.
Yeah, I'd say it was one of his people. We’ll have to wait and see, but it shouldn’t take too long:
Police and the FBI confirmed they were reviewing the incident, though said it was too early to discuss any potential charges.
"We've got to be involved," said officer Pete Berndlmaier of the 26th police district, who gathered information at the scene. "If they get away doing something like that, they are going to up the ante."
This may be what Donald Trump and his Republican Party stand for, but it’s not what the vast majority of Philadelphians stand for.
"It is," [Ruth Landau, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations] "a heinous act that sends a message to Arab-American communities that they are not wanted here in Philadelphia and that could not be further from the truth."
Philadelphia Mayor-elect Jim Kenney expressed outrage.
"The bigotry that desecrated Al-Aqsa mosque today has no place in Philadelphia," he said in a statement. Philadelphia "has a long history of coming together in the face of challenge. We cannot allow hate to divide us now, in the face of unprecedented difficulties. I ask all Philadelphians to join me in rejecting this despicable act and supporting our Muslim neighbors."
Some of you may remember the attacks on Muslims and Sikhs after 9/11. Anyone wearing a turban or head covering was deemed fair game by some American thugs fed a diet of right-wing bigotry. Of course at that time they didn’t have the leading Republican Presidential candidate cheering them on and validating their behavior. They didn't have a role model who's found out he can get his jollies off of ginning up Americans’ most vile impulses. Even if it’s all fun and games to him, and eventually a lot of book sales, speech fees, brand exposure and money, which is all he’s ever been about in the first place.
Marwan Kreidie is head of the Arab-American Corp and maintains an office in the Mosque that was defiled:
"It's worse now that it was after 9/11," he said, "which is really frightening. [September 11, 2001] was a horrible incident but we didn't have this kind of reaction, nobody threw a pig's head. ... A pig's head doesn't do much. Could the next thing be a pipe bomb?"
It makes me sick to have to see this stuff happening in my country. But I guess in all things there’s a silver lining, of sorts.
Thanks Trump, for putting a face on the Republican Party for us.
Even if it happens to be a severed pig's head.
