The MYTH of American Islamophobia

[superchunk]

badgenome said:

superchunk said:

...and there are attacks on other religions, races, etc every day that don't make the news, so what. Right now its all out in the open on Muslims due to the stupid outcry for the Mosque in NYC, as well as other places in the nation. If this were about Synagogues then Jewish attacks would be being highlighted as well and I'd come into that thread and agree that its wrong on all accounts, not discuss the attacks on blacks, gays, etc.

You're assuming that this has to do with the mosque, when there is roughly one anti-Muslim hate crime every three days and nothing is really said about it in the national media. So a cab driver gets slashed (horrible incident) and a guy urinates in a mosque and calls the people terrorists, and the media goes wild over it because, hey, we were just talking about a mosque!

But two drops don't make a rainstorm, and this is very typical of how the media covers things. Like when there's a high profile kidnapping, you'll often see several such stories grabbing headlines for a while and it seems like there's been a rash of such incidents.Bbut in reality there wasn't any uptick in kidnappings, only a change in how much media attention they're receiving.

That's my point. Its news because of related news in NY, but that doesn't mean that news like the Mosque issue don't have an effect on actions by radicals as that behaviour is indirectly encouraged. Plus, the simple fact that the mosque issue is even an issue demonstrates a level of Islamaphobia accross the US.