Do you know what I find most appalling about this? On Monday,\u00a0Trump\u2019s press secretary, Sean Spicer, spoke to reporters, offering condolences to those involved. In the wake of Trump\u2019s executive order banning individuals from seven countries from entering the U.S., Spicer\u00a0called the incident at the Quebec mosque \u201ca terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant and why the president is taking steps to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to our nation\u2019s safety and security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bear in mind that the perpetrator of the Quebec mosque shooting was a white supremacist Trump-supporter. Unless Trump\u2019s executive order\u00a0is extended to ban\u00a0white supremacist Trump supporters, it does nothing to prevent\u00a0situations like this\u2014in fact, by\u00a0portraying Muslims as a threat to American security, Trump\u2019s executive order feeds the very Islamophobia that fueled this attack.<\/p>\n
It has become pretty clear that many Americans are extremely\u00a0afraid of\u00a0being the victim of\u00a0an Islamic terrorist attack. Fine. That\u2019s their right, I suppose. However, the chances that that will happen are next to zero. They\u00a0are far more likely to die falling out of bed<\/a> than at the hands of Islamic terrorists, but I don\u2019t see them\u00a0worrying about that. Here\u2019s something I wish more people would understand: Muslim Americans are far<\/em> more likely to be victims of Islamophobic terror than the average American is to be the victim of Islamic terror.<\/strong><\/p>\n Not so long ago, a Muslim woman was physically assaulted in my own town, near a restaurant I frequented regularly, by a white man yelling Islamophobic slurs. I wondered, then, what it must be like to live with\u00a0that reality\u2014to know that your beliefs and your dress make you the target of such hatred and even violence. Over the weekend, a\u00a0mosque in Texas burned down mysteriously<\/a>. While officials haven\u2019t determined the cause, the mosque had been the target of Islamophobic vandalism in the past\u2014as is\u00a0unfortunately far too common<\/a> for mosques.<\/p>\n I had a medical\u00a0appointment on September 11, 2001. My doctor was a Pakistani immigrant; I\u2019d been his patient since I was small. Do you know what I remember from that appointment? I remember that my doctor was afraid. I was only a teenager at the time, but I understood this. He wasn\u2019t the only one who was afraid. At the time, my family hosted a Muslim international student from Kuwait who attended the local university. He hid in his apartment for three days, until we finally came and got him.<\/p>\n And he had good reason to be worried:<\/p>\n Have a look at this (incomplete) list of incidents<\/a>\u00a0perpetrated\u00a0in the U.S.:<\/p>\n Muslims have been shot and killed,\u00a0execution-style,\u00a0in their living rooms<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0outside of their mosques<\/a>. They have been\u00a0fatally stabbed<\/a>\u00a0on their way home. They have been beaten\u00a0in their stores<\/a>, in\u00a0their schools<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0on the streets<\/a>. They have been\u00a0kicked off airplanes<\/a>,\u00a0egged outside Walmart<\/a>,\u00a0scorched with hot coffee<\/a>\u00a0in a park,\u00a0shot in cabs<\/a>\u00a0and punched\u00a0while pushing their children in strollers<\/a>. Their clothes have been\u00a0set on fire<\/a>\u00a0and their children have\u00a0been bullied<\/a>. Men have come to their door and told them that they would\u00a0burn down their house<\/a>\u00a0if they did not move away. They have been fired for\u00a0wearing hijabs<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0for praying<\/a>. They have seen their\u00a0cemeteries vandalized<\/a>\u00a0and their\u00a0Quran desecrated<\/a>. A Muslim congressman has received\u00a0death threats<\/a>, and business owners have posted signs advertising \u201cMuslim-free zones.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Heavily armed men have protested outside\u00a0mosques<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Texas<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Arizona<\/a>, arguing that it\u2019s their patriotic duty to protect the country from Islam.<\/p>\n People have covered the doors of a mosque with\u00a0feces and torn pages of the Quran<\/a>, left a\u00a0severed pig\u2019s head<\/a>\u00a0outside a mosque,\u00a0firebombed<\/a>\u00a0mosques,\u00a0urinated<\/a>\u00a0on mosques, spray-painted the\u00a0Star of David<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0satanic symbols<\/a>\u00a0on mosques,\u00a0carved swastikas and crude drawings of penises<\/a>\u00a0into signs at mosques,\u00a0set fire<\/a>\u00a0to mosques, threatened to\u00a0blow up mosques<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0kill \u201cyou Muslim f****,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0fired rounds from\u00a0high-powered rifles<\/a>\u00a0into mosques,\u00a0wrapped bacon<\/a>\u00a0around the door handles of mosques, left\u00a0hoax bombs<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0fake grenades<\/a>\u00a0at mosques,\u00a0threatened to decapitate<\/a>\u00a0congregants at mosques, sent\u00a0suspicious substances<\/a>\u00a0to mosques, written notes saying,\u00a0\u201cWe hate you,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u201cWe will burn all of you\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cLeave our country\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to mosques,\u00a0rammed a tractor-trailer<\/a>\u00a0into a mosque, thrown\u00a0bricks<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0stones<\/a>\u00a0through the windows of mosques,\u00a0pelted Muslims with rocks<\/a>\u00a0as they left mosques and stood outside mosques shouting,\u00a0\u201cHow many of you Muslims are terrorists?\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are around 3.3 million Muslims\u00a0living in the U.S., making up only\u00a01% of the total U.S. population and intensifying the impact of these incidents. Now remember that graph up the page a bit, that shows anti-Muslim hate crimes spiking after September 11th, 2001, and then decreasing but remaining substantially higher than previously? Well, there is reason to believe that anti-Muslim hate crimes are spiking again\u2014perhaps as high as 2001 levels<\/a>\u2014due at least in part to rhetoric like Trump\u2019s.<\/p>\n We humans are terrible at risk assessments. A\u00a0child is far more likely to die in a car accident while being driven to school than they are to be kidnapped while walking to school, yet\u00a0many parents drive their children to school precisely due to\u00a0fears about child abduction.\u00a044,000 Americans commit suicide each year, but we are more interested in shutting Syrian refugees out of the country based on a\u00a0perception of\u00a0risk\u2014in the face of all evidence to the contrary<\/a>\u2014than we are in creating accessible mental health systems.<\/p>\n Sometimes I think\u00a0we Americans are more interested in our fear of what might go wrong than we are in working to right what has already gone wrong.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=img.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/files\/2015\/02\/hate_crimes.png&w=480\")
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