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Say Their Names: Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, Deah Shaddy Barakat, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha

Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha testified this week before members of the House Judiciary Committee on hate crimes and the rise of white nationalism.

You may not have heard about it, but his testimony, describing the autopsy reports for his murdered daughters and son-in-law, left some members of the committee covering their mouths and in tears:

"I must be one of a few physicians, if not the only one, who read his own children's murder autopsy reports and details. They are seared into my memory."

The February 10, 2015 murders of 21-year-old Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, her 23-year-old husband Deah Shaddy Barakat, and 19-year-old sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, shocked the Chapel Hill, North Carolina community where they had lived.

The Department of Justice investigated the deaths as a hate crime, but the suspect Craig Hicks, a neighbor, was ultimately charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

"Bullets macerated Yusor's and Razan's brains. Deah took many bullets to his arms and chest before he fell down to the ground. After that, the murderer saw that he was still breathing and shot him again in the mouth. … The last time we saw them in their coffins, Yusor's forehead was bulging and her hazel eyes had turned grey and lifeless. What was once Razan's warm and smiling face filled with life was now a lifeless stone cold and deadly pale."

Dr. Abu-Salha recalled an officer trying to comfort him at the scene of the murder:

"(The) officer whispered: 'They didn't suffer, it was swift, one shot to the back of the head.' His statement did not make it more bearable; nothing did."

Abu-Salha described the six weeks between the marriage of his daughter and son-in-law and their murders as "the happiest days of our lives... followed by one of the most painful days, filled with the greatest heartache we have ever experienced." His daughters were committed to volunteering at a dental clinic for Syrian refugees, and for a program that fed the homeless, among others:

"My wife and I raised them to be Muslim-Americans, proud of their country and their community. As Muslim as apple pie ... I'm sorry, as American as apple pie. That can be Muslim, too."

Then he added that it was their Muslim identity that got his daughters killed. Yusor had complained to her father about their "condescending" neighbor, Hicks, who "told her he hated how she looked and dressed."

"I am afraid for our country. In 2016 the FBI recorded a 67% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes, and just weeks ago a young man in Indiana was shot in the back of the head by a man shouting anti-Muslim slurs."

During questioning, Abu-Salha recounted some of the hateful online messages he saw after his children's deaths … a tweet that said, "three down, 1.6 billion to go." … another that praised the murderer, "Greg [sic] Hicks should be given the Medal of Honor and released from custody." 

In his testimony, Abu-Salha urged the U.S. government to take similar action to stem hate speech online in the wake of his family’s tragedy and of the Christchurch shooting:

"We miss our children so much. At times the pain is just as sharp now as when they died. I ask you, I truly plead to you, not to let another American family go through this because our government would not act to protect all Americans.”

Our government does not act to protect all Americans; our president speaks hate of Muslims, and Mexicans, calling them terrorists and rapists. But the terrorist who took Yusor, Deah and Razan from their family was white, American, homegrown, and fed by hate from the top.

"Hate violence against members of my community cannot be ignored any longer. For far too long our public officials have turned a blind eye to the extremist violence that is killing our children – that killed my children. In 2012, a white supremacist murdered six and injured four at a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. In 2015, a white nationalist filled with racial hatred entered the predominantly African American Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine individuals. In 2018, a white nationalist burst into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and shouted anti-Semitic slurs, killing 11 worshippers. How much longer will we allow this to continue?"

As Dr. Abu-Salha said at the end of his testimony:

"Please remember them, Yusor, Deah and Razan. They are my children and they are gone."

And if I have anything to say about it, they will not be forgotten. We cannot continue to live in a country that hates, that listens to hate speech from our so-called president, that allows hate speech to be spread online.

Oh yeah, I’m all for Free Speech, and Hate Speech is Free, but there should be consequences.

And we need to enact Hate Crimes laws because Yusor, Deah and Razan weren’t slaughtered for their cars, their wallets, their jewelry; they were meticulously gunned down in their own homes because they are, were, Muslim.

That is Hate.

CBS News

Mt Two Cents: Terrorism

We need to get our words right.

In the wake of that mass hooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week we need to learn our words: terrorist.

See, I’ve noticed that when a brown man takes out an assault weapon and shoots up an office in San Bernardino, or a couple of brown men open fire at the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, they are called terrorists.

But when a white man murders fifty people in New Zealand, or a white man slaughters nine black people in a church in Charleston … or a white man shoots at concert goers, or movie goers or shoppers in a mall or students at school, when white people slaughter dozens they are called in the press, gunmen.

They are not. They are terrorists.

Slaughtering people is terror. People gathering to worship, or dance, or to listen to music, and who are murdered for no apparent reason other than hatred are victims of terror, no matter what the skin color is on the hand that pulls the trigger.

And we need to hold the press accountable; we need to remind the media that terrorism isn’t committed solely by brown-skinned people, but that most of the terror attacks, at least in this country lately, have been committed by white men.

Now, that doesn’t mean all white men are terrorists, but it does mean we need to broaden our scope and our language as to what makes a person a terrorist.

It isn’t who you shoot, it’s that you shoot.

It isn’t where you shoot, it’s that you shoot.

It isn’t the color of your skin, it’s that you think you have the right to take human life because you hate people.

It’s hate; and it’s hate speech. So maybe we need to start by combating hate speech, and that’s not so hard to do. When someone says something within earshot that is hateful, say something; call them out on their hate, their racism; shine a light on it. Cockroaches and racists run from the light.

But what do we do when the hate speech is coming from positions of power?

We have a president who has said that Muslims are terrorists, that Muslims hate “us,” that Muslims cheered in New Jersey on 9/11 as the towers came down. We have a president who has said that some white supremacists are “nice people,” even as Heather Heyer was being laid to rest after Charlottesville.

There are good people on both sides, he said, when people shouted death to Jews.

And, both men responsible for the mosque shootings in Quebec and Christchurch actually credited an American president for his views on Muslims. Those two men in opposite corners of the world, singled out the president, and his views, his opinions, his statements, as part of the reason why they opened fire and slaughtered innocent people.

That’s also terrorism.

Our president, while he may not carry a gun, and may not actually say the words, ‘Go out and kill,’ suggests that people are coming for us, to take our lives, our jobs, our loved ones, our country, and when a terrorist strikes, he has no anger toward the terrorist who echoes his white supremacist leanings, in fact he almost has to be coerced to even condemn the violence.

And then his words of sorrow weren’t for the people murdered, they were for New Zealand, because he couldn’t be bothered to say the word ‘Muslim’ lest he offend his base. In fact, as they were cleaning up the blood in that mosque in Christchurch, he said he didn’t think there was a rise in white supremacy at all, at least not in this country.

He’s forgotten Charlottesville, Quebec, Pittsburgh; he’s forgotten Las Vegas, Charleston, Orlando; he’s forgotten Parkland, Newtown, Christchurch.

He’s forgotten that, while the FBI defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, not including the suspect, are killed, that there over 20 mass shootings in this country in 2018 … almost two a month. And there have been eight mass shootings in 2019 … and it’s only March. And that doesn’t include shootings where less than four people were murdered.

That’s terrorism, and until we start calling it by its real name, no matter the skin color of the perpetrator, we’ll never find a way to stop it. And that’s the greatest terror of all.

It’s not over ….

Just A Thought ....

Today in Christian Love: God Hates Fags ... So Shoot Them

Another day, another Hate Crime.

This time it’s Wayne Steven Odegard, of Minnesota, who harassed patrons outside a gay club in Minneapolis and then, just for fun apparently, because they were gays after all, he decided to shoot a gay couple with a BB gun.

The attack occurred last September, when Wayne Steven Odegard stood outside the Saloon bar and began hurling anti-gay epithets at the people waiting to get into the club, Shortly after his little homophobic tirade, he pulled out the BB gun and began shooting into the crowd of patrons and then ran. Tyler Erickson, the club’s security guard, who witnessed the entire altercation and pursued Odegard as he fled the scene.

"I ran after him and then it ended up he shot a different gay couple in the leg, with that gun and it went through his jeans and drew blood. He told me multiple times that I’m going to go to hell and he’s going to bring me with him. He recited a biblical passage — I think it’s a Deuteronomy passage." — Tyler Erickson

Erickson caught Odegard and held him until police arrived, charged and arrested the man for making terroristic threats; last month Odegard plead guilty to the charges in October and was sentenced to six months in jail, and ordered to undergo chemical dependency and psychological evaluations and attend anger management classes. In addition, given that his crime was based on the sexual orientation of his victims, the court raised his probation period from three years to five years.

Okay. So what?

Here’s so what: I blame every single one of those so-called religious anti-gay bigots, like Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, Peter LaBarbera, Mike Huckabee, Brian Brown and Linda Harvey; I blame NOM and the FRC and the AFA.

For every single time they take to the airwaves to rail against gay folks, and quote the Bible, and pretend that they speak for God, they incite people like Wayne Steven Odegard to physically attack gay people just for being gay.

And yet, these same wingnuts, in the same breath, will rant and rave about how The Gays are out to destroy religion and harm the Christians, and rid the word of God-fearing individuals. And still I wait for that Hate Crime, the one perpetrated by a Gay Man or Woman, waiting outside a church, shooting a BB gun at a Christian couple and shouting anti-Christian epithets.

But that hasn’t happened. I have yet to see one incident of a gay person bashing, shooting, hurling hate speech, at Christians. And yet we have these losers and morons and haters telling their minions that we are an abomination, a sin against nature, and that God hates us; and because they do that, because they couch it in Freedom of Religion, they encourage people like Wayne Steven Odegard to attack gay people in the streets while shouting Bible verses.

I blame Wayne Steven Odegard for what he did in Minneapolis, but I also blame Fischer, LaBarbera, Brown, Perkins, Harvey, Huckabee and the rest.

They all played a part in that attack.

via LGBTQNation