The amazing aspect of this story is that AP doesn’t bat an eye over the fact that this captain was offended by a bulls-eye poster of Osama bin Laden, or by his completely fantastic assertion that “hundreds of Muslims,” presumably in the US, were being killed because “people believed they were involved” in 9/11.
What would the reaction have been if a German-American in 1942 complained about a bulls-eye poster of Hitler? Anyway, this also departs from the party line, the one that the media still retails: that the vast majority of Muslims abhor and condemn bin Laden. If we are to believe the conventional wisdom, this captain should have brought in the poster himself, not been offended by it. (Thanks to Teri for the link.)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A police captain testified Tuesday that he suffered retaliation for complaining about a sergeant who brought in a “bull’s-eye” poster of Osama bin Laden seven days after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Khalid Mohammed Syed, 49, was the first witness on the first day of trial of his civil-rights suit against the city.
A native of Pakistan and a U.S. citizen since 1981, Syed joined the Philadelphia police department in 1990. He said the poster incident made him “scared for my life” and “terrified” his wife and two young children.
“I just could not believe that someone would have brought that poster in at a time like that,” Syed testified, “at a time when hundreds of Muslims were being killed because people believed they were involved” in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Within six months, Syed was accused by students in one of his police academy classes of making a derogatory comment about gays, joking about the al-Qaeda terrorist network, and suggesting some recruits try drugs to stay awake in class.
And this is supposed to be retaliation for complaining about the poster? Well, maybe it was. Maybe his students got the impression that if poking fun at Osama offended him, maybe he was on Al-Qaeda’s side. What would have been unreasonable about that?