Many people in the Muslim Community in Pensacola claim that they fear someone may retaliate against them. This comes days after a deadly shooting at NAS Pensacola in which three sailors were killed and eight others injured.
Here is the story: “‘Pain shared by everyone regardless of faith,’ Pensacola Muslim community speaks out,” by Amy Russo, WEAR, December 9, 2019.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (WEAR) — Many people in the Muslim Community in Pensacola fear someone may retaliate against them. This comes days after a deadly shooting at NAS Pensacola that claimed the lives of three sailors and injured eight people.
The shooter, Mohammed Alshamrani, is from Saudi Arabia and was a Muslim.
Is the “pain shared by everyone regardless of faith”? Even though the killer was a Muslim, intent on killing only Infidels? Isn’t it possible that the “pain” is felt more keenly by those who belong to the class of those targeted, than by those who belong to the same faith as that killer? Aren’t we all heartily sick of the way, after every Muslim terror attack, local Muslims insist that it is they who are afraid, they who need reassurance and sympathy – and too many of us fall for this victimization, choose to “share their pain,” and give them that quite unnecessary reassurance, unnecessary because almost never, after one of these atrocities, has there been a retaliatory attack against Muslims?
Authorities say there hasn’t been any credible threats to the Mosque or local Muslim community.
But that won’t keep the local Muslims from dwelling on their fears for their own safety, turning the event upside down so that it becomes one where we are to offer our thoughts and prayers to the Muslims who are, yet again, supposedly terrified of becoming victims of the haters and the haters and the islamophobes. It’s a worry that never materializes, but it keeps being brought up, lest we forget how imperiled are our Muslim brothers and sisters.
One of the victims killed, 19-year-old Mohammed Sameh Haitham, was a Muslim.
That has no bearing on the anti-Infidel intent of Mohammed Saeed Ashramani. If one of his victims happened to be a Muslim, he certainly did not intend it, and had he lived, would have much regretted it. He was out to kill as many Infidels as he could. The Muslim sailor killed was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his death has no bearing on our understanding of the terror attack.
Salma Ashmawi is with the Islamic Center of Northwest Florida.
She says the recent shooting at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard produced a suspect, but religion was never part of the conversation.
By that, Ashmawi means that the police, the FBI, and the mainstream media, have all been determined to avoid the obvious: that Ashramani was a Muslim. Not mentioning that fact, so as to make sure that the killer’s faith “was never part of the conversation,” testifies to the fear in the media and the security services of being labelled “islamophobic.” But we know, from Ashramani’s uncle, that the killer was a pious and observant Muslim. He would certainly have grown up, in Saudi Arabia, with schoolbooks full of antisemitic and anti-Christian hate. He would, as a pious Muslim attending a Wahhabi mosque, have been familiar with the 109 Qur’anic commands to Unbelievers to take part in violent Jihad, to fight, to kill, to smite at the necks of, to strike terror in the hearts of, Infidels. His religion — Islam — explains the killer’s act, and not naming Islam, forever the elephant in the room, merely makes those in the security services and the media, who presume to protect and instruct us, look foolish. After 36,000 terror attacks by Muslims since 9/11 alone, we have earned the right to freely discuss Islam, its texts and tenets, without fear of being labelled “islamophobes,” a word meant to shut down all islamocriticism, and therefore ought to be banished from our lexicon.
“I’m sorry the media highlights the faith being Muslim when something like that happens,” said Ashmawi.
Actually, having closely monitored ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS in the four days following the attack, I find Ashmawi’s comment bizarre, as there has been no “highlighting” of the killer’s faith being Muslim. Far from it. It was not until late on Sunday that the first mention was made of Ashramani having been a Muslim. There was a deliberate effort not to bring up his religion, though of course, given that his name was Mohammed Saeed Ashramani, that effort was certain to fail.
Teachers at the Mosque say the tragic news have [sic] affected the entire Pensacola Community and the pain is shared by everyone regardless of faith.
Yes, that is what the teachers at the mosque would say. But was the news quite as ‘tragic” to Pensacola’s Muslims as it was to the real victims of the attack, the Unbelievers? No doubt the Muslims were sorry that one of the killer’s victims turned out to be, inadvertently, a fellow Muslim, but are they quite so sorry about the Infidels who were killed or wounded? After all, if they are Muslims, the Qur’an teaches them that Infidels are “the most vile of created beings.” Why should they regret the deaths of those who are thus described? It would make no sense. What “pain” would pious Muslims “share” with Infidels mourning their own?
But much has been accomplished by the local Muslims. They have made themselves the objects of pity. It is they who “fear” retaliation, even though the police say there have been “no credible threats.” It is they who are full of sorrow that the media “highlights the faith being Muslim when something like that happens,” even though those in the mainstream media have gone out of their way to remain silent on the subject of Islam, and its possible relevance to the killer’s behavior.
The sorrow and the pity. Will we ever learn to behave decently to our Muslim brothers and sisters? We seem to have failed them yet again in Pensacola. Perhaps the next time something is done by someone, we will know better how to react. We can only hope.