Meanwhile, other mosques were shot at, menaced with fake explosive devices, firebombed,
threatened and protested. One had a severed pig’s
head tossed at it, and still another’s copy of the
Koran was smeared with feces.
An Example in Texas
Irving, Texas, was a sort of microcosm of the rest of
the nation. A Dallas suburb of 230,000 that is home
to one of the largest mosq ues in America, Irving
was the site of multiple anti-Muslim demonstrations and events.
On Nov. 21, about a dozen armed protesters carrying long guns and signs gathered outside the
Islamic Center of Irving. Explaining his decision to
bring a 12-gauge hunting rifle to the peaceful suburban scene, protest organizer David Wright told The
Dallas Morning News, “I’m not going to lie. We do
want to show force. … It would be ridiculous to protest Islam without defending ourselves.”
Four days later, Wright published the names and
addresses of local Muslims and “Muslim sympathizers” on Facebook, as well as a message: “We should
stop being afraid to be who we are! We like to have
guns designed to kill people that pose a threat in a
very efficient manner.” In the weeks that followed,
a sort of counter-protest movement evolved, with
individuals who are not Muslim but support the
right of Muslims to worship in peace showing up
to defy Wright’s group. But the protests showed no
signed of stopping — in one case, the Texas Rebel
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan announced plans to
demonstrate at the mosque in May 2016.
As in the rest of America, Islamophobia was
a problem in Irving well before the latest Paris
30 splc intelligence report
attacks. In February 2015, Mayor Beth Van Duyne
reacted with outrage to the existence, in nearby
Dallas, of an Islamic tribunal whose purpose is to
use Shariah law to settle civil disputes within the
local Muslim community. Though American Jews,
Catholics, Amish, and other religious groups use
religious tribunals on a voluntary basis to settle
civil disputes (but not criminal matters) amongst
themselves, Van Duyne condemned the mediation panel in the strongest of terms, suggesting it was a stealth effort to replace American
law with Shariah. In March, she asked the Irving
City Council to endorse a state bill outlawing the
already illegal use of foreign law, including Shariah,
in state criminal courts.
That wasn’t the end of it. In September, Irving
school officials made national headlines when they
sent Ahmed Mohamed, a nerdy ninth-grader, out of
the school in handcuffs after accusing him of making a fake bomb. The bomb turned out to be a homemade clock, and, for his troubles and his smarts, the
14-year-old landed an invitation to the White House.
But his family, shaken by the incident, withdrew all
their children from Irving’s schools and said they
were moving to Qatar.
For his part, armed protest organizer Wright
claimed to represent a new group called the Bureau
of American Islamic Relations (an obvious mimicking of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a
Muslim civil rights group). He is also allegedly associated with the so-called III Percenters, a national
movement of gun-toting, antigovernment “Patriots”
that takes its name from the discredited myth that
only 3% of colonists fought against the English in
the American Revolution.
AP IMAGES/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS (HOLLANDE AND OBAMA); AP IMAGES/LEWIS JOLY/SIPA (EIFFEL TOWER); AP IMAGES/MICAH ESCAMILLA/LOS ANGELES NEWS GROUP
Islamist terror attacks
like those in Paris
(clockwise from right)
and San Bernadino,
Calif., have caused
world leaders like
French President
Francois Hollande and
President Obama to
increase cooperation.