Maine: Muslims “frustrated” by “backlash” after Brussels jihad massacre

MARCH 29, 2016 4:19 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

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What backlash? Muslims attacked? Mosques burned? Laws passed barring Muslims from entering airports? No. Actually, there has been no backlash at all: “violence against Maine’s estimated 6,000 Muslims has not been a serious problem.” So where’s the backlash? Why, one Muslim says that “the anger and hostility displayed nationally during the political campaign season eventually reach him and others as a low-level hum of suspicion that permeates their everyday lives.” A low-level hum of suspicion! It’s an outrage! Call the “Islamophobia” police! 

In reality, if Muslims in Maine want to silence this “low-level hum of suspicion,” let them cooperate actively with counter-terror measures and act honestly and firmly against the jihad ideology, instituting genuine programs in mosques to teach against the understanding of Islam presented by the Islamic State.

“Backlash from Brussels terrorism frustrates Muslims in Maine,” by Matt Byrne, Portland Press Herald, March 28, 2016:

When the images of the terrorist attack in Brussels began to flood across Ahmed Abdiraham’s television screen last week, his mind went in two directions.

First he thought: Please, don’t let it be in the name of Islam.

Then, like so many Muslims in Maine, he was reminded of his own past.

When there are “things like what happened in Belgium, it makes them remember, ‘That happened to me,’ ” said Abdiraham, director of the Maine Muslim Community Center in Portland, who fled Somalia’s violent civil war before resettling in Maine’s largest city. “It triggers that pain again” from witnessing horrific violence.

As the Islamic State militant group has continued to target European cities, the Muslim community in Maine has been forced to confront shifting attitudes about Islam and the politics of terrorism, in both the race for the presidency and the news media’s response to attacks around the world.

Republican presidential contenders Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have both made the U.S. response to terrorism key tenets of their candidacies.

Trump, in a statement in December that drew widespread condemnation, proposed temporarily shutting U.S. borders to Muslims. Last week he reiterated that stance after the Brussels attacks. Cruz suggested that police should step up surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods in the U.S. before they become radicalized. He cited a controversial surveillance program by the New York Police Department that collected intelligence on Muslim communities, but which critics say failed to provide any useful information about radicalization and turned public sentiment against police in those communities.

Abdiaziz Mohamed, a Maine Muslim center board member, says that “what (Islamic State militants) do is killing, and killing is haram,” the Arabic term for “forbidden.” For us, “(ISIS is) hijacking our name.”

Killing is haram?

“And kill them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is more grievous than slaying. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they should fight you there; then, if they fight you, kill them — such is the recompense of unbelievers, but if they give over, surely Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s; then if they give over, there shall be no enmity save for evildoers.” (Qur’an 2:191-193) 

“They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of Allah; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and kill them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper.” (Qur’an 4:89)

“This is the recompense of those who fight against Allah and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be killed, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be cut off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement.” (Qur’an 5:33)

“When your Lord was revealing to the angels, ‘I am with you; so confirm the believers. I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so strike above the necks, and strike every finger of them!” (Qur’an 8:12)

“Then, when the sacred months are over, kill the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.” (Qur’an 9:5)

“Allah has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah; they kill, and are killed.” (Qur’an 9:111)

“When you meet the unbelievers, strike their necks…” (Qur’an 47:4)

Although violence against Maine’s estimated 6,000 Muslims has not been a serious problem, Abdiraham said the anger and hostility displayed nationally during the political campaign season eventually reach him and others as a low-level hum of suspicion that permeates their everyday lives.

“It creates that fear,” he said. “Your neighbor might feel that anger. It makes everything for everyone that much harder.”…