Hate Crimes Are Terrorism

Filed in National by on December 15, 2015

It’s time to call “hate crimes” what they really are – Terrorism. There really is no difference.

Here’s a list of reported incidents against Muslims and Mosques since the San Bernardino attack:

Dec. 4: Windows broken at Palm Beach Islamic center

A member of the Islamic Center of Palm Beach discovered that someone had broken about half of the building’s windows overnight and overturned furniture in the Islamic center. Police are not yet investigating the incident as a hate crime.

Dec. 4: Man threatened to cut off Muslims’ heads

A man left numerous threatening voicemails at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in St. Louis, mentioning the attack in San Bernardino. He threatened to cut off Muslims’ heads if they came to his home. The FBI reportedly arrested a suspect, but he may not be charged.

Dec. 5: Muslim store owner punched by man who yelled “I kill Muslims”

A Muslim store owner in Queens says he was repeatedly punched by a man who yelled “I kill Muslims.” The man first asked if a newspaper with a report on the San Bernardino was free, and then asked if other items in the shop were free as well, according to store owner Sarker Haque. Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime, but the suspect told CBS News that he did not say anything negative about Muslims while he was in the store.

Dec. 5: Muslim congressman received death threat

Muslim Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) said that he received a death threat.

Dec. 5/6: Man threw stones at Muslim woman’s car

A Muslim woman wearing a hijab said a man cut her off and threw stones at her car while she was driving away from a mosque in New Tampa, Florida.

Dec. 6: Sikh temple vandalized in California

Graffiti mentioning Islam and the Islamic State was discovered at a Sikh temple in Buena Park, California.

Dec. 6: Woman threw hot coffee at Muslims praying in park

A woman yelled anti-Islamic slurs and threw hot coffee at a group of Muslims praying in a park in Alameda County, California. Police are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.

Dec. 7: Man asked restaurant workers if they are Muslim, slapped one employee

A man started yelling at workers in a Manhattan restaurant, asking if they were Muslims. He slapped one worker and later returned to smash a glass partition at the restaurant with a chair. Police have charged the man with a hate crime, according to the New York Daily News.

Dec 8: Pig’s head found outside Philadelphia mosque

A pig’s head was found outside the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society in Philadelphia. Surveillance video shows someone throwing the pig’s head at the mosque from a red pickup truck.

Dec. 7: New Jersey mosque received hateful letters

A mosque in New Jersey received several hateful letters, one of which called Muslims “evil.”

Dec. 9: Passengers attack ride-share driver in Seattle

Passengers attacked the driver of a ride-share in Seattle, accusing him of being a terrorist and punching him. Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.

Dec. 9: Man calls woman “trash,” kicks her in the leg

A man confronted a woman at a Brooklyn bus stop and said, “I can’t wait for the U.S. to get rid of you trash.” He then kicked her in the leg. Police are investigating the incident as a bias crime, according to the New York Daily News.

Dec. 10: CAIR receives hateful mail with unknown substance

The offices of the Council on American-Islamic Relations were evacuated after the group received a letter with a powdery substance that referenced a “painful death.” Tests found that the substance was not dangerous.

Dec. 10: Vandals broke windows at Phoenix mosque

Broken windows and a busted light were found at Islamic Community Center of Phoenix on the morning of Dec. 10. Police are not yet investigating the incident as a hate crime.

Dec. 10: Man set fire to Somali restaurant

A man was charged with arson after he allegedly set fire to a Somali restaurant in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The fire came just a few days after Nazi symbols and the phrase “go home” were found painted on the restaurant.

Dec. 10: Muslim woman’s car shot at while leaving mosque

The car of a Muslim woman wearing a hijab was shot at while she was leaving a mosque in Tampa, Florida, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Florida.

Dec. 10: Muslim family had windows of house smashed multiple times

A Muslim family in Plano, Texas, said that they had the windows on their home smashed two days in a row — just six weeks after they moved to the area, according to CBS Dallas-Fort Worth.

Dec. 11: Man set fire to Mosque in California

A man set fire to the Masjid Ibrahim Mosque in Coachella, California. Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.

Dec. 12: 20 people hold armed protest at Dallas mosque

About 20 people held an armed protest outside a mosque in Dallas, Texas, according to ABC News.

Dec. 13: Two southern California mosques vandalized, fake grenade found in one mosque

A plastic replica of a hand grenade was found in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Baitus-Salaam Mosque in Hawthorne, California. The fence around the mosque was spray-painted with the word “Jesus.” Police also found the phrase “Jesus is the way” painted in front of Islamic Center of Hawthorne.

For a nation supposedly terrified of terrorism it’s obviously our go-to response.

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A stay-at-home mom with an obsession for National politics.

Comments (26)

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  1. Aoine says:

    missed one – although the investigation is still ongoing
    how it was handed by the media is sad

    http://thevillagessuntimes.com/2015/12/11/spd-investigation-continues-into-death-of-seattle-central/

  2. Dorian Gray says:

    After my friends’ mosque and Islamic Center in Newark was vandalized two years ago I wrote and had published in the News Journal a letter expressing my embarrassment as a native Delawarean and explaining that the many Muslims I knew who prayed there and attended classes there were some for the sweetest, friendliest people I know. These acts are stupid, shameful and criminal.

    However…

    The incredible effort that goes into arguing these false equivalences is a waste of time in my view. Several years ago we made up a thing called “hate crimes” to qualify other crimes. Now we must argue about the definition and category of “terrorism” also. I have no idea to what end we have these inutile semantic discussions. It seems very Orwellian to me. I guess it makes some liberals feel better, like there’s some service being performed. I don’t know.

    It is upsetting because really the only people (or at least the crucial people) who can push back against the Islamic religion being used to persuade and recruit maniac killers is other Muslims. So threatening them is counterproductive. But false equivalences like this are equally unhelpful. It’s the banal banter of the Huffington Post and Salon.

  3. Dorian Gray says:

    @Aoine – “‘As with all death investigations, we ask the community to be patient and avoid jumping to conclusions while detectives conduct their work,’ police said.”

    Perhaps we should wait and see and try to determine like what actually happened here. I know you’re all very eager to add to Pandora’s list and prove your point (whatever that actually is), but maybe you could read a few of the ten or so Donald Trump posts on HuffPo today to get yourself sufficiently frothed. We can come back to this story later when we actually have some idea of what happened. There’s a GOP debate tonight as well! That’ll be at least 120 minutes of vacuous nonsense. Hopefully that’ll satiate that pang.

  4. cassandra m says:

    Speaking of banal ^^^.

    If you are on the business end of one of these hate crimes, you’d get that it is terrorism. But then, here you are, arguing that the targeting of brown and black people by angry and scared white people is apparently the cost of living in the USA. Spare me.

  5. Dorian Gray says:

    I didn’t write or imply that it was the cost of living in America, did I? Perhaps you should reread what I wrote without the immature knee-jerk reaction. The cookie-cutter “liberalism” here is very sad. Intellectually weak… It would fly really well over at like Daily Kos maybe.

    Although, Cass, you do seem to be sufficiently frothed already this morning. I recommend skipping the debate this evening.

  6. Dorian Gray says:

    You know what I really enjoy. Challenging the easy ideas that you all believe are the answers because it’s conventional wisdom for “liberals.”

    It just occurred to me that both Cass and Pandora know my name in real life. Well, go ahead and read the published letter I referenced in the first sentence of my remarks. Go ahead… I’ll wait.

  7. ben says:

    question from someone who doesnt know. (it’s me) Is a charge of “terrorism” different than a charge of “hate crime”?
    if so… I think what we have come to term as a “hate crime” SHOULD be a more serious charge with more serious consequences. If calling it something different accomplishes that, im for it.

  8. cassandra m says:

    I didn’t write or imply that it was the cost of living in America, did I?

    Why, yes — yes you did. Rather than engaging Pandora in her idea here, you tut-tutted, and pooh-poohed her idea by engaging in the usual jejune litany of bullshit.

    Hint: it isn’t a false equivalency if the people who are at the brunt of this violence experience it as terrorism. And they do.

    Frankly, I’d be OK with a reclassification of Hate Crimes to terrorism or terroristic threats.

  9. Dorian Gray says:

    How is challenging the idea intellectually not engaging in the idea? You don’t know how to read and absorbed arguments. If it doesn’t agree with what you already think it’s jejune bullshit. Your responses are a complete waste of time.

    So, just to be clear, your rule of thumb is if victims feel terrorized the crime is terrorism. That’s fantastic logic. Circulus in probando… You keep up like this nobody will take you seriously. I certainly don’t.

  10. pandora says:

    I am very concerned for the women and men entering a Planned Parenthood. I am very concerned for Muslims praying, dressing as a Muslim and going to a Mosque. I am very concerned for a black person who encounters a confederate flag waving/wearing individual. I am very concerned because these places and people could threaten their life (and they have already proven they would) simply by how they look, where they walk/pray, and if they dare to seek medical care. To me, that’s terrorism – designed to make certain people think twice before going about their daily lives.

    What I’m saying is that these acts are designed to alter people’s lives/choices based on the attackers ideology. That’s the point of terrorism. Terrorize while sending a message.

  11. Steve Newton says:

    Several years ago we made up a thing called “hate crimes” to qualify other crimes. I used to believe this–that if someone was assaulted that assault was a sufficiently “hateful” crime and that there was no point in selectively dumping other charges on top of it, because–wait for it–that’s a “liberal agenda.”

    Yet I’ve come to understand that dismissal as being pretty intellectually vacuous. If a group of teenage thugs vandalizes all or most of the plots in a graveyard it is a crime against property, pure and simple. Unless it is done by carving swastikas into only the Jewish graves. Then it is a conscious attempt not just to commit vandalism but to limit/affect/coerce the actions of one particular group of people, based on their religion. It graduates from being just vandalism into being behavior intended to terrorize a group of people.

    That’s intent, you say, and it should be irrelevant–a crime is a crime. But intent is always relevant–the lack of pre-determined intent converts first-degree murder into second-degree murder; crimes of hot rage and passion get converted from second-degree murder into manslaughter. Holding a certain amount of weed becomes “possession with intent to distribute.” To suggest that our laws are neutral about intent is simply inaccurate.

    But still, you say, murder is murder and how can you make murder more awful (particularly in states with capital punishment) that murder by declaring it a “hate crime”? Curiously, this argument goes back to three decades of reasoning in the early 20th Century that it was inappropriate to have a Federal anti-lynching statute, which was effectively the first attempt to legislate a “hate crime.” (So, Dorian, it goes back much further than you’d like to believe.) The question revolved around the crime that had been committed by the members of the mob who did not actually tie up the Negro transgressor, put the noose around his neck, or set the body on fire. Had the witnesses who cheered and took pictures and (even!) ate picnic lunches committed a crime? And were their actions specifically intended to terrorize somebody into not exercising their rights as Americans?

    “Motive” is a perfectly necessary part of any prosecution equation–if I can’t prove you meant to kill her, then I can only charge you with involuntary manslaughter, not manslaughter. If I can’t prove you had a reason to want to kill her, I probably won’t get a conviction.

    The only tiny agreement that I have with Dorian Gray here is that the spectrum is too large for just two terms–“hate crime” and “terrorism.” We need to retain a distinction between “grand” terrorism (groups or individuals attempting to kill on a large scale in order to instill fear in a large sub-section of the population) and “petit” terrorism (people using a rock through a window or spray paint because they don’t have the guts to become suicide jockeys). There is a difference of scale between state-sponsored terrorists, sub-national groups, organized nutcases, inspired individual/couple murderers, and twits throwing rocks through windows, and we need to capture those nuances. Not sure what the terms would be.

    As for that “letter of embarrassment” for vandalism against a Mosque, precisely how much impact do you seriously think it had? Did you shame one person out of spray-painting graffiti? Did you win one convert for accepting Muslim-Americans as equal citizens? Or was the letter itself no more than a different type of liberal hand-wringing than what you are now decrying?

  12. Geezer says:

    @DG: If I am to take seriously your claim that semantics don’t matter, I would have to pretend that objections to the estate tax did not increase when conservatives began calling it a “death tax.” Or that conservatives weren’t waging a similar fight to convert their travails into “reverse racism,” or more often these days, just “racism.”

    Your own persistence in insisting that this doesn’t matter belies your very argument.

  13. Dorian Gray says:

    First, the easy part. Professor Newton – Admittedly I don’t think my published letter did anything of consequence. I only mentioned it to try to ensure that when I had the nerve to question a perceived liberal orthodoxy today I didn’t get called a neo-con, a racist or an Islamophobe. Why did I write it in the first place? Because I do believe, as I wrote above, that the only real way I see out of this is by action within the Muslim community. I thought my letter was a way to state publicly that I don’t not see all Muslims as a problem in the United States.

    On the main topic, if you all think that compiling lists of what seem to be some nasty retaliatory crimes and labeling them as you see fit has any value (and Geezer seems to think so) than have at it. I disagree.

    I think the entire enterprise of cataloguing these acts and arguing something like, if A is “terrorism,” than B, C, D and E are also “terrorism,” is meaningless. I find the exercise very silly. It reeks sloganeering and the worst type of university activism. This idea of having to make equivalences or finding harsher words serves no real purpose other than perhaps a political purpose. I don’t think politicking is going to fix any of this.

    Put it this way, creating categories and enforcing how people refer to what crimes isn’t helpful in my view.

  14. pandora says:

    Personally, I got tired of “certain” shooters referred to as lone wolves. I’m tired of people willing to move heaven and earth, write laws, suggest religious tests, etc. when it comes to Muslims, but won’t lift a finger against a problem just as real (statistically more so).

    Killing people for your religion and killing people because of abortion still results in people killed in the name of ideology. That’s terrorism.

  15. Dorian Gray says:

    Do you see how the premise in your last comment is different from the original post? I understand your point about ideological random murder, regardless of brand, being terrorism. If we’re going to use the word than Roof, Dear, these monsters in San Bernardino, etc. are all terrorists. But your original premise got away from you a little bit, I feel. I’m not saying hate mail and stone throwing and vandalism are cool. It’s repugnant and criminal and I said so. Anyway, that’s one of the points I was making. That and the labeling is completely a political exercise that has little real value.

  16. Steve Newton says:

    Dorian, it’s time become intellectually consistent here. Our entire legal system is built on such categorizations; our military and homeland security operate on them; and our political system currently (for better or worse) revolves around them. We categorize.

    But the greater slippage in your answer is the total ducking of my argument regarding the concept of “hate crimes.” I like the way you avoided defending your own original argument that hate crimes are some sort of “liberal” concoction. This is important because your entire argument of disdain for categorization follows from your dislike of the concept of a hate crime … and yet when challenged, you did not defend it.

    Oh, and I did appreciate the little slap at “university sloganeering.” It was cute. As vacuous as your thinking on hate crimes. But cute, I’ll give you that.

  17. cassandra_m says:

    I owe this man^^^^ the adult beverage of his choice.

  18. puck says:

    “Our entire legal system is built on such categorizations”

    Actually our legal system is built on equal treatment under the law.

    Human intellect fundamentally consists of putting things into categories. But we are also smart enough to know the limitations. Categorization also manifests as bigotry and racial profiling. “Equal treatment under the law” is an attempt to harness our natural impulse to judge by categories.

    Our legal system already categorizes crimes into first degree, second degree, etc. Sentencing guidelines allow for aggravating or mitigating factors. I suppose “hate”and “terrorism” are just additional degrees or aggravating factors.

    We will always judge by categories because that’s how intellect works. But civilization and humanity requires us to evaluate our judgments objectively before acting on them.

    I recall “terrorism” always seemed to have the connotation of “international terrorism.” Planes and boats were hijacked, Olympic athletes were held hostage, all in the service of some faraway cause, usually in the Middle East. Americans couldn’t be called terrorists of course, because everything was just fine back home.

    In the 70s some radicals attempted to “bring the war home” in an effort to make us realize the effects of our war in Vietnam. In earlier times terrorists were called “anarchists.”

    One real outcome of labelling a crime “terrorism” is that Federal resources can be brought to bear on the investigation, especially any international aspects.

  19. ben says:

    “One real outcome of labelling a crime “terrorism” is that Federal resources can be brought to bear on the investigation,”
    and why not? crimes motivated by bigotry and the desire to oppress others go against our nation’s founding belief structure. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them TREASON, but they should most certainly be dealt with as seriously as possible.

  20. Geezer says:

    @DG: OK, you think it’s a waste of time. So noted. The rest of us are busy trying to move the Overton Window, so if you’d excuse us…

  21. Aoine says:

    @Dorian’s comment December 15, 2015 at 9:25 am

    your reading comprehension leaves a lot to be desired…..

    my post was short, clear and succinct…..

    how could you have MISSED this: ” although the investigation is still ongoing”

    so I came to no solid conclusions – but you could not resist the dig –

    makes you look like what you are – no bad reflection on me – its YOUR side that likes to jump to conclusions – you know – like solar panels sucking all the energy out of the sun (reason they denied a solar panel array in North Carolina.

    but, after last night apparently your side is ok with the wholesale slaughter of innocent women and children and carpet “bombing the desert until the land glows” Ted Cruz

    I’m just waiting for one of your ilk to say ” kill them ALL and let God sort them out”

    OR

    “build a wall and nuke the entire region”

    Because throwing out the baby with the bath water is what you people do so well.

  22. ben says:

    holdonasecond are you calling Dorian a republican/conservative?

  23. anonymous says:

    aoine: if you can’t tell the difference between a liberal who isn’t a doctrinaire leftist and the maniac far right, then you’re not really trying.

  24. Dorian Gray says:

    Wasn’t on yesterday but I owe Prof Newton an explanation.

    I was never trying to argue whether “hate crimes” is a thing. I actually don’t care. I know there’s has been – and will likely continue to be – arguments about whether “hate crimes” are a real thing. That wasn’t my point and I don’t care to argue it one way or the other because the distinction is not interesting to me.

    My point is that now we seem to need to go even a step further. Hate crimes aren’t enough. It’s all “terrorism” now.

    I didn’t side step your question. I didn’t answer it because that wasn’t even the point I was trying to make. I feel like your trying to bait me into a discussion about the definition of hate crimes. I’m not interested.

    I was commenting on the premise of the post. That we feel the need to compile lists and call it all terrorism because we need to show how everything is equivalent.

    Like Pandora said, she’s upset that there’s a distinction between a crazy loner who lived in a mountain shack and a radical Muslim who worked at the Health Department in a professional capacity. I see little value in trying to draw these equivalences. Is that clear enough?

    And just as one additional aside. I mentioned that I raised the issue of that letter I had published in support of my friends because in this day and age if you don’t you’re slandered as a particular type of person. And then it happened anyway! Haha… Classic.

  25. Steve Newton says:

    Uh, wow. How have you been slandered?

    As for hate crimes, here’s your original argument:

    The incredible effort that goes into arguing these false equivalences is a waste of time in my view. Several years ago we made up a thing called “hate crimes” to qualify other crimes. Now we must argue about the definition and category of “terrorism” also.

    Pure and simple it’s bullshit that it was not fundamental to your argument.

  26. Dorian Gray says:

    I prefer to think of it as a rhetorical flourish rather than foundational to the argument, but I appreciate the compliment.

    So, putting aside the bullshit bit about the validity of the term hate crime, does bending backwards to highlight so-called equivalences do any good? Like the point of the post is what I’m disagreeing with.