Stand up for Muslims

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Being assaulted while walking with young family members is any New Yorker’s nightmare. Being assaulted just because of one’s faith is an affront to us all.

Sadly, a rising trend in anti-Muslim violence reached the Bronx over the weekend, when two men allegedly attacked Mujibur Rahman in Parkchester since he was wearing Muslim garb. The assailants approached him from behind while he was walking with his 9-year-old niece, beat him to the ground and shouted “ISIS” — an acronym for the so-called Islamic State terrorizing innocent people in the Middle East and beyond — according to news reports.

It was the latest in a series of attacks on Muslim New Yorkers. Since November’s terrorist massacres in Paris, Muslim individuals and organizations have described a rise in all kinds of abuse, from verbal assaults to the physical kind. Around the country, mosques have faced vandalism and threats. A California State University report recently cited by The New York Times found that nationwide, hate crimes against Muslims tripled in the month after the Paris attacks.

Pundits, social scientists and politicians will debate the reason for this shameful pattern. But it does not take an expert to figure out what’s happening. As terrorist groups around the world continue to misappropriate the name of Islam — which, after all, derives from the Arabic word for peace — active and latent bigotry is spreading everywhere.

The active kind is easy to spot. In addition to physical attacks the likes of which Mr. Rahman suffered, this variety is embodied by demagogues like Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate whose hate speech includes a disgraceful proposal to track Muslim Americans in a database. The latent variety is perhaps just as noxious, and includes relentlessly negative depictions of Muslims in entertainment and news media.

What can we in the northwest Bronx do as anti-Muslim bigotry gains a seemingly ever-stronger hold within the American mainstream?

We must reject the trend in both word and deed. That means calling for swift justice for Mr. Rahman and demanding that our elected officials stand with him. Local organizations like Congregation Tehiliah and the Riverdale-Yonkers Society have organized interfaith events with Muslims from the area, and there needs to be more of the same.

With Martin Luther King, Jr. Day just behind us, it seems well to reconsider a passage from one of his most famous writings: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Mujibur Rahman, Islam, Islamophobia, Parkchester

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