Head Of Muslim Group: 'If North Carolina Killer Describes Himself As An Atheist, Are We To Demand All Atheists Apologize For Him Like Muslims Have Had To Do?'
By Dom Giordano
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Three American-Muslim students were killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Tuesday evening. The killings inspired uproar over night with the Twitter campaign of #MuslimLivesMatter by those that felt that they were killed because of their religion. Craig Stephen Hicks, has been charged in their murder that police are saying stemmed from a parking dispute.
The Executive Director of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations(CAIR), Jacob Bender told WPHT midday host Dom Giordano that he is not sold on the police's reasoning, saying that it "hasn't been proven yet" and that true motive originates in the "growing anti-Muslim bias in this country."
"There's the fear mongering, North Carolina has passed so called 'Anti-Sharia' legislation, and we have anti-Muslim bus ads potentially coming to a SEPTA bus near you. So, we see that these crimes are not isolated incidents or tragedies, but take place in a growing climate of fear and condemnation of Islam and the entire Muslim community."
According to Bender, whenever Muslims are involved in violence, they are called "terrorists" and every Muslim is asked to apologize for it, but the same can not be said for people of other religions.
"If he (Hicks) describes himself as an Atheist and an artist, are we going to demand that all Atheists apologize?...When a white Christian relying on anti-Islamic teachings and websites goes on a rampage and kills 85 people in Norway, that person is never described as 'terrorist,' he is described as a 'lone wolf.' Yet, whenever Muslims out of the perversion of their faith commit violence, then the word 'terrorism' is constantly used over and over again."
He makes the case that with such an overwhelming majority of Muslims being "peace loving," the fringe violent minority has almost no connection with the rest of the Islamic community.
"Every mainstream Muslim organization in the world has condemned ISIS over and over and over again and yet the media keeps bringing up ISIS as if somehow it is representative of Islam...The Islam of the shooters in Paris has as much in common with mainstream Islam as the Ku Klux Klan has in connection to mainstream Christianity."