Manchester Mayor: Bomber Was Not A Muslim. The mayor of Manchester says that Salman Abedi, the son of Libyan migrants who killed 22 people including children in the name of Allah, was actually not a Muslim.
From LBC:
Andy Burnham insisted people should not turn on the Muslim community in the aftermath of the Manchester terror attack.
Salman Abedi killed 22 people, including children as young as 8, when he detonated a suicide bomb outside the Manchester Arena on Monday night.
He was born and raised in Manchester to Libyan parents and worshipped in a mosque in Didsbury, not stopped going because the imam was speaking out against ISIS.
But the Mayor of Manchester insisted that this man was a terrorist who had nothing to do with Islam.
Speaking with Nick Ferrari on LBC, the mayor said Abedi was only a terrorist, not a Muslim, even though his Islam informed his terrorism.
Manchester always reacts in the right way and we did that last night. People came together. The message that I would want to get over - and this is how the vast majority of people feel - this man was a terrorist, not a Muslim.
He does not represent the Muslim community. We've got to keep that distinction in mind all the time. This was an unspeakable act.The worst thing that can happen is that people use this to blame an entire community, the Muslim community.
In my view, the man who committed this atrocity no more represents the Muslim community than the individual who murdered my friend Jo Cox represents the white, Christian community.
This politically correct response pales in comparison to the madness espoused by pop singer Katy Perry following the attack, who actually called for "no borders and no barriers."
“Whatever we say behind people’s backs, the Internet can be a little bit ruthless as far as fan bases go but I think that the greatest thing we can do is just unite and love on each other,” Perry said, adding, “No barriers, no borders, we all just need to co-exist.”
Britain's The Independent has now taken to reporting Islamophobic hate crimes:
Alongside data that shows Americans are seven times more likely to be killed by right-wing extremists than those driven by Islamist views, a new report suggests that incidents of Islamophobia rose by 57 per cent in 2016. This included a 44 per cent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes.
The report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), shows that between 2014 and 2016, anti-Muslim bias incidents increased by 65 per cent. In that two-year period, CAIR found that hate crimes targeting Muslims surged 584 per cent.
The finding by CAIR was similar to that of other independent researchers. Looking at data from 20 states, researchers at California State University reported 196 incidents of hate crimes against Muslims in the US in 2015, a 78 per cent increase on the prior year. Those figures were later corroborated by FBI data.
Earlier this year, CAIR reported that the number of incidents of alleged Islamophobia involving US Customs and Borders Protection officials has increased by about 1,000 per cent since Donald Trump took office.
Laura Pitter of Human Rights Watch, wrote this week that Mr Trump’s administration had rejected as “absurd” the allegation that his own anti-Muslim rhetoric had helped fuel the most recent increase of Islamophobic incidents.