The day after an immigrant from Uzbekistan murdered cyclists and pedestrians in New York, running them over with a rented pickup truck, NPR did an interview to highlight how such events make life uncomfortable for Muslims. They spoke with Hussein Rashid, a professor of religion at Columbia University who had distinguished himself by his response to the terror attack. He had tweeted: “I am a New Yorker and a Muslim. Stand tall. Stand proud. That’s our city. #ManhattanAttack and also, f— all y’all who want to mess with us.” Expletive not deleted in the original.
Rashid, with a little prompting from the NPR host, allowed that the “all y’all” he had in mind included “anybody who wants to mess with our city” (hear, hear), but was particularly aimed at “the backlash against Muslims that are going to come after this.”
We’re told repeatedly that it is crucial not to leap to the assumption that some or another attack is an act of terrorism—we need to wait for the facts to come in. But it’s never too early to report on the terrible backlash against Muslims, even before any such backlash has happened.
As you might expect from a religion professor who responds to a mass killing by tweeting “f— all y’all,” Rashid is a guy who can be counted on to keep it classy. Which he did with another tweet while the wreckage was still being removed. Riffing on the fact that the killer’s birthplace was once a part of the Soviet Union, Professor Rashid had a few yuks tweeting, “With the Russia connection, the Manhattan Attacker has more in common with @realDonaldTrump than he does with NY Muslims.”
Say this for Rashid: He knows how to get on National Public Radio.
