It happened in history class. Heraa Hashmi, a 19-year-old American Muslim student at the University of Colorado, was supposed to be discussing the Crusades with the man sitting next to her. Within a few minutes, however, he was crusading against Islam.
“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims,” Hashmi’s classmate told her. What’s more, he complained, not enough Muslims were making a stand against terrorism.
Hashmi was perplexed by this analysis. Muslims are constantly denouncing atrocities that have been committed in the name of Islam. Yet many people seem to think Muslims don’t condemn terrorism enough. So Hashmi decided to put the notion to the test. Using Google spreadsheets, she made a “712-page list of Muslims condemning things with sources”, which she tweeted. The list includes everything from acts of domestic violence to 9/11.
“I wanted to show people how weak the argument [that Muslims don’t care about terrorism] is,” she explained.
Her stats struck a chord. Within 24 hours, Hashmi’s tweet had been retweeted 15,000 times. A couple of her followers volunteered to help her turn her spreadsheet into an interactive website and, within a week of the tweet, muslimscondemn.com was born. This was last November, but the website has grown considerably since then and, sadly, flickers into prominence whenever a new attack takes place.
Like 14 who condemned Israel's fighting Hezbollah in 2006.
Or the 32 who condemned the Simon Wiesenthal Center for building a museum near a deconsecrated Muslim cemetery.
There are also condemnations against Israel for "attacking Al Aqsa" and for Gaza. In a database of condemnations of "terror."
Among the terror attacks condemned, I could find very few condemnations for attacks that targeted Jews. The Islamic Society of North America, alone among Muslim groups in this database, condemned the 2014 attack killing 4 rabbis in a synagogue in Jerusalem; and the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe, alone among Muslims quoted in this database, condemned the 20123 Toulouse school murders.
That same Federation condemned the mythical Israeli attacks against Al Aqsa Mosque in 2015 - while Israelis were being stabbed in the streets. No Muslim condemned that, according to this database.
Nobody condemning the Hypercacher attacks, although plenty of condemnations of the Charlei Hebdo attacks.
Nobody condemning the 2014 murders at a Jewish museum in Brussels, but plenty for the 2016 Brussels bombings.
Nobody condemning Hamas rocket attacks towards Israeli civilians, but plenty condemning Israel for defending itself.
Out of the many terror attacks since 200 that targeted Jews for being Jews, very few of these Muslims quoted here condemned any of them. No one, as far as I can tell, condemned more than one of the hundreds of attacks on Jews.
It is easy for Muslims to claim that they are against ISIS attacks in Europe. Many of them claim that the Mossad is behind ISIS.
Yet since nearly all of those, even those who condemn some Islamic terrorism, cannot condemn terrorism when innocent Jews are the victims (and, as we have seen, in fact many celebrate those very attacks,) then the entire basis for this database rings very, very hollow.
(h/t Zach)