Washington, April 24 - Waves of empathy and condolences for the hundreds of Sri Lanka church bombing victims and their families have left prominent figures in the Democratic Party bewildered, aides report, as those victims of violence do not belong to the Islamic faith.
Staff members of Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and other legislators and political leaders noted this week that in the aftermath of the attacks that left more than 360 dead and many more wounded, Democratic politicians continue to voice confusion at widespread outpourings of sympathy, goodwill, offers of assistance, and similar manifestations of care that those politicians had assumed only appropriate when Muslim suffering appears on the news.
"Some of them are really shaken up," observed an aide to Congresswoman Omar, speaking on condition of anonymity. "My boss, for example, spent much of last night on the phone with fellow Democrats discussing this phenomenon, which she described with words such as 'disturbing,' 'weird,' and frustrating.' There seems to be a general sense of the unfamiliar in party circles at the moment, because compared to when Muslim attacks on non-Muslims happen in the West, it's much harder in this case to fall back on the comfortable tropes of grievance, resistance, colonial baggage, or whatever. Those easy sound bites don't fit Sri Lanka. The whole thing feels very awkward."
"It's freaky," admitted presidential hopeful Kamala Harris. "We live under the assumption that the people who automatically get sympathy are Muslims, and then boom, so to speak, large numbers of people direct sympathy toward those who are not only non-Muslim, but victims of violence by Muslims. It's going to take some time to digest this."
Observers note that this is not the first time many on the political left have admitted confusion in the face of non-Muslim victims. "The Palestinian suicide bombing campaigns of the late 1990's and early 2000's prompted a good bit of perplexity on the left, as I recall," noted New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. "There was this groundswell of sympathy for Jewish Israelis, especially among Americans, and for those whose leftist leanings translated into reflexive sympathy only for Palestinians, that was a difficult and confounding time. Why would anyone feel sympathy, let alone empathy or solidarity, with non-Muslims, and with Jews, of all people? It was a real challenge."
"Fortunately," he recalled, "9-11 happened and eventually we were able to put that chapter behind us. Maybe something similar can happen now."