From The Atlantic
by Arsalan Iftikhar | October 9, 2015
Imagine if Americans woke up one morning to news of a coordinated nationwide effort by a network of armed “patriots,” toting semiautomatic guns with live ammunition, who were organizing roughly 20 protests outside Jewish synagogues, Sikh temples or black churches across the United States to intimidate congregants?
They would rightfully be horrified.
Now imagine if these armed patriots were actually planning on protesting outside 20 Islamic mosques across the U.S. Would they produce the same degree of outrage?
The Council on American-Islamic Relations warns that activists are planning anti-Muslim rallies at as many as 22 mosques, community centers, and government offices across the United States on Friday and Saturday. A Facebook page for the euphemistically named “Global Rally for Humanity” encourages “fellow patriots” to unite in protest.
These would-be “patriots” are nothing more than gun-wielding bullies trying to intimidate religious minorities from freely exercising their First Amendment rights by pointing their loaded semi-automatic Second Amendment rights directly into synagogues, temples, and mosques around the country.
The organizer of one protest planned for this weekend is a former U.S. Marine and “Oath Keeper” named Jon Ritzheimer, who gained a degree of notoriety earlier this year for coordinating an anti-mosque protest in Phoenix that drew hundreds of armed protesters. At that previous rally, he proudly sold “FUCK ISLAM” shirts. Ritzheimer, who is organizing the Phoenix Global Rally for Humanity, also recently (and bizarrely) threatened to arrest a senator for treason, for her support of the nuclear deal with Iran.
These blatant displays of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim animus are not emerging in a vacuum. One recent poll found that just 49 percent of Iowa Republicans think the religion of Islam should be legal in the United States—while 30 percent believe it “should be outlawed altogether.”
Such sentiments continue to be fanned by many conservative political leaders. Most recently, Ben Carson, a Republican presidential candidate, provoked a national uproar when he publicly stated on several occasions that he would not support a Muslim as president.
