Every American Muslim's Fear After the Boston Bombing

Charles King

The Tsarnaev brothers are Muslim. They are homegrown jihadists. But careful, writes Charles King, are these terrorists really any different from Adam Lanza and other mass murderers?

Tsarnaev bothers in an image taken
before the explosion at the
Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
(Handout/UPI, via Landov)

The naming of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing and the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured alive last night, have made the nightmare scenario for many American Muslims come true. The Tsarnaev brothers will forever be the poster children for a particularly American fear, reflected in everything from blockbuster films to popular fiction: that the English-speaking, dark-haired young men with unpronounceable names, who wear baseball caps, win scholarships, and garner wrestling trophies, are also the ones who could blow you up.

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Is it freedom of expression or a hate crime?

Bülent Keneş *

Let me be clear at the beginning so that no one gets confused: No provocation or instigation could justify or legitimize the killing of innocent people.

From this perspective, the murder of an American envoy and three diplomats who had nothing to do with the incidents in Benghazi of Libya cannot be tolerated, even if it was carried out in response to a heinous movie insulting our Prophet Muhammad. It is my hope that this massacre, which violated the inviolability of the right to life and the immunity of diplomats, is expeditiously investigated, and that those who committed this horrible crime receive the punishment they deserve.

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'Sikhs are not Muslims' sends a sinister message

Such declarations by the news media and others has an insidious subtext: that there's something wrong with being a Muslim in America.

Scott C. Alexander *

Almost from the beginning of their coverage of the horrific and deadly shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, CNN and other news media went out of their way to send a message to the American public: "Sikhs are not Muslims."

But what were we to make of that message? If the temple's members had been Muslims, would the attack have then been justified?

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