A vehicle-ramming attack in New York City has drawn a strong reaction from US President Donald Trump, who called the attacker “very sick and deranged” on Twitter and pledged to step up vetting of those entering the US.
At least eight people died and 11 people were injured late on Tuesday after a man drove a rented pick-up truck into cyclists and pedestrians in New York City, before being shot and wounded by police officers.
The city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, condemned the attack as “cowardly” and investigators have labelled it a “terrorist” incident.
Local news stations, citing sources in law enforcement, said the attacker, who they named as Sayfullo Saipov, had left a note inside the car in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL).
“We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!” The US president tweeted, later adding: “I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!” (Source: Al Jazeera News, 2 Nov 2017)
Comment:
Islam has been in the Americas since the 9th century, long before it became a refuge for people who suffered religious persecution, fled Europe to start a new life in the ‘new world’. How tragic then, the people of the United States defended into a society of bigotry and hatred? How does the ‘leading democratic country’ elect such a shallow and ill informed leader?
No one has the right to take life without the authority of the One who created it.
However in Trump’s America, criminal actions are differentiated, the mass murdering shooter in Nevada didn’t receive the condemnation and moral indignation of Trump and his supporters. The bile and hatred is only reserved for Muslims and Islam.
The recent centenary of the Balfour Declaration shows that horrendous acts of ethnic cleansing and genocides, similarly are treated unequally in the West. The United Kingdom is still proud of their act of treachery and their role in the massacre and injustice that continues till today in the Muslim lands of Palestine. They do not see the irony, they do not smell the spilt blood of children in our lands.
True indeed is the Warning of Allah (swt):
لَقَدْ جِئْنَاكُم بِالْحَقِّ وَلَكِنَّ أَكْثَرَكُمْ لِلْحَقِّ كَارِهُونَ * أَمْ أَبْرَمُوا أَمْرًا فَإِنَّا مُبْرِمُونَ * أَمْ يَحْسَبُونَ أَنَّا لَا نَسْمَعُ سِرَّهُمْ وَنَجْوَاهُم بَلَى وَرُسُلُنَا لَدَيْهِمْ يَكْتُبُونَ
“Verily We have brought the Truth to you: but most of you have a hatred for Truth. What! have they settled some plan (among themselves)? But it is We who settle things. Or do they think that We hear not their secrets and their private counsels? Indeed (We do), and Our messengers are by them, to record.”
(Az Zukhruf, 43:78-80)
Muhammad Hamzah