Bullied for being Muslim

The Staten Island Advance first reported the story of a 16-year-old attending Port Richmond High School who was bullied and eventually beaten by classmates who yelled anti-Muslim slurs.

The boy, Kristian, is an American-born Trinidadian, whose last name is being withheld. 

The Daily News got the gory details:

"They punched me in my groin, and I fell to the floor. They started kicking me, and calling me 'You fuckin terrorist,' 'You fuckin Muslim."

Police have arrested four teens, three 14 and one 15, and charged them with a hate crime.

Was this an isolated incident, or a systemic problem not only in our borough, but in our country?

The New York Times recently ran a puffy Q and A with batshit Islamophobe Pamela Geller. Her rising star in the right-wing media is built on lambasting Muslim Americans as terrorists and denying them the right to freely practice their religion.

Remember that whole Midland Beach thing - yeah, that was her.

When George Bush was in charge of the country, he seemed to keep the anti-Muslim sentiment in check by repeatedly stating his support for American Muslims, and separating the religion from the radical ideology that bastardizes it.

Obama could say this now, but who would listen? A recent poll showed that 20 percent Americans believe the President is a Muslim himself - among Republicans it's 46 percent (as if this is a bad thing).

The four teens who beat Kristian had no reason to believe he was a terrorist, or that his Muslim faith was some sort of crime. But neither did the people of Midland Beach, who held weekly anti-Muslim hate rallies to protest a mosque moving into an abandoned convent in their neighborhood. What reason did they have to deny fellow Staten Islanders a place to worship?

Setting an example can be a powerful thing. In this case the adults acted like children - and the children, like thugs.