In fact, consider what the apologists for Obsession are really implying when they question the link between the movie and the attack. Is there really such a nationwide, systematic pogrom against mosques, such that the timing of the Dayton incident was truly coincidental, statistically speaking? ... The timing was too convenient to be coincidental, and only someone with deeply-entrenched prejudice could possibly suspend their common sense enough to argue otherwise. (Belienet)
Simply: no.
When the finger is pointed squarely towards the Clarion Fund, the point at which history begins is drawn forward to here, to today. The cultural climate which has allowed far too many of our men and women to be harassed, institutions to be defaced, and communities to be humilated and threatened is erased from the time before this day.
Yes, Obsession is a rather vile little piece of propaganda distributed with what is hard to believe can be anything but ill intent. I almost had to laugh at the point that its makers began to delve into Muslim/Nazi comparisons. I would have laughed at the far too obvious emotional manipulation in this, had I believed that everyone else watching would view it in the same light.
However -- and it is an important however -- do not imagine that when, for example, a Huffington Post writer posits that "this, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain's supporters has led to -- Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil," they are not also using Muslims for partisan political gain.
Speak out against the film, as loudly as you choose. Speak out against the cultural climate to which it contributes.
And speak out against acts like those against the children in Dayton, Ohio, regardless of whether the mystery substance turns out to be roach spray, pepper spray, or hair spray.
But do not under any circumstances allow those who have an invested interest in seeing these acts connected by a straight and clear line pretend that this is something new and novel in America. Do not let them convince anyone that someone has not once already tried to scare mosque patrons with a fog release in Sacramento, that bullets have not been fired at mosques from Maryland to Texas to Florida states, that we have not seen a rash of everything from broken windows and graffiti to all out arson attempts and successes across the nation, and that there are not among our neighbors those who have found it appropriate to, for example, roll a decapitated pig's head in amongst prayers in Idaho, or to spatter blood upon a San Francisco mosque's outer walls. For starters.
It is not everywhere. And it is not everyone. Many of us never see it. And perhaps that accounts for some among us believing that "the timing was too convenient to be coincidental." But for the rest of us, when we nod in agreement, pleased that at last -- at last! -- one such incident has warranted mention outside of back-page local news and strictly Muslim sources, choosing to forget that the timing really isn't so convenient, all precedent considered, and choosing to hail the mention devoid though it may be of appropriate context and full recent history ... well, it becomes ourselves who are drawing history forward. And ourselves who become complicit in the ongoing national ignorance regarding the ever murky scale and source of things.
Ourselves who, once the letters to the editor are written, the election is passed, and no external sources, regardless of how sympathetic they might now appear, any longer have use for news blips like this ... it is ourselves who will be again forgotten. And our assaulted children, again, ignored.
