Chemical Irritants Sprayed in Room With Children in Apparent Attack

Media Turns Blind Eye

By Shirien Elamawy

It’s hard to believe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan is over.

Muslims all over the world are celebrating with feasts and gatherings. But for many Muslims in America, it’s hard to celebrate in the midst of tragic news that the world has turned a blind eye to.

I implore media to let go of their bias and report on the huge news story that has been swept under the rug – despite the story having multiple elements of newsworthiness.

The incident happened in Dayton, OH when a chemical irritant was sprayed into a mosque causing worshipers to panic and children to cry from fear.

“According to fire dispatch communications, a child reported seeing two men with a white can spraying something into a window. That child was brought to the supervising firefighter at the scene,” Dayton Daily News reported.

That’s about the only thing the Dayton Daily News reported.

The Daily Kos, a political news blog which public figures like President Jimmy Carter and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have used to voice their views, gave a much more detailed account of the incident.

A woman who witnessed the incident told The Daily Kos, “The gas was sprayed into the room where the babies and children were being kept while their mothers prayed together their Ramadan prayers. Panicked mothers ran for their babies, crying for their children so they could flee from the gas that was burning their eyes and throats and lungs.”

A paramedic at the scene tried to give oxygen to this one child who couldn’t stop crying from shock.

The woman said that her children slept with her sobbing all through the night. She was afraid to go back to the mosque.

Days earlier, the anti-Muslim, fear-mongering DVD created by Fox News, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War on the West” had been circulating inside of newspapers and US mail in Ohio and other swing states as part of a political stunt by none other than John McCain supporters.

In fact, 28 million copies of the DVD were distributed as a scare tactic to get people to vote for John McCain, The Huffington Post reported.

“70 newspapers in swing states have been paid to distribute ‘Obsession’ this weekend and next, which means not all the DVDs have been delivered yet.”

Talk about dirty politics.

Sally Lopez of Lemoyne, PA displays a copy of the DVD that came in the mail. Photo courtesy of The Huffington Post.

And so I ask the media, where are you? If you are more interested in covering politics, this story has politics written all over it.

If you’re looking for hard news stories filled with investigations, why not investigate if there was an obvious link between the DVDs and the hate crime?

This news story is timely, has prominence, is pertinent, has conflict and has many human interest stories waiting to be told.

There is no reason why this story should remain under the rug, unless the media chooses to embrace its bias knowingly.

If this incident had happened in a church or synagogue, would the response have been different?

Children were attacked. How then, can we turn a blind eye?

Your latest article on beliefnet.com has recently come to my attention — partially because of the subject matter being about me and my work with The Daily Reveille.

I’ve done a little bit of research about you and your past and have discovered that you are currently a columnist for the Dallas Morning News, are a contributor to the National Review and The American Conservative. It also appears that you were previously a columnist for The New York Post and have authored a book titled, “Crunchy Cons.”

However, regardless of your “credentials,” I am not impressed. While it does seems that you are a journalist by definition, you failed to do the most fundamental and obvious thing any journalist should do before writing an article: research. You’ve been an opinion columnist longer than I have. So it seems rather odd to me that you would neither do your research nor ask me for an interview before assuming certain things.

In your article, “Dhimmitude on the Bayou” you wrote:

“Favog discovers, to his chagrin, that our alma mater in journalism, the LSU Daily Reveille, allowed itself to be mau-mau’d by a Muslim Student into giving her a column, which she used to proselytize for Islam.”

Mr. Dreher, it seems as though you did not take the time to even look through or read any of my columns before rushing to judgment.

You later said, “Now, just imagine a state college newspaper giving a column to a fundamentalist Christian who uses it solely for the purpose of evangelization. Wouldn’t happen. Shouldn’t happen. But anything can be justified in the name of diversity. Ms. Elmasraya may be a pushy activist with a one-track mind, and a mediocre, jargon-dependent writer to boot, but the lady obviously knows a thing or two about how American newsrooms work. I predict she’ll go far.”

I challenge you to find any instances in any of my columns i’ve written in the past 1.5 years in which I blatantly call people to accept Islam. If someone accepted Islam as a result of reading my columns and seeing the truth nature of Islam, than this is by the Will of Allah alone and I’m very happy that I could help someone see the true nature of a true religion. And yes, this has happened before but I still challenge you to find an instance of what you call, “Evangelization.”

So again, for a journalist it’s surprising to see that you did little-to-no research on my past columns before you decided to dish out your “George-Bushy” words.

You claim that I somehow admitted my columns were for proselytizing Islam in my “Farewell Daily Reveille” post – which again, has no basis. I told a story of how I was hired. And in order to understand my post you need to understand a concept called “Divine Decree” or Qadr. And that is to say that Allah (or God) had everything that we will do in our lives already written before we were even born and that everything that happens in the world is by His will. It was by the divine decree of Allah that I was at the right place and the right time which led me to get my job. Much like it is by the Qadr of Allah that we wake up every morning.

I also take offense at the notion you have made by implying The Daily Reveille felt threatened or pressured into hireing me. If that were the case, then why would they re-hire me for two more semesters in which about 100 other people were competing for that one spot every semester? I did have to re-apply and go through the interview process every semester with different editors and different managers each time — just so you know. And tell me Mr. Dreher, how can this be when I had no idea they were accepting applications at the time and the editor himself was the one who suggested I apply? Hmm…

You also said, “Now, just imagine a state college newspaper giving a column to a fundamentalist Christian who uses it solely for the purpose of evangelization. Wouldn’t happen. Shouldn’t happen.”

It did happen. Again, this shows your lack of research because if you did any at all the name “Emily Byers” would come to mind. Byers is a friend and ex-Coworker of mine. She, too, was a columnist for The Daily Reveille who — more often than not — would talk about Catholicism. So nice try.

I’d like to thank you for being an example to the Muslims (and to the rest of the world) the very problem with the mass media today. People are quick to write and speak publicly without doing any investigations or without knowing anything at all about the topic they talk about.

Your use of the words “Dhimmi,” “Evangelical” and “Proselytize” are poor attempts of persuasion, to say the least. And I think most of your readers caught on to that based on the comments they left you on your site. But to reiterate, I thank you for being a prime example for my readers as to why they should NOT trust everything a journalist and someone with so-called “credentials” spews out at them.

Perhaps the problem, Mr. Dreher, is not that The Daily Reveille hired me to write about Islam, but perhaps you, as a strong conservative, are merely threatened by the spread of the true nature of Islam. For even the idol-worshipers during the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) used to attack him not because of him as a person, but because it was Islam and truth that they hated.

And Allah knows best.

Sincerely,

Shirien