Hypocrisy in handling of Muslim versus Christian hoaxers

Dueling hoaxes expose more than youthful lies in bonfire of the bigotries
By Ray Hanania

The incidents happened weeks apart, a young Christian girl in Palos Heights, a community notorious for anti-Arab hatred and racism, told police that she had been sexually assaulted by an man she described as “Arab looking.”

Police developed a sketch of the suspect and the community response was immediate. The sketch was posted on nearly every store window not just in Palos Heights, but throughout the Southwest Suburbs across a 15 mile span that happened to correspond with the regional settlement of Arabs.

Although widely reported, the story even made America’s Most Wanted and host John Walsh repeated the description of the assailant being “creepy” looking.

Several weeks later, a Muslim girl reports she is assaulted at Elmhurst College. The news media covered the event and Muslim organizations stood up denouncing the attack as an example of rising anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate crimes.

In contrast, there wasn’t a peep from Arab American groups as they are ineffective and dysfunctional. And, America’s Most Wanted, which always seems to highlight cases where the victims are White and the Assailants are Black and “creepy” looking Arabs, didn’t bother to even give the incident 15 seconds on their popular national weekend TV program.

Safia Jilani, 19, told Elmhurst Police that she was attacked in the bathroom at the Southwestern suburban college and the incident was declared a “hate crime” when police found threatening graffiti written on the bathroom’s mirrors and walls.

Just about the time of the Muslim attack, the family of the Christian assault victim hired an attorney and the attorney announced his client had lied to police and that no such sexual attack had taken place.

The attorney expressed genuine remorse from the family, apologizing to the public, the police and later to “ethnic groups” who felt targeted, a reference to the Arab American profile of the hoax. Police said they would not prosecute, although the investigation into the crime cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The girl has agreed to do community service.

But when Jilani’s hoax was discovered, after she admitted to police that she had made up the attack details, police immediately announced they would file charges against her. She is charged with a Class 4 Felony and can face up to 4 years imprisonment.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) which helped lead calls to declare the event a Hate Crime, responsibly and immediately issued a statement saying that false reports like Jilani’s undermine efforts to fight the many other, frequent incidents of discrimination that do occur.

Hate groups immediately flooded the Internet with statements denouncing Muslims as anti-American and citing the Jilani case as evidence that claims of discrimination are false.

Arab groups remained silent, reinforcing their view that doing nothing is oftentimes the best course of action.

What caused these students to do what they did?

In the case of the young Palos Heights girl, who is under-aged and her identity is therefore not made public, she was afraid to tell her parents about something she had done. The sexual assault would help her cover that up.

In the case of Jilani, earlier before she made up her lies, there was a clash between rightwing conservatives on the campus and students, including many Arabs and Muslims, who were protesting the abuse and violation of the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo, a detention center many compare to a concentration camp and a Russian Gulag. Many of the prisoners there are victims of politics and have never been charged with any crime, other than being Arab or Muslim.

Tensions were high at Elmhurst College but college officials acted responsibly to address the issues. Tensions were also high at Palos Heights but officials there have notoriously refused to address the rising incidents of hatred that have given the community the shameful moniker, “Palos Hates.”

Palos Heights was the site of the 2000 community protest to prevent their Muslim neighbors from establish a Mosque where they could pray. Palos Heights has two dozen Christian Churches, and no Synagogue.

While both girls are responsible for their lies, they are also victims of societies that put ethnic and religious faces on crimes. It’s not enough to capture a criminal. The suspects are used to argue racial issues that dominate American society and politics.

But there is one thing very clear.

When a Christian girl, who is White, cries wolf and it turns out she is lying, society is more willing to excuse her actions and not punish her with imprisonment of fines.

When a Muslim or Arab girl cries wolf and it turns out she is lying, the bonfires of bigotries and racism are ignited.

Although most of the police sketches of the phony “creepy” Arab assailant have been taken down from store windows, the mental sketches of hatred remain seared into the racism of a community disabled by hate.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com or by email at rayhanania@comcast.net.)