Albuquerque, New Mexico, was reeling with the prospect of a serial killer going on a rampage, targeting Muslim men. Four Muslim men were murdered in broad daylight, as the Muslim community in Albuquerque lived in mortal fear. Mohammad Ahmadi was killed in November 2021, Aftab Hussein was murdered on July 26, Muhammad Afzaal Hussain was shot recently and the last murder was on an unnamed Muslim man. Amid cries of Islamophobia, on the 10th of August, the police nabbed the primary suspect in the killings.
Turns out, the primary suspect was a Sunni Muslim, targeting Shia Muslims. According to a press release mentioned by the New York Post, authorities charged a 51-year-old named Muhammad Syed for two of the four homicides. A report by the New York Times quotes Ahmed Assed, president of the Islamic Centre of New Mexico, saying that Syed, a Sunni Muslim, was upset that his daughter married someone who is a Shia Muslim. Syed is a “refugee” from Afghanistan, who has been living in Alburquerque for the past 5-6 years. Evidence has now emerged that Syed’s son, Shaheen Syed, was also involved in the murders.
Reportedly, Shaheen lied about the fact that he had accompanied his father to gun stories and also about his location. The prosecutors also said that on August 5, when Naeem Hussain was killed hours after attending a funeral for two of the most recent victims, cellphone tower data indicated that Shaheen Syed’s phone was in the general area of the funeral around 3:39 PM, but 20 minutes later had moved closer to the area where Hussain was killed in his car. The data also showed that Muhammad Syed’s phone was in the area of Hussain’s killing shortly after 4 PM.
The filing also noted that Shaheen Syed and one of his brothers, Adil Syed, were involved in a shooting at a Walmart in July 2021. During what Shaheen Syed had described as a road rage incident, Adil had fired a gun once at the car of a man who he and his brother said had also been armed. No one appeared to be charged in the incident.
There is clear evidence that this was a family full of hate and violent tendencies that have been expressed multiple times over the years. However, before this family was pinned by the police, one heard the usual cries of Islamophobia and allegations that the serial killings were the handiwork of “right-wing white supremacists”.
After the last murder in the string of murders, President Joe Biden made a statement calling the murders “hateful attacks” that have “no place in America”. In his tweet condemning the attacks, Biden ensures that he mentioned the fact that 4 “Muslim men” were killed, hinting, that these crimes could have been driven by Islamophobia.
Veteran propagandist, suspected to be on the payroll of ISI, went on to say that the New Mexico killings were probably done by white supremacists. He did not stop there. He went on to say that he would not be surprised if the murders were committed by Hindu nationalists – in New Mexico.
Others stood with the Muslim community, claiming that “targeted communities” need protection. She decried Islamophobia, deciding, even before the investigation reached a conclusion, that the murders happened because non-Muslims hate Muslims.
Islamaphobia—like all toxic fear—thrives in times of darkness and lawlessness. We stand with the Muslim community in demanding a full investigation of the killings of 4 Muslim men in 9 months in Albuquerque, New Mexico and greater protection for targeted communities. #StopHate https://t.co/mI4XyNOdfP
— Janai Nelson (@JNelsonLDF) August 7, 2022
Even a senator called it racist attacks, basically, mouthing the same trope that these were Islamophobic attacks because the victims were all Muslims.
Muhammad Afzaal Hussain was a pillar in the UNM community and an incredible force for good.
— Martin Heinrich (@MartinHeinrich) August 5, 2022
I’m very concerned by law enforcement reports that his murder may be linked to two other murders of Muslim men in Albuquerque. Racist, hate-fueled violence has no place in New Mexico.
Islamist Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) was among Muslim advocacy groups that have condemned the killings as possible “sectarian hatred”.
As soon as the identity of the perpetrator was revealed, and the Shia-Sunni angle of the crime was being probed, all those who had spoken about Islamophobia went silent. No retraction. No comments. No apology.
After scores of articles talking about prevalent Islamophobia and the fear that the Muslim community was living, the media silently started taking a turn to cover up the hate within the Muslim community, where a Sunni Muslim hated Shia Muslims enough to go on a murderous rampage.
Reuters, which was gleefully counting Hindu dead bodies in India during the COVID wave, published an article about the Muslim community “rejecting the sectarian label” for the killings.
For weeks, the global propagandists, including Biden, decried these murders as sectarian and racist. Suddenly, the Muslim community that was living in mortal fear, was no longer in “fear” per se, because the murderer turned out to be an Afghan Muslim.
The Reuters report said that local Muslims have rejected the “sectarian violence” tag after the perpetrators’ real identity was revealed, saying that this could hurt the relations between the Shias and Sunnis who pray together at the local Mosque. “The simplicity of saying this is Sunni-Shia hate crime is so reckless,” said Samia Assed, a Palestinian-American human rights activist who hosted an interfaith vigil for the victims.
“It wasn’t Sunni and Shia, it was extremism,” said Kadhim, a Shi’ite who helped organize a Muslim unity march.
The change in sentiment of the local Muslim community is rather telling and indicates a pattern not just in the New Mexico case per se, but the world over.
When it was not known that the murderer was an Afghanistani Muslim, the local community was more than happy to talk about growing Islamophobia and how it was probably the whites (essentially non-Muslims) who were targeting the Muslims because of their faith and ethnicity. When making such baseless assertions, not too many local Muslims were worried about their relationship with the white community, the Christian community or the local non-Muslim community being tarnished by these assertions. In fact, the propaganda was so strong, that CJ Werleman managed to drag Hindus into the controversy, claiming that he would not be surprised if the Hindus murdered the Muslims because of their supposed, imagined hate for the community. When such statements were made, nobody pointed out that such assertions could ruin the relationship that Muslims had with Hindus.
However, when the murderer turned out to be a Sunni, going on a murderous rampage against Shias, the worry that it may draw chasms within the Muslim community started getting verbalised. The obvious conclusion here is that the Muslim community does not particularly care about their cordial or peaceful relations with non-Muslims as long as the global cabal can blame non-Muslims every time a Muslim is murdered, handing them the perennial victim card.
The local Muslim community was apparently more than happy when Hindus, Whites, Christians etc were being blamed for the murder of Muslim men, after all, it gave them the opportunity to play the part of the “Dara hue Musalman” – New Mexico version. They got the opportunity to paint the entire community as a scared minority, targeted for following a peaceful faith – a ploy used to whitewash Islamic extremism, radical hate and terrorism that the Islamist community heaps upon non-Muslims.
The fear, the cries of sectarian violence and Islamophobia suddenly disappeared when they realised that the murderer was Muslim himself. Almost nobody came up with terms like Shia-phobia and we hardly read articles talking about the fear that Shias live in because Sunnis want to murder them.
This phenomenon is not unique. In India as well, one recalls when the rape of a nun was willy-nilly blamed on Hindus. We heard wails of Islamophobia and en masse demonisation of Hindus because a “Muslim journalist” decided to use the heinous rape to score political brownie points against non-Muslims.
The column where Rana Ayyub called Hindus “terrorists” still exists on her timeline.
My column on nun rape and church vandalism : Mohan Bhagwat and Subramaniam Swamy are not fringe elements.
— Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) March 17, 2015
http://t.co/q1FO77f7P1
Muslim journalist Rana Ayyub offered no apology for branding Hindus as terrorists when the nun was raped by Bangladeshi Muslims.
Here is an excerpt that still exists.
The people accused of the rape were 5 Muslims from Bangladesh – Salim Sheikh, Gopal Sarkar, Khaleda Rahaman Mintoo, Milan Sarkar and Ohidul Seikh.
It is, therefore, evident that the world over, every crime against a Muslim particularly, or any numeric minority, is considered an opportunity by the global cabal to demonise the majority population. In India, it is the Hindus. In the US, it was the whites and the Christians. Every crime is an opportunity to cry about the mythical beast of Islamophobia – a shot in the dark. If it works, they strengthen their propaganda used later to whitewash Islamic crimes, if it doesn’t, they can silently ignore the consequences because the global cabal will never question their own.
