A 71-year-old landlord in Plainfield, Illinois, one of the safest neighborhoods in America, knocked on the door of his Palestinian Muslim tenant, attempted to choke her while screaming “you Muslims must die,” and then stabbed her six-year-old son Wadea Al-Fayoume 26 times. The knife was still in the boy’s body when he was taken for autopsy. His mother was stabbed 12 times, including in her face. The suspect had been radicalized by conservative talk radio and the atmosphere of hate manufactured around the Israeli war on Gaza.
Manufactured Hate Has Real Consequences
The suspect’s own wife told detectives that he listened to conservative talk radio regularly and had become obsessed with events in Israel, believing his Muslim tenants would bring people to attack them. This is the direct result of media figures calling Palestinians “human animals,” demanding that “Israel kill enough sons of” them, and branding anyone who calls for a ceasefire as a “terrorist sympathizer.” When public figures broadcast genocidal rhetoric, people with unstable minds take it as permission to act. Wadea was about to go to school that Monday. Instead, he was carried to the cemetery.
What type of hate has to be manufactured in the head of a man for him to stand over a 6-year-old boy and stab him 26 times? Do you think a bomb falling from the sky does less damage than a knife? There are 750 children in Gaza just like Wadea.
The Double Standard of Outrage
- Wadea’s murder drew national media attention, but the 750+ children killed in Gaza at that point received a fraction of the outrage
- A bomb dropped on a child causes no less damage than a knife — the only difference is that one happens on American soil
- Ahmed Rehab of CAIR emphasized that without justice, there can be no peace — and this applies to children in Plainfield and in Gaza equally
- Ben Shapiro’s rhetoric calling for unlimited killing was directly cited in the atmosphere that produced this hate crime
Check Your Ego, Worship Your Creator
Ahmed Rehab makes a profound distinction between the religion of God and the religion of ego. Those who worship their egos — their tribalism, their desire for power, their political identity — will always justify violence against the innocent. Those who truly worship God will be objective, just, and fair. The question every person must ask themselves is simple: are you following your whims and desires, or are you following the path of justice that every prophet from Moses to Jesus to Muhammad (peace be upon them all) called humanity toward?
Have you seen the one who follows their whims and desires? They worship that. The separation is clear: are you worshiping your ego, or are you worshiping God? When you worship God, you can be objective, fair, and just.
