A woman named Lauren Kirk-Coehlo was given five years probation last Friday for breaking windows at the Islamic Center of Davis, California, and putting bacon on its door handles. Ryan Couzens of the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office thundered:
We can’t live in a free society if people’s political views are expressed through violence.
That’s true. These kinds of attacks on mosques are stupid and never justified.
But the prosecution of this case only underscores the fact that when it comes to jihad attacks, authorities have lost all sense of proportion.
Twenty-two people are dead in Manchester and seven in London in recent jihad attacks. Another is dead in Jerusalem. There are more dead all the time: over 30,000 lethal jihad attacks worldwide since 9/11. And the Islamic Center of Davis is playing the victim, with help from authorities, over … bacon.
Kirk-Coehlo should certainly be made to pay for the broken windows and any other actual damage she caused. Nonetheless, a Muslim civil rights attorney, Saad Sweilem, highlighted the disproportionate nature of the sentencing when he crowed:
A felony conviction is something that will follow her for the rest of her life, and 5 years probation is no joke either.
Very well. But if Kirk-Coehlo had broken windows at a church, would she have gotten a felony conviction and five years probation?
According to CBS13, the DA was aggressive because of the target:
[T]he Yolo County District Attorney’s Office wanted Kirk-Coehlo to go to jail — especially considering the motive behind her attack.
…
It has been a difficult six months for the local Muslim community. Four local mosques have been attacked or vandalized — twice at the Islamic Center of Davis. There was also last week’s anti-Shariah march in Roseville.
So the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office wanted to make an example of Kirk-Coehlo — who happens to suffer from bipolar disorder. They didn’t get jail time for her, but they got a strong sentence nonetheless.
Maybe it has been “a difficult six months for the local Muslim community,” but in light of the numerous fake anti-Muslim hate crimes, all claims about mosque attacks and the like have to be regarded with skepticism. Moreover, one would think that in light of the steady stream of jihad attacks, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office would laugh off a few strips of bacon on the door handles of a mosque, and tell the mosque leaders to direct their attention to more important matters — such as making sure there are no jihad terror sympathizers and plotters from their communities.
That’s what the sentencing of Lauren Kirk-Coehlo is all about: shoring up the sagging narrative that the racist, “Islamophobic,” “far-right” bigots are threatening Muslims on a large scale, and that Muslims are more victims than victimizers.
A few strips of bacon and some broken windows next to thirty dead is a sad exercise in moral equivalence, but it’s all the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office had to work with, and so they ran with it. Yet while the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office devoted its manpower and resources to tracking down the perpetrator of a bacon hate crime, let’s step back for a moment and consider the larger picture.
How many Muslims are dead in the U.S. as a result of “far-right,” “Islamophobic” attacks? Why, none. None at all.
Are “far-right,” “Islamophobic” leaders in the U.S. calling for the destruction of the state and its replacement with an authoritarian system that denies equality of rights to women and others? Why, no. No they aren’t.
One wonders if the leaders of the Islamic Center of Davis were able to keep a straight face when they called the police to report this bacon hate crime. Did they shed tears at the horror of it all? Did they plead for protection from porcine persecution? Did they fulminate about what an inhospitable place the United States is for Muslims, and long for the green fields of human rights bastions such as Syria and Iraq?
Did they demand the full force of law enforcement power be directed against the real threat — not jihad terror, but “Islamophobia”?
Consider this: if Muslims in the U.S. really want to make sure that no more bacon is left at mosques, they can accomplish that very easily by working against jihadis in their own community. They can do everything they can to make sure no more jihad attacks happen, instead of constantly whining and playing the victim, and claiming that counter-terror efforts are unjustly singling them out.
If Muslims in the United States and elsewhere stood up resolutely against jihad terror, acknowledged its roots in Islamic texts and teachings, honestly worked to root out that understanding of Islam from its community and cooperated energetically with police against jihadis? No more non-Muslims would be so frustrated by the Muslim community’s duplicity and the government’s supine reaction to terror, and they would no longer do rude things like leave bacon at mosques.
In the final analysis, that’s essentially all this was: a rude act, along with some minor vandalism. Imagine if the law enforcement officials who spent time and resources on this crime had instead been diverted to other duties, such as trying to stop the next jihad attack. Then maybe no more blood would be spilled, and no more bacon would be deployed.
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