As time goes on more information emerges about the attack last Friday in Regents Park Mosque. Our sources have confirmed that the victim of the attack was Imam Dr Mohammad Sulaimani.
The perpetrator, Ryan Donegan, was apparently known to the Imam as he had previously come to debate issues of Christianity with him and was also easily identifiable from the cross he would wear around his neck.
According to reports, Donegan arrived early on Friday morning knowing that the mosque would be relatively quiet at this time. When he found the gates to the mosque closed he scaled them. He was confronted by mosque staff whereupon he requested to see the Imam. After some inquiries Imam Sulaimani recognised him and assumed he had more questions about Islam and so allowed the staff to leave them both.
When they were alone Donegan, without any warning, took what is suspected to be some kind of knuckle-duster from his pocket and hit the Imam across the face. As the Imam fell to the ground he recalls thinking that he shouldn't put up a fight just in case the media reports it as an attack by an imam on someone in the mosque while they were asking questions about Islam.
The Imam managed to run away from him but Donegan pursued him and leapt on him, wrestling him to the ground. Here he repeatedly punched the Imam in the face and then tried to gouge his eyes out with his fingers. Mosque staff were alerted by this stage and called the police. Donegan did not attempt to run away, it was as if he was making a statement by remaining on the scene. When the police tried to put handcuffs on him, he assaulted an officer.
The Imam was taken to Western Eye Hospital for emergency surgery on his eyes but it remains unclear if Imam Sulaimani will ever recover his sight.
In the aftermath of the attack, the press release from Regents Park Mosque speaks in general terms of an Islamophobic attack on an imam without even naming Dr Sulaimani.
At first glance this appears to be a religiously based hate crime. If so, the reporting of it should follow the same template as other hate crimes - like the ones committed wrongly in the name of Islam.
In the first wave of articles after an act of despicable criminality by a Muslim, their religion is inextricably linked to their crime. There are the usual rejoinders of "Islam is a religion of peace" but the overwhelming weight of reporting that begins and ends with words like "Islamist", "Islamic terrorist", "Muslim Fundamentalist" leave no doubt in the public's mind what the problem is - Islam.
The next wave of articles - usually several days after the event, finds the great and the good soul searching about the Muslim problem. One wonders if we will see Ryan Donegan referred to as a "Christianist" and perhaps his neighbours and work colleagues interviewed as well as live direct-to-camera reports from outside his church.
Will John Humphrys or Jeremy Paxton do their usual "crazed rottweiler" type interview but this time with an archbishop on what exactly the Church was doing to prevent hate crimes against Muslims? Or perhaps Ryan Donegan's school will be shown with questions asked about the content of the RE classes.
The answer is probably not.
Unfortunately it seems that the reporting of hate crimes committed against Muslims differs markedly from the reporting of hate crimes committed by Muslims.
In the first instance it seems that the media is struck dumb by the whole affair and we get either no coverage or extremely muted reporting of the crime. This usually is excused by a desire to maintain community cohesion. But where is this excuse when a Muslim commits a crime? Or indeed when a so called reputable current affairs programme desires to do a hatchet job on Islam and Muslims as Dispatches has done twice this year?
We are not offered the same courtesy of protection against reprisal attacks whilst we are expected to bear the brunt of vicious religiously motivated attacks in silence. When one speaks to people from various Muslim communities from Luton to Bolton one hears of many religiously motivated attacks that are never reported - all in the name of maintaining community cohesion. So the sister from Luton who was beaten up by four white youths, had her fingers broken and hijab ripped off her head doesn't get any justice, nor does the mosque in Bradford that was the victim of an arson attack.
Not only is there a lack of justice at an individual level but as a community there seems to be no record of any of these crimes and so we are left in a Never-Never Land in which the levels of Islamophobic hate crimes are rising but there is no objective measure of it.
As a community we should not let this event be swept under the carpet. This doesn't mean that we repay this mindlessly brutal act by committing another mindlessly brutal act in return. Any suggestion of Muslims taking the law into their own hands should be given extremely short shrift. Rather we require justice to be delivered by the institutions which have been set up to protect and serve every citizen of this country, Muslim or not. The first way we can set about doing this is by disseminating this information. Everyone should know about what happened to one of our imams in one of the foremost mosques of this country. Most importantly please keep praying for the health of our brother in Islam Imam Dr Mohammad Sulaimani.
Inshallah, UmmahPulse will try to keep everyone informed of events in this case as they transpire.
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