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Colorado Springs Christian School officials reprimanded a coach Friday for a pair of racist tweets about the gunman who's accused of shooting and critically wounding a police officer.Could the increase in reports of anti-Semitic incidents be the result of an increase in the Islamic population? Or is it just an amazing coincidence? Here in Edmonton in the last year or so, we've had the case of a Syrian Muslim refugee claimant charged with groping girls at the West Edmonton Mall Waterpark, and a foreign Muslim running people over with his car as they were on their way to a football game at Commonwealth Stadium. School boards in various cities across Canada have files on cases of foreign Muslim students assaulting Canadian students. The mainstream media refuse to report on the situation in the schools, because it doesn't fit their politically correct agenda; only The Rebel (the only real opposition in the country) has covered it. Of course, it's just a coincidence that the perpetrators are Muslims--and it's just a coincidence that we never had such incidents like this until large numbers of Muslims arrived. As for Muslim whining about "blowback" that never seems to occur, it's about time that there was some blowback.
Karrar Noaman Al Khammasi, 31, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of attempted murder in the shootout early Thursday east of the Olympic Training Center in which officer Cem Duzel was shot in the head. Al Khammasi is being held in the El Paso County jail without bond.
“Oddly Muslim reading name there. ... I’m sure it’s nothing,” Bob McCall, the school's boys' tennis coach, tweeted Thursday in response to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office releasing the suspect's name and photograph.
Oddly Muslim reading name there.... I’m sure it’s nothing.
— Coach McCall (@Coach4Tennis) August 2, 2018
“My point was to note the Muslim connection to so many acts of terror/shooting at cops,” McCall continued after another Twitter user urged him to focus on the wounded officer. He then called that user a “terrorist lover” and added “#IslamIsTheProblem.”
MY point was to note the Muslim connection to so many acts of terror / shooting at cops. Ah! I see you’re a terrorist lover. (There is no state of Palestine.)#BackTheBlue#IslamIsTheProblem
— Coach McCall (@Coach4Tennis) August 3, 2018
While no motive for the shooting has been released, investigators have not said they believe it is terrorist-related or connected to Islamic extremism.
Christian Schools Superintendent and CEO Roland DeRenzo quickly distanced the school’s official lines of communications from McCall’s.
“These are his personal opinions, but he is being contacted by the athletic director this morning to let him know that we disavow the statements he has made,” DeRenzo said. “That does not represent our position at CSCS. We do not represent anything of the kind towards Islam or Muslims or anything. He is going to be told that he better cease and desist because it is bringing a bad reproach on CSCS and if that continues we will have to take the appropriate action.”
The Colorado Springs Christian Schools network of campuses has about 1,100 preschool through high school students, DeRenzo said.
McCall spoke briefly to The Gazette Friday afternoon, defending his comments as protected First Amendment speech and circled back to Al Khammasi’s name.
“I do not know if he’s a practicing member of Islam,” McCall said. “I thought there might be a connection.”
Asked to further clarify his tweets, McCall declined and ultimately hung up the phone. He later tweeted that he did not believe his employer disavowed his comments.
Assumptions like McCall’s, connecting certain names to Islam, are an unfortunate fact of life for Muslims in Colorado Springs, said Arshad Yousufi, spokesman for the Islamic Society of Colorado Springs. While some members of the mosque are harassed in school, at work or on the street, most Americans don’t jump to such conclusions, he said.
Yousufi said he hadn’t ever seen Al Khammasi at the mosque and his criminal activities would suggest he is not a practicing member of the religion. He equated assumptions connecting Al Khammasi’s name with Islam to concluding that someone with a Christian name represented all of Christianity.
“We would be on the side of the police, not on the side of the criminal,” he said.
When crimes are committed by someone with a Middle Eastern-sounding name, the local Islamic community fears blowback, Yousufi said. But as of Friday afternoon, there had been no incidents, he said.
The best option is to combat prejudicial assumptions through education and compassion, Yousufi said.
McCall and others are entitled to their opinion, said Scott Liven, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, an international organization that advocates for civil rights.
“But I would hope that people in a position of trust, like a coach or a teacher, would certainly hold themselves to a higher standard than jumping to a conclusion,” Liven said. “And it’s important for us to exercise our own First Amendment rights to counter prejudice and bias.”
Rhetoric like McCall’s has been on the rise in America in recent years, Liven said.
“It’s been against immigrants, people with foreign-sounding names, people of color, Jewish people and other disaffected groups in our communities,” he said.
He used anti-Semitic incidents as a bellwether for the trend.
“Those have gone up in alarming rates,” he said of the numbers in Colorado. “In 2015 I think we had 15. In 2016 we had 45 and last year we had 54. Those range from an actual hate crime, act of violence or physical damage to … verbal incidents of harassment.”
The statistics show that Islamic extremists are nearly matched in acts of domestic terrorism by right-wing extremists in the United States, Levin said.
Since 2002, 98 domestic plots or attacks were motivated by Islamist extremism, Levin said. In that same time period, 94 plots or attacks were motivated by right-wing extremism.
In all, 127 people were involved in the 98 plots or attacks motivated by Islamic extremism and 90 percent of them were U.S. citizens or living in the country lawfully, Levin said. Six percent were in the country without documentation and 4 percent were foreign citizens. By contrast, all of the 161 right-wing extremists involved in the 94 plots or attacks were U.S. citizens, he said.
DeRenzo took the appropriate action, Levin said, and should follow up with an internal investigation to see if further steps are needed.
“One of the most important things to be done is that our leaders need to speak out and say this is unacceptable behavior," he said. "It doesn’t matter whether you’re the dog catcher, the mayor, the superintendent of the school or the president. When these things happen, they need to speak out against it so all of us know we live in safe and secure communities where we’re not going to be under threats based on our religion, the color of our skin, our sexual orientation or anything else.”
Duzel remains in critical condition with traumatic head injuries, a police spokeswoman said Friday. He and the Police Department have received an outpouring of support from the local and national community.
If "rhetoric like McCall's has been on the rise in America in recent years"--and I don't trust the
If "God is bringing the world here"--supposedly so they can come to Christ--then He must also be "bringing the world" to other Western countries, and the resulting crime and other social ills must, by that logic, also be the work of God. The man charged with shooting the policeman in Colorado Springs is an example of the kind of person whom God is supposedly bringing to the West; as reported by Tom Roeder, Jakob Rodgers, and Lance Benzel of the Colorado Springs Gazette, August 3, 2018:
A man accused of shooting a Colorado Springs police officer in the head in a shootout early Thursday while free on bond was known to immigration enforcement officials, yet evaded deportation despite a string of crimes, court records show.Remember, politically correct people--some of whom inhabit Evangelical and other supposedly Christian pulpits--regard U.S. President Donald Trump as a meanie for wanting to keep people like this out of the United States.
Why Karrar Al Khammasi wasn’t deported was among the questions left unanswered Friday as his bond was revoked. Cem Duzel, the officer he is accused of shooting, remained hospitalized in critical condition.
The 31-year-old Iraqi immigrant appears to have lived in the Pikes Peak region for at least five years, and he had at least nine contacts with police in that time, according to court records.
On the day he pleaded guilty in 2014 to felony trespassing, Al Khammasi was on an immigration hold, court records show.
Whether his guilty plea should have triggered deportation depends on a variety of factors. But his conviction raised the question as to why he was allowed to remain in the United States, said David Simmons, a Denver immigration attorney of more than 30 years and a former adjunct professor at the University of Denver.
Some forms of trespass are considered crimes of moral turpitude — which can lead to deportation — and others are not, Simmons said.
The consequences of such a conviction also could vary, depending on how long he had been in the country, or the nature of the circumstances that brought him here. Some Iraqis living in the U.S. came as refugees who assisted the government or who fled persecution. But those refugees sometimes evade deportation because of chaos in their home country, or threats to their lives upon their return.
It is unknown whether those things factored into Al Khammasi’s immigration here, and the type of visa Al Khammasi used to enter the United States wasn’t clear.
El Paso County sheriff’s spokesman Jacqueline Kirby said Al Khammasi was an Iraqi citizen who was born in Iraq. She had previously said Al Khammasi was a refugee, but she later said she was mistaken, and that she wasn’t certain of his immigration status.
The last five years of Al Khammasi’s life have been marked by several run-ins with the law.
He picked up his first charge for drunken driving in 2013.
A month later, he was charged with criminal extortion in a case that police say was tied to a dispute over a business debt of $25,000, according to court papers. Investigators suspect Al Khammasi threatened a man and his family, and also set a car on fire.
The man told police that Al Khammasi’s “behavior began to change when he came into money and was drinking and possibly using drugs,” according to an arrest affidavit.
Al Khammasi pleaded guilty to a lesser felony, first-degree trespassing of a dwelling, and was sentenced to two years of probation, court records show.
“It sounds like he had a criminal defense lawyer who was aware of possible immigration consequences and negotiated that plea,” Simmons said. “It’s also possible that he’s a permanent resident and as permanent resident long enough that a single conviction for crime of moral turpitude wouldn’t trigger (deportation).”
An official clerk’s account of court proceedings on Feb. 19, 2014, says “(defendant) has immigration hold,” a court document obtained by The Gazette shows.
Kirby, the sheriff’s spokeswoman, said she could not find any mention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials requesting that he be held.
After Al Khammasi violated the terms of probation, a judge sentenced him to a year and a half in prison. He received credit for time served for almost half of it, court records show.
After Al Khammasi got out, he didn’t stay out of trouble. He picked up a traffic ticket and was arrested in June 2017 for allegedly punching a person “in the face approximately three times,” court documents show.
In January, Al Khammasi wound up back in handcuffs with an arrest on a weapons charge, possession by a previous offender. A tipster phoned police that his vehicle was outside of a North Nevada Avenue motel, and officers later found a stolen .38 Special revolver in his room.
In February, he entered a guilty plea on the 2017 assault case and put up $1,000 cash bail on the weapons case.
Al Khammasi was free to go. Until early Thursday.
Al Khammasi remains hospitalized, causing him to miss a court appearance Friday, his attorney, public defender Jennifer Chu, said at the hearing related to the stolen revolver.
Fourth Judicial District Chief Judge William Bain revoked his bail, citing the new allegations, and appointed the Colorado Public Defender’s Office to represent him. He was ordered to return to court Aug. 8 on the weapons charge.
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