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<b><big><big><span class="style1">Where Have All the Muslims Gone? <br>
The 2018 Hashmi Award</span></big></big></b><br>
<span class="style2">by Susie Day<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/day250213.html">http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/day250213.html</a><br>
</span>
<p>New York, N.Y., 2018 -- Every year about this time, since way back
in 2013, the City of <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013211102339764399.html"
class="style5">New York</a> has bestowed its prestigious Hashmi Award
upon a worthy <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/nyregion/new-york-police-commissioner-defends-monitoring-of-muslims.html"
class="style5">New York</a> resident who lives openly as an observant
Muslim. The Hashmi recipient -- preferably of Asian, Middle Eastern,
or African descent -- must have paid taxes, abided by Western law, held
no criminal record, valued higher education, and demonstrated
all-around Good Muslim Sportsmanship in the war against terror.</p>
<p>The Hashmi, according to Mayor <a
href="http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/02/27/speaker-quinn-voices-support-for-nypd-monitoring-of-muslims/"
class="style5">Christine Quinn</a>, "is our way of saying, 'Thanks,
observant Muslims, for allowing us to project our post-9-11 fear and
hatred onto you. Your sinister hijabs, skullcaps, and beards, not to
mention your wacky halal food, have justified years of the <a
href="http://www.ap.org/Index/AP-In-The-News/NYPD" class="style5">NYPD</a>
<a
href="http://www.ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2011/Inside-the-spy-unit-that-NYPD-says-doesnt-exist"
class="style5">secretly monitoring your communities</a>.'"</p>
<p>In a dignified ceremony at City Hall, the Hashmi honoree is
presented with a pair of complimentary waterproof socks and a rain
poncho. The lucky prizewinner is then immediately arrested on
suspicion of intent to give these items to Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Now, in 2018, the Awards Committee would again like to honor a
deserving man or woman of the Islamic faith. Unfortunately, the
Committee can't seem to find one. Virtually all New York's observant
Muslims appear to have been deported or are assumed to be on the
down-low, hoping to avoid "persecution."</p>
<p>The Hashmi Award, begun in 2013, was named for the ultimate Good
Muslim Sport, <a
href="http://chronicle.com/article/My-Student-the-Terrorist/126937/"
class="style5">Syed Fahad Hashmi</a>. Mr. Hashmi, born 1980 in
Pakistan, did not, unfortunately, begin life as a Good Sport. When he
was three, he moved with his family to the United States and became an
American citizen, thus succumbing to his inborn jihadist urge to
infiltrate Western society. The youthful Mr. Hashmi soon launched
himself on a downward spiral, moving ever deeper into the netherworld
of fanaticism by not smoking, not drinking, not cursing, respecting his
teachers, pursuing an interest in current events, and abusing his
First-Amendment rights in arguing against U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>By 2003, when he received a degree in political science from
Brooklyn College, Mr. Hashmi had all but completed his descent into
terror. Seeking to expand Islam's worldwide web, he went to England to
study for a master's degree in international relations at the London
Metropolitan University. There, Mr. Hashmi, in a wanton perversion of
niceness, allowed an acquaintance, <a
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8322346/Terrorist-who-trained-77-bomber-released-after-five-years.html"
class="style5">Mohammed Junaid Babar</a>, to spend two weeks in his
apartment. He also permitted Mr. Babar to use his cell phone and to
stow some luggage. Luggage of doom, as it turned out: for it contained
waterproof socks, raincoats, and ponchos that Mr. Babar later delivered
to Al Qaeda in Pakistan.</p>
<p>Mr. Babar was arrested in 2004 and jailed. Then, to avoid a prison
sentence, he agreed to testify against the <em>real</em> terrorist:
the vile, apartment-renting, sock-storing Syed Fahad Hashmi.</p>
<p>Mr. Hashmi, 26, was arrested in London in 2006, extradited to New
York, and held in <a
href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-11-05/columns/a-brooklyn-college-grad-experiences-the-constitution-in-a-cage/"
class="style5">solitary confinement under Special Administrative
Measures for three years before trial</a>. Then, a miracle: In
detention, cut off from family, friends, and most sensory stimuli --
while contemplating <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/nyregion/28hashmi.html"
class="style5">a possible 70-year sentence</a> -- Mr. Hashmi allowed
the healing power of Good Muslim Sportsmanship into his heart as his
personal savior.</p>
<p>Finally embracing the tenets of Western Enlightenment, Mr. Hashmi
made the inspiring decision to <a
href="http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/28/after_3_years_in_pretrial_solitary"
class="style5">plead guilty</a> to one count of providing material
support to Al Qaeda. By so doing, he saved the U.S. government
millions upon millions of dollars in the beefed-up security that would
have been needed for news media to <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/nyregion/27hashmi.html"
class="style5">evoke the proper level of dread and revulsion</a>.</p>
<p>Mr. Hashmi now resides in the Florence, Colorado ADX, the most
locked-down prison in the U.S., where he will probably spend every
remaining day of his 15-year sentence. Unlike observant Christians
serving time for bombing abortion clinics or murdering doctors, Mr.
Hashmi lives alone in a bathroom-sized cell, devoid of human contact,
where, as one reporter from the <em><a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/18/us-supermax-prison-international-opprobrium"
class="style5">Guardian</a></em> put it, "The only possible means of
communicating with other humans is to yell into the toilet bowl and
hope that someone may hear."</p>
<p>All this, for non-Muslim New Yorkers, makes not having a Hashmi
Award recipient especially hard to bear. "I'd hate to see that award
disappear," said veteran gay rights activist Herbie Brownstein, in an
impromptu sidewalk interview. "We of the LGBT community doff our
chapeaux to Mr. Hashmi and to the other brave folk of Islam who, in
this, and many other legal cases, have taken the place of us commie
fags as the main threat to Western civilization." Mr. Brownstein is
president of the New York Chapter of Militant Communist Homosexuals for
Domination of the Entire Globe.</p>
<p>"I hate that evil Muslim," interjected passerby Mildred
Knucklewrapper, who teaches third grade in the Bronx. "Thanks to that
guy, we may never know how many terrorists in South Waziristan now go
to bed with dry feet. That Hashmi Award is the perfect way to remember
why we need to forget about people like Syed Fahad Hashmi."</p>
<p>This reporter would have asked a challenging question at this
juncture, but was afraid to be seen as supporting terrorism.</p>
<hr>
<span class="style3">Susie Day is a writer.</span>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
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San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
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