The horrific backlash against Muslims has begun

At the end of an essay, Victor David Hanson explains what Homeland Defense Secretary Janet Napolitano has been up to since the murders at Ft Hood:

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas. Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday’s rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US Army Chieff of Staff, Gen. George Casey, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” with host George Stephanopoulos.

Casey, when asked about the role Hasan’s Muslim faith may have played in the shooting, said the issue was something "we need to be very careful about."

"The speculation could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers,” Casey said. “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here."

Sadly, I have learned that the long-dreaded backlash has already begun. However, these incidents are not being reported by the media, not even the fanatically rightwing FoxNews Channel, which breathes Islamophobia with every host.

DES MOINES, IA--Upset by killings at Ft Hood, Texas, by a suspect believed to have been motivated by his Islamic faith, a Methodist minister pulled his car next to the car of a Muslim woman attempting to change a flat tire. The minister changed the tire while the Muslim woman made sure her first-grade Muslim child did not stray out into traffic.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, immediately demanded that the woman's husband beat her severely with a rod no thicker than his thumb for spending time in the company of a man to whom she was neither married nor related by blood. It is not known whether the husband has yet complied.

MONTGOMERY, ALA.--Southern Baptists of this deep South city, enraged that a Muslim had apparently shot more than three dozen people at Ft Hood, gathered boxes of Gideons New Testaments and walked through Muslim neighborhoods passing them out and inviting the Muslims to Christian worship this Sunday.

The imam of Montgomery's largest mosque has filed a complaint with state authorities demanding that the Baptist churches' tax-exempt status be revoked for engaging in political activities.

"It is takfir for Muslims even to touch infidel books," he said, "so their gesture was extremely offensive to us. This incident just illustrates how hard Muslims have it in America."

HOPE, ARK.--After three known white supremacists were arrested while trying to set fire to the only mosque in the same town where Bill Clinton grew up, men of a local African Methodist Episcopal Church began patrolling the mosque's perimeter 24 hours per day.

The men are equipped with cell phones to call police and two-way radios to contact one another. AME Pastor Andrew Thomas said that no one would permit anything to happened to the mosque like happened to a few black churches in the 1950s.

"We don't know how long we'll walk these patrols," he said. "We have several men who served in the Army and Marines since Nine-Eleven who say that this is nothing compared to what they had to patrol in Iraq or Afghanistan."

Other local churches volunteered to bring hot food and drink to the AME men. "The Church of Christ has been very helpful," said Pastor Thomas.

"The only thing we have to be careful about is not to set foot on the mosque's actual campus," he continued. "The congregants here told us that would defile their mosque."

[Satire off]

However, there is real discrimination against Muslims in the American armed forces that does need serious attention, but is unlikely to get it.

In the South Asian and Arab immigrant communities where the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are deeply unpopular, Muslim military members have often felt criticized for their service, Muslim chaplains, military members, veterans advocates and others said in interviews.

Some return exhausted and traumatized from their tours, only to hear at their local mosques that they will go to hell for “killing Muslims,” said Qaseem A. Uqdah, the executive director of the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council.

“Imagine you are 20 years old and you hear you’re going to purgatory,” Mr. Uqdah said. He argued that Muslim groups must work harder to help their veterans cope with coming home. “We are failing as a community here in America."

No one oppresses Muslims more than other Muslims. And no one has killed more Muslims than al Qaeda and it's ideological allies.