On Sept. 12, workers found a burned Quran, the holy book of Islam, in a trash bin outside the Islamic Society of San Francisco. Khaled Olaibah , the administrator of the ISSF, reported the bigoted act to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and CAIR reported it to local authorities.
 Islamic Society of San Francisco |
The ISSF has functioned as a community center in San Francisco for almost 15 years, helping Muslim immigrants and providing a venue for weddings and other religious ceremonies for the Muslim community. The ISSF serves over 800 people.
The Quran burning in San Francisco is a direct result of recent anti-Muslim rhetoric targeting the proposed Park51 community center in New York City, falsely referred to as the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, had issued a provocative appeal to mark 9/11 as an international day to burn the Quran. Jones used as a pretext for the threatened burning opposition to Sharia law and honoring the victims of 9/11.
The threat to burn 200 copies of the Quran did not happen as planned, due to pressure from sectors of the U.S. ruling class who feared their interests in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the other predominantly Muslim countries would be adversely affected.
Since 9/11, Muslims and Arabs have been racially profiled in the United States as well as Europe. The U.S. government used the 9/11 attacks as well as claims to be delivering freedom to women as justification to invade Afghanistan. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was carried out based on bogus claims that the Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass destruction and was harboring terrorists. In reality, the goal was to turn Iraq into a colonial-type state.
Anti-Muslim bigotry has also been used to portray the Palestinian struggle as a religious holy war, when in fact it is a struggle of the Palestinian people against imperialist-backed Zionist colonialism. The scapegoating of Muslims is necessary for the U.S. ruling class to create an artificial enemy and prevent working-class unity.
All progressives must stand against anti-Muslim bigotry and join in solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters and against imperialist oppression.
