Michelle Malkin


 

Faking it: More Muslim hate crime myths





http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com

Mazhar Tabesh, Nezar "Mike" Maad, and Aqil Yassom Al-Timimi all have something in common. They were held up by Muslim activists as innocent victims of the "post-September 11 backlash." They milked the compassion of their communities. They won sympathy from the media and politicians.







And now it appears they were all hate crime hucksters who cried 'racism' to cash in on the terrorist attacks.


Mazhar Tabesh, a naturalized American originally from Pakistan, co-owned a motel in Heber City, Utah. Last July, someone set the lodge ablaze, causing nearly $100,000 in damage.


"We are really scared because we are Muslim - probably the only Muslims in the area - and we are the target," Tabesh declared. "It's scary." Tabesh complained of receiving threatening calls from anonymous hatemongers who "told us they would get us if we didn't get out."


Utah residents organized a benefit concert and raised $1,400 for Tabesh's family. The national press jumped on the bandwagon: "Immigrant Family Feels Post-9/11 Rage," blared a Los Angeles Times headline. The accompanying 1,100 story suggested that "white supremacists and skinheads living in the area" might be to blame.


But the chief suspect turned out to be Mazhar Tabesh himself. Prosecutors say Tabesh invented a "mystery man" arsonist and lied about witnessing the non-existent lodger running from the hotel after the fire started. His motive? A Heber City police officer testified at a preliminary hearing that Tabesh was losing about $5,900 a month on the motel and still owed $450,000 on the mortgage.


Tabesh will stand trial in June on first-degree felony aggravated arson charges. Don't count on the Los Angeles Times to cover it.


The tale of Nezar "Mike" Maad follows the same basic plot. Maad, an Arab-American businessman and "tolerance advocate," owned a print shop in Anchorage, Alaska. On Sept. 21, 2001, someone destroyed equipment and spray-painted "We hate Arabs" inside the store. Community leaders created the "Not in Our Town" fund, a city-backed charity which raised a whopping $75,000 for Maad. A local newspaper editorial declared unequivocally that the incident "was a hate crime. It was vandalism. It was a statement against bedrock American values…"


Five months after Maad was "victimized," a jury convicted him of federal fraud charges. During the hate crime investigation, agents discovered that Maad had lied on bank loan applications and federal forms about his business finances and prior criminal convictions. Nevertheless, Maad received a reduced sentence of six months' prison time.


The FBI dropped its hate crime investigation; Maad and his wife remain the prime suspects in the languishing property damage case.


In Nashville, Tenn., Iraqi-American Aqil Yassom Al-Timmi claimed someone set his Chevy truck on fire after the Sept. 11 attacks because he was of Arab descent. Although local TV stations ate up the hate crime angle, one keen reporter remained skeptical and raised the strong possibility of an insurance fraud scheme. Writing in the Nashville Scene, Matt Pulle reported that no notes or graffiti were left at the crime scene. Emergency personnel were immediately suspicious of Al-Timimi, who reportedly pressed them to alert the media as soon as they arrived at Al-Timimi's home.


Sources said they suspected Al-Timmi was the perpetrator all along, but more than a year and a half after the fire, the case has languished. Al-Timimi, the supposed victim of hateful wrongdoing, hasn't been heard from since. "If he was playing us," Pulle told me, "he did a perfect job."


The FBI and Justice Department have vociferously condemned and aggressively prosecuted a string of anthrax hoaxes that followed the September 11 attacks. But when it comes to cracking down on hate crime hoaxes by Arabs and Muslims, the feds—too busy conducting politically correct "outreach" with Muslim leaders who pooh-pooh hate crime fraud— have been appallingly negligent. There is no way of knowing whether fake hate crimes outnumber real anti-Muslim crimes because no law enforcement agency keeps track. (Note to frustrated cops: Send me your suspected hoax cases and let's get started.)


Hoax crimes waste precious investigative resources, exacerbate racial tension, create terror, and corrode goodwill. It's a shame so many in the media are more concerned with protecting the twisted cult of victimhood than with exposing hard truths.

Racist.

Its obviously a frame up

All "Minorities", pull that shit, lesbians, handicapped, blacks, women, the aged, the young, homosexuals. When's the last time you ever heard of THEM being charged with fraud, or a "Hate" crime....

I'm just glad these SOB's got caught...It's a start.

Oh really? My friends wife had her life threatened by a redneck in IN. He was yelling racial epithets and making threats to a carload of Malaysian women and children who had just left their mosque, so she wrote down his tag # to report it to the FBI that were doing their "meet and greet" that week. They weren't interested. Neither were local PD. Guy saw her write something down, got out of his truck came over to her car, said some crap about 9/11 threatened to kill her too, in front of her 4 year old son, and attempted to rip the piece of paper out of her hand but failed. My friend is a decorated combat veteran from the first Gulf War, a former Marine, and on the executive comittee of their local mosque, a registered Republican, and a rabidly patriotic American.
How many non-Muslims and non-arabs tried to swindle the media, the public, and insurance companies after 9/11? Let's face it, there are POS in every demographic. A local TV station is currently running a smear campaign against their mosque. These hate crimes are happening and going ignored. Shitheads like the ones brought out in the article are helping to get the real crimes swept under the rug. As a patriotic American with Arab and Muslim friends makes me fuckin sick though.

I remember the Mike Maad incident very well.  My brother and I really crowed over it after reading all these self-righteous letters to the editor about the supposed "hate crime" in response to the 9/11 attacks.  Even after all the facts came to light and Maad got 8 years for fraud, the extreme calculated cynicism of his actions just takes your breath away.  

It was also very strange to watch the "Not in our Town" folks stand by him in court and vouch for his character and citizenship after it was made clear that he was a fraud who exploited their compassion.

It kills me that these people will stand up and be "brave in the face of ignorance" in others, but won't fess up and admit it when it comes to light that they were wrong and had been duped. Integrity comes from standing up when you're right and also having the stones to admit when you were wrong. Everybody seems to forget that last part. Must be why I can't stand mutton.

As heard of Fox: "If their mouth's are moving. they are lying"

Actually, Liberty, one of the great ironies of this "hate crime" crap is that blacks get charged with hate crimes at a much higher rate than whites.  So the socialists push this "hate crime" shit through to protect minorities from "hateful whites" and black people bear the brunt of the legislation.  Funny how government tends to go its own way, regardless of the original intentions of a law.

[url]http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=12[/url]

-Nick Viejo.

Quote: "...the extreme calculated [b]cynicism[/b] of his [Maad's] actions just takes your breath away."

Okay, bucko, you're on my watch list now.

cynic

Hey man, what else do you call it?

Say you're an Arab, you realize the race politics in America, then 9/11 happens.  You realize through the media that the public expects idiot redneck to go out bashing Muslims and Arabs.

What do you call utilizing that knowledge to vandalize your own store with racist anti-arab grafitti to get insurance money to support your failing business?  Holy shit.  That's about the most cynical thing I have ever seen.  That's what this guy did.