USPCN mourns the loss of Yusor, Razan, and Deah

The United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) offers its most sincere condolences to the families of the three Arab Muslim youth who were killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, this week. Palestinian Americans Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Yusor’s husband, Syrian American Deah Shaddy Barakat, were shot execution style Tuesday afternoon by a neighbor, a white man named Craig Hicks. We mourn their deaths with the rest of the world.

Today, the Huffington Post wrote, “Chapel Hill police have said that they haven’t ruled out the idea that the shooting was ‘hate-motivated,’ but so far they’ve suggested an ongoing parking dispute fueled Hicks’ wrath.” But we support the father of the slain young women, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, who was quoted as saying, “This has hate crime written all over it.” The FBI has launched a “preliminary inquiry,” but the Campaign to TAKE ON HATE, a project of the National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC), has already published an online petition demanding a full investigation.

In addition, the public was not made aware of the killings until Wednesday morning, which does not at all suggest a cover up, but does raise the question as to whether a double standard is at play here. While the media and politicians of all stripes fall all over themselves to immediately ascribe acts of violence allegedly perpetrated by Arabs and Muslims anywhere in the world to an entire nationality or religion, law enforcement in Chapel Hill and the press did not even broadcast this crime until half a day later, and President Obama only today broke his silence on the killings.

We must analyze these murders in today’s social and political context. Institutional and structural racism against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims in the U.S. have helped establish a culture of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate that the media, Hollywood, and politicians here, ultra-right wing and otherwise, regularly perpetuate, especially in the post-9/11 world that saw the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, its mass torture and indefinite detention of Arabs and Muslims in CIA black sites and Guantanamo Bay, and its relentless drone strikes in Arab and Muslim countries. It is impossible to divorce anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia in the U.S. from the dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims abroad, including the attacks on the Palestinian people fighting a righteous battle for our liberation from Israeli colonialism and apartheid. U.S. warmongering in the Arab and Muslim world, and its unequivocal support of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, fuels much of the discrimination and racism against Arabs and Muslims here.

Arabs and Muslims are victimized, scapegoated, and attacked by legislatures, courts, law enforcement, and even individuals full of hate like Hicks. They are profiled not only because of the color of their skin, but also because of their ethnicity, nationality, and religious beliefs. Just as structural racism combined with political repression devastated movements of oppressed nationality groups and communities of color throughout US history, including those for Black and Chicano liberation, Native American sovereignty, immigrant rights, and Puerto Rican independence, today’s attacks, even by an individual like Hicks, on Arabs and Muslims are also political in nature.

To justify a foreign policy that calls for a never ending “war on terrorism” in the Arab and Muslim worlds, the U.S. government must manufacture a local “enemy.” And to justify its unequivocal support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, the U.S. government must convince people here that the struggle for Palestinian liberation is criminal, and that those who organize for our liberation like Rasmea Odeh, the Holy Land 5, Sami Al-Arian, and Abdelhaleem Ashqar, amongst so many others, are criminals as well. The Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, South Asians, Africans, African Americans, Asians, Latinos, and others directly affected by these attacks and policies experience a fundamental challenge to their personhood, an “un-citizening,” so to speak.  They become personifications of “the enemy” abroad, extensions of the proverbial “other,” un-American and unwanted, regardless of whether they are undocumented or U.S. citizens like Yusor, Razan, and Deah. Unfortunately, this is what it often means to be Arab or Muslim in the U.S.

USPCN will not be able to describe the beautiful lives of these community members of ours any better than their friends, family, and acquaintances, so read below some of their stories, mourn their deaths, and pledge to continue to organize to stop hate crimes, national oppression, and the culture of violence, war, and occupation that so disgustingly permeates U.S. society today.

Here Are The Three Victims Of The Chapel Hill Shooting

Victim’s friend: The world is dimmer without Deah Barakat

Slain North Carolina couple and sister remembered as generous, loving

Exclusive Interview: Brother of Chapel Hill shooting victims

Our Three Winners