The Biden administration’s recent Islamophobia Strategy perversely claimed that Muslims were the real victims of Hamas’ Oct 7th jihad carnage in Israel, suffering “hate and discrimination” in its aftermath, which paralleled their alleged, “experiences following the 9/11 attacks.” Investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield described the resultant moral inversion:
“Every Muslim terrorist attack soon concentrates attention on the ‘backlash,’ not the act itself, victims are sidelined and Islamist groups like (Hamas linked-) CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) redefine themselves as the victims…
This cynical dynamic has been playing out in Rhode Island following the October 7th attacks, and two manufactured November 2023, “Islamophobic shooting” incidents.
On 11/17/23 Mustafa Ramos, was shot in the buttocks while selling Islamic paraphernalia adjacent to the Islamic Center of Rhode Island (ICRI) mosque. Relying heavily upon a propagandized “assessment” by Hamas-linked CAIR , WPRI suggested the shooting was an “Islamophobic hate crime.” Upon actual criminal investigation, Providence police Maj. David Lapatin stated, “To say the mosque was targeted would be premature.” Regardless, a “hate crime” narrative was how local media framed the story—including The Providence Journal, and The Boston Globe. CNN, and even the UK Guardian and UK Daily Mail, echoed the notion of a presumed “Islamophobic shooting.”
Last February, 2024, a Rhode Island House resolution on “Islamophobia” was passed referencing Mustafa Ramos’ shooting, and the Burlington, Vermont shooting of Brown University student, Hisham Awartani. Language was included declaring the “belief” that Ramos “was a target based solely on his faith, and implying the same conclusion for Awartani.
Now, more than 18-months after both shootings, neither the Ramos or Awartani shootings—following extensive criminal investigations—has been classified as a hate crime.
Actual investigation reveals Mr. Ramos was most likely shot by another Muslim, Nasir Dupont, a recidivist criminal with a long history of serious drug and firearms convictions, currently incarcerated for offenses unrelated to the Ramos shooting. Mr. Ramos himself served 5-years in prison (of a 20-year sentence) for illicitly distributing and manufacturing dangerous and addictive drugs. No evidence has emerged that the Ramos shooting was an “Islamophobic hate crime.”
The suspected gunman in the Awartani shooting, Jason Eaton, was a pro-Hamas, Leftist, organic farmer with a psychiatric history, but no history of ethnic or religious prejudice. There is zero evidence that the Awartani shooting was an “Islamophobic hate crime,” and it is not being prosecuted as one, even after Eaton’s bizarre May 23, 2025 courtroom outburst claiming that he was working for the CIA and Mossad.
Conversely, my own investigation has revealed that the ICRI, which bellowed the false claim of “Islamophobia,” in November 2023, consistently preaches jihadism and hatred toward non-Muslims, especially Jews.
Examples of this hateful sermonizing at the ICRI include:
—On 12/22/23, 3-days before Christmas, it was preached that the Muslim Jesus (“Isa”) will destroy Christianity, and in the same sermon, the imam invoked Quran 17:4-10, and 2:61/3:112, while accusing Jews of “genocide in Gaza,” and reminding Muslims that Jews are “corrupters” to be “punished” [17:4-10], and “prophet killers” [2:61/3:112].
—On 1/12/24, the imam, after explaining that sura or chapter 1, per Muhammad, is “the greatest verse in the Quran,” noted Quran 1:7 [which pious Muslims repeat 17-times daily] means it is the Jews who have “incurred Allah’s anger,” and observed they are “cursed” (Qur’an 5:78), while again accusing “prophet killing” Jews—not the Israel Defense Forces, or Israel—of committing “genocide in Gaza,” because of their inveterately evil Quranic nature.
—On 1/3/25, just 2-days after the New Orleans vehicular jihad carnage New Years Day, which the imam ignored altogether, he preached treating non-Muslims harshly (Quran 48:29), and concluded with an Arabic supplication to “fight the disbelievers and polytheists,” consistent with the jihad war proclamations of the 9th Quranic sura (9:5, 9:29, etc.)
The most recent sermon (Friday, 5/30/25) at the ICRI was ostensibly about Islam’s Hajj pilgrimage to Muslim-only Mecca. Under that pretext, the sermon evolved into a celebration of jihad conquest, specifically, the “cleansing” of Mecca’s pagans (in 630 C.E.), and not long afterward, the attack on Syria’s and Iraq’s Christians (634 C.E.), all given Islamic religious sanction from the Qur’an’s 9th sura (chapter), a series of timeless war proclamations.
Also in that triumphal vein, the ICRI imam invoked Islam’s supersessionism, its notion of being the true primordial monotheism of Jewish patriarch Abraham, reciting in Arabic, then translating, accurately, Qur’an 3:67 and 3:68, as follows:
“Ibrahim [Abraham] is not a Christian or a Jew. He is someone who worships only one God [Allah]. He is a Muslim.” [Q 3:67]…And the people who have the greatest claim to Ibrahim are those who follow his and this Messenger [Muhammad], and those who believe [Muslims] and Allah is the protector of the believers” [Q 3:68]
The imam segued from that traditional Qur’anic supremacism into a derision of Christianity, and an ugly, contemporary blood libel against Jews, and Judaism:
“One group, the Christians, can’t articulate what they really believe, what their tawhid (monotheism) means. And the other group (the Jews) has reduced their religion to an ethnic identity that they use to justify a slaughter of innocent people“
Painstaking investigation of “hundreds of Friday mosque sermons” across the U.S. following October 7, 2023 places the ICRI’s sermons within their alarming context:
“…almost all the sermons amplify(ied) a single narrative which justifies Hamas’s attack as a legitimate act that is based on the command of Allah and the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. Therefore, they did not condemn or hold Hamas responsible for killing and abducting civilians, including children and the elderly, and sexually assaulting women…for starting a war…using the Gazans as human shields, or causing the death of thousands of Palestinians…Instead, their sermons, focused on highlighting the similarities between Hamas’ attack and the wars fought by the prophet and his companions, demonizing Israel, narrating historical antisemitic stories attributed to the prophet Muhammad and citing verses from the Qur’an that characterized Jews as corrupt, treacherous, untrustworthy, and the killers of prophets.”
Worse still, MEMRI Director Yigal Carmon’s plaintive 2019 warning about the U.S. “mosque problem,” has gone unheeded, as feckless U.S. Jewish “leadership” remains paralyzed by fear of being sprayed with scurrilous charges of “Islamophobia”:
“A lot of the incitement actually deteriorated into threats of violence based on Islamic texts… the primary, basic Islam of the time of Muhammad… Jewish communities, who are the direct victim or the direct target of this incitement, are afraid to do anything…They are afraid of being considered Islamophobic”
