Daniel Greenfield article: Omar Rivera Urinates on the Wall of the Steinway Street Mosque |
Posted: 14 Sep 2013 07:27 PM PDT
On the 12th
anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the principal at the Concord-Carlisle High
School in a Boston suburb substituted a
Muslim Anti-American poem for the Pledge of Allegiance.
According to Principal Peter Badalament, he chose to read Mohja Kahf’s poem, “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears” in which her grandmother argues with American women at Sears about washing her feet in their sink, to emphasize "cross-cultural understanding rather than unsettling words and images associated with the event” The poem which contains the exchange...
“You can’t do that,” one of the women protests,
turning to me, “Tell her she can’t do that.” “We wash our feet five times a day,” my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic. “My feet are cleaner than their sink. Worried about their sink, are they? I should worry about my feet!” ...is about American intolerance As my own contribution to cross-cultural understanding, I would like to offer this poem based on true events that occured in 2010. It can be read for Ramadan or any other Muslim occasions when any words and images dealing with the actual event would be unsettling. I hope it leads to a great deal of cross-cultural understanding Omar Rivera Urinates on the Wall of the Steinway Street Mosque With his eyes on the moon, Omar Rivera stumbles down Steinway Street hearing the music of his dead sister dancing in between the bodegas In the Al-Iman Mosque, the men have washed their hands up to the wrists cleaned their nostrils with water wiped their wet hands over their dirty socks in the sink Henry Steinway, the piano man, once donated an organ to the Astoria church that bears his name on Steinway Street but there are mosques here now and they take no requests In Al-Iman they cry the Adhan the loudspeaker breaks it up into static like the call of the Q Train on the elevated subway tracks of Astoria Boulevard Omar Rivera has ridden the Q and the N the J and the M the A and the D and the F and the V out of money he walks to the bitter music of the new Astoria In the mosque they cry Allahu Akbar and on Steinway Street on a five-day drunk weeping for his sister weeping for all the things he can't remember he cries a woman's name He halts outside a cheap boutique covered in glittering tile and carved doors and he follows nature's call not reading where it says Al-Iman Mosque Later they will say he burst into the mosque and shouted, "Terrorists". They will say that he cursed at everyone threw a beer bottle at their heads gave them the middle finger and peed all over their prayer rugs Omar does not know much of Islam and less of their prayer rugs and if he hummed Me Enamore while inside they shouted Muhammadar Rasul Allah his prayer was least as sincere as theirs A late arrival sees him and screams Allahu Akbar inside they shout Allahu Akbar bewildered, Omar shouts Olly Olly Oxen Free as they tackle him still urinating My sister is dead, he tells the scowling Egyptian men holding him for the police and they tell the police he shouted anti-Muslim slurs The media weary of replaying the story of a drunk who stabbed a Muslim cabbie and sat down on the sidewalk finds another drunken Islamophobic menace to test its tolerance against "You're famous," a cop tells Omar. "The Mayor is talking about you on the radio." "Why?" "Because you urinated in a mosque." "I wasn't in no mosque," he protests. "Tell it to the Mayor." Later his mother brings him the papers. "Omar the Carpet-Unmaker", the New York Post calls him. The Daily News says that he represents everything wrong with the city. "Couldn't you have gone somewhere nicer?" she asks. "Drunk Shouts, "Terrorists", Urinates on Mosque Rugs" NBC News reports and interviews an FBI Special Agent Burying the lead, FOX headlines it, "Drunk Man Screams Anti-Muslim Slurs Urinates in Mosque" "Another Brazen Anti-Muslim Incident" cries the Huffington Post and Omar Rivera who had gone where so many had gone before just cries, bewildered as the mosque raises money to replace the prayer rugs Press conferences come and condemnations Bloomberg gets involved ISNA holds an Interfaith Summit warning of a tide of violence when the only tide was Omar's watered down Cerveza on the glittery tile of Al-Iman Islamophobiawatch features it. "This is a true hate crime," says a Mosquegoer "Without a significant response," says Faiza Ali, CAIR spokesman "this disturbing trend will continue to grow." Meanwhile the Al-Iman website claims the Jews invented AIDS A woman who hates Israel and calls herself a Rabbi raises $1,180 from across America for new prayer rugs and Al-Iman kindly gives her AIDS invention the benefit of the doubt Against the bars of Bellevue Omar presses his face watching the rush of traffic on the FDR Drive and waiting for his head to be shrunk out of its unintentionally Islamophobic proportions Outside, prosecutors eager to prosecute Omar fill their notes with quotes from Jefferson and Franklin on tolerance and wait for CNN to call, to snack on the peanuts of ABC News' Green Room But in Astoria, Queens a big bluff cop O'Brien, O'Malley or even Henriquez who watched Omar crying in his handcuffs for his sister chases down the truth The Imam of Al-Iman curses Kuffar the mosquegoers mutter Kalb ibn Kalb and Shatain as he compares their statements in his notepad Henriquez scribbles filling white pages and striking out lies soon there is no shout of terrorist no mosque invasion no cursing no tide of violence no prayer rugs only a drunk outside a mosque Up go the notes prosecutors curse deputy mayors grit their teeth tolerance commissioners suggest going ahead anyway Bloomberg squints as if chewing on a sour lemon and cancels the interfaith press conference That night, bewildered and free Omar Rivera roams Astoria In Al-Iman, the mosquegoers flush with $1,180 in infidel cash rub their dirty socks in the sink and mutter of the Dar Al-Harb and the dirty Kuffar And beneath a crescent moon, Omar Rivera sips a beer and hears the Adhan beneath the elevated tracks a faint memory stirs loosing his bladder he cries Allahu Akbar and his prayer is answered
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger
and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
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