(Washington, D.C. – 11/27/2023) – The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the nation’s leading umbrella group of national, regional, and local Muslim associations, and American Muslims decries the likely hate-motivated shooting of 3 Palestinian university students near the University of Vermont in Burlington on Nov. 25th.
USCMO leaders also condemned the sharp rise in anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim hate and called on elected officials and media outlets to stop contributing to such bigotry.
In a statement, USCMO Secretary-General Oussama Jammal said:
“We are grateful to local law enforcement for a quick arrest. This hateful crime was almost certainly sparked by the wildfire of hate against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims that has been irresponsibly and deliberately blown across the country over the past six weeks.
“Many elected officials, corporations and media outlets have dehumanized Palestinians overseas while smearing Palestinians and their supporters here at home, contributing to a dangerous atmosphere of bigotry. Last month, little 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume was stabbed 26 times with a military-style knife by an elderly man who was reportedly inspired by anti-Muslim hysteria in the media.
“This must end. So must the Israeli government’s plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland in Gaza, which is endangering people there and now around the world.”
The three Vermont shooting victims – Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmed, each 20 years old – are graduates of the Ramallah Friends School, a private Quaker secondary school in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They are attending Brown University, Haverford, and Trinity colleges, respectively. They were walking to the home of a family member for dinner, two wearing the now ubiquitous black and white checked Palestinian keffiyeh and speaking to each other in Arabic.
All are expected to survive, but a bullet that struck Awartani, who is of Palestinian-Irish heritage and described as a “math genius,” hit his spinal cord.
Brown University president Christina Paxson called the shooting a “heinous and despicable act of violence” and acknowledged it as the “latest evidence of anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian discrimination and hate spiraling across this country and around the world.” U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, addressing the shooting, cited “the startling rise of anti-Arab hate and Islamophobia in America.”
An inclusive coalition of Ivy League university students for Palestine specifically noted “we also recognize that this violent act is part of a broader trend of dehumanization of Palestinians, one that our universities and politicians have actively contributed to by silencing Palestinian voices and refusing to recognize Palestinian humanity.”
The students called on college students across U.S. campuses to “wear their keffiyehs and the colors of the Palestinian flag in solidarity,” pointedly noting that “in the face of hatred, we will not stand down.”
USCMO leaders call for three measures:
- A meeting between Office of Homeland Security and FBI heads and American Muslim leaders to take measures against rising, lethal anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim hate.
- President Biden’s long overdue appointment of a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia.
- Meetings with U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and U.S. presidents and officials of major university and college campuses and American Muslim leaders to safeguard Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students and their free speech, along with the safeguarding of the rights of their related campus organizations.
May God heal Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Ahmed and protect the safety, security, and rights of all our children.
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