Three Muslim men were killed at the Islamic Center of San Diego after two shooters carried out an attack on the community. Authorities are investigating it as a hate crime, and the local police chief called the incident “every community’s worst nightmare.”

And now suddenly everyone is asking the same question: How could this happen?

But maybe the real question should be: What did we think was going to happen?

Because for years, Muslims in America have been dehumanized in plain sight. Not subtly. Not accidentally. Not on the margins of society, but publicly — in media, culture and politics.

We watched politicians such as Randy Fine talk about Muslims like they are an infestation instead of human beings. Sen. Tommy Tuberville denigrated Muslims as a threat to America and incompatible with American values. We watched large media organizations like the Paramount-owned Free Press platform Islamophobes, who claimed that fearing Muslims is “rational.” A prominent local radio host in New York call the city’s Muslim mayor a “cockroach.” 

Instead of these officials and personalities being censored or canceled, anti-Muslim hate is being institutionalized in Congress with a caucus that claims to prevent the nonexistent spread of Islamic law. This fixation on a fabricated threat is being institutionalized in states like Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott is targeting Muslim communities, denying funding to Muslim schools and prohibiting the construction of housing and religious projects.   

We’ve watched elected officials routinely defend and justify genocide, war and collective punishment overseas. Media figures spent the past two years framing pro-Palestinian protesters as terrorist sympathizers, as inherently suspicious, violent, radical and dangerous.

American officials like Pete Hegseth and Lindsey Graham are portraying the war on Iran, a Muslim country, as a war between civilizations, between good and evil and framing it as Christianity versus Islam. 

The double standard is suffocating.

When Muslims are killed, we don’t hear widespread condemnation. We don’t hear from elected officials across the board demanding increased budgets to protect communities and places of worship. 

Following the deadly shooting in San Diego, some people seized on an opportunity to link the San Diego school to 9/11 as a thinly veiled justification for the attack.   

Let’s stop pretending rhetoric doesn’t matter. The Donald Trump administration rose to power on policies like the Muslim Ban — literally telling an entire faith community that they were unwelcome and dangerous.

As Trump campaigned around the country, crowds of his supporters cheered while Muslims were portrayed as threats to America. And it has only grown from there.

As members of America’s Muslim communities know too well, we are constantly scrutinized and interrogated. We are asked to repeatedly apologize for violence we had nothing to do with.   

Imagine growing up watching your faith and community being discussed like a security problem instead of a religion. Imagine being a Muslim child in America seeing your image reflected in society like a villain, day after day.

Then a mosque is attacked. Beloved community members are killed. And everybody acts surprised.

But this is what dehumanization does. It creates a permission structure, a culture where Muslims are seen as less worthy of empathy, less innocent, less American.

And here’s the hypocrisy that should make everyone uncomfortable: If any other religious community in America endured this level of sustained suspicion, surveillance, political scapegoating and media demonization, there would be, and rightly so, national outrage.

But as Muslims, we are told to accept this — to stay quiet so nobody feels uncomfortable.

Three families are grieving today. Children who attend school at the San Diego mosque had to run for their lives and will be traumatized for life.

This attack did not happen in a vacuum. Hatred is taught. Fear is manufactured. And words — especially from powerful people — have consequences. We’re looking at them right now.

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