Deah Shaddy Barakat and his wife Yusor at a recent UNC Basketball game. (From Barakat’s Facebook Page)
Washington, D.C., February 11, 2015: The Muslim American Society is shocked over the execution style murder of three American Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina last night, and calls on local and federal authorities to look into the incident as a possible hate crime.
The Students, Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21 and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, were shot by 46 year old Craig Stephen Hicks who turned himself in to the authorities.
With the increase of anti Islamic rhetoric, anti-Islamic sentiment and related bias attacks have been on the rise. In a statement, Muslim American society executive director Mazen Mokhtar said: “The vilification of an entire religion has led to widely spread anti-Islamic sentiment, an issue that not only threatens the security of Muslim individuals, but also the security of entire communities.
We extend our deepest sympathies to the families of the victims and to the entire Chapel Hill community, and call on anyone touched by these young but impactful individuals to help continue their visionary charity work. We ask local and national leaders to speak out against bias, and call for responsibility in media portrayal of Muslims and other minorities in order to prevent similar incidences in the future.”
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MAS is a dynamic charitable, religious, social, cultural, and educational organization legally organized and operating in the United States. Over the past two decades, MAS has expanded to more than 50 chapters across the United States. It offers a wide range of member programs and services that seek to better the individual, and in turn, the greater society by imparting Islamic knowledge, promoting community service, and advancing its members to the forefront of involved citizenry through civic engagement, political participation, and interfaith collaboration
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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