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US Mayor Under Fire for Anti-Muslim Email
The mayor of an American town came under fire over the weekend for forwarding an anti-Islam email calling on recipients to protest against a U.S. postage stamp recognizing Islamic holidays as it was a “slap in the face” to Americans.
Stereotyping the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, the email cites “Muslim terrorist attacks” and calls on people to “remember the Muslim bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993!” in a bid to call on “Patriotic Americans” to protest against the postage stamps first issued in 2001 to mark the Eid holidays.
Forwarded by Mayor Johnny Piper of Clarksville, Tennessee, who defended his actions, the email was sent to around 22 city council members, city officials and even a local newspaper editor.
The email called the stamps, which were wrongly assumed to have been issued under President Barack Obama’s administration, a “slap in the face” to the Americans who “died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors.”
Piper said his actions were not anti-Muslim and that he was passing on “information.”
Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, said it would send a copy of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, to Piper and other council memebrs.
While president of the Islamic Center of Clarksville, Ahmed Joudah, said: “I laughed when I read it, but at the same time, I felt sorry that we still have people around us that think that way.”
Joudah said he was surprised the mayor had forwarded the email and added: “I don’t want to say harsh things, because he’s a very nice man. I know him personally, and he’s a very nice, decent man.”
Al-Arabiya