Vitriolic e-mails zero in on 'Muslim'

Elaine Jarvik and Deborah Bulkeley wrote in Deseret Morning News On ultraconservative Web sites like littlegreenfootballs.com,

LGF is certainly conservative, but what makes it ultraconservative? The fact that it is not liberal?

the story of Monday's shooting rampage at Trolley Square has been reduced to one fact: "Salt Lake City Killer Was a Muslim."

A fact that you left out of the coverage.

"The media did everything they could to avoid mentioning it, but it's confirmed today that the mass murderer who terrorized a mall in Salt Lake City was a Bosnian Muslim," reads the intro at littlegreenfootballs.com. At MichaelSavage.com, the Muslim connection is a running-banner headline. At jihadwatch.org, the story begins "Sudden Jihad syndrome? Maybe." The online stories, as well as Tuesday's and Wednesday's stories in the Deseret Morning News, have resulted in a barrage of vitriolic e-mails to the News from people either angry at the paper for not mentioning the religion of shooter Sulejman Talovic in Wednesday's Web edition, or certain that because Talovic is Muslim that he must be a terrorist.

Why didn't you just mention the fact. Was it not "newsworthy" in this post 9/11 environment?

There is no record that Talovic attended any of the mosques in the Salt Lake area, according to both Tarek Nosseir, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake and Bobby Darvish, president of the Muslim Forum of Utah.

Do they have a complete record of those that attended, and if so have they shared that record with the authorities?

Nosseir noted that many Bosnian Muslims are more secular than religious.

And a number are not, and yet they do not appreciate the fact that the US tried to protect them.

"Having lived under Soviet Union rules for decades, where religious freedom was not an option, a majority of these people" are not practicing Muslims, he added. "What I hear is that he came a couple of times at most, to Eid prayers, but I can't confirm that he came."

The Al-Qaeda manual directs operatives to "avoid visiting famous Islamic places (mosques, libraries, Islamic fairs, etc.)

Although Salt Lake City police have not yet established a motive for the shootings, a handful of Bosnian refugees were verbally harassed at their workplaces on Wednesday, according to the Utah Consortium of Multicultural Groups. Local police report no incidents of violence against Bosnian or other refugees.

Yet the local "multicultural group" wants to pretends its members are "victims".