Syrian Refugee Family gets this Disturbing Note on their Front Door #HummusHaters
With all the anti-Arab bashing we see in the news every week, Arab America is determined to expose those who discriminate against our community. We will recognize those who vilify the positive influence and contributions Arabs have made to the fabric of American society. And we will use hummus as our weapon. By naming those who vilify the Arab American community as #HummusHaters, we can express our culture positively while showing intolerance to bigotry.
BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer
A Syrian refugee family living in Tucson, Arizona woke up to find a disturbing handwritten note taped to their apartment door this week. The note is a collection of hateful sentences and threats, such as “Go away killers!” and “Please move before danger can happen.”
Other messages on the note include: “America hates terrorists like you,” “You are Muslim and not welcome,” and “We don’t like you living here! You need to move!”
photos from buzzfeed.comThe back of the note read, “Shame on you terrorist. May our God forgive you since most people will not. Cowards!”
Tucson has a large and diverse refugee community, with many coming from Somalia, Nepal, and Arab countries. This is the first reported incident of harassment from members of Tucson’s refugee community, but the family is not comfortable living there any longer.
The unidentified family alerted the apartment complex’s management and Tucson police, who say that there are no suspects so far. The family of four is staying with family friends until they find a new place to live. The refugees resettled in the U.S. from war-torn Syria only three months ago. Now, they must flee from threats to their safety again, but this time in America.
What’s especially alarming about this note is that it looks like it was written by a group of children, who personalized their messages with different color markers. One message reads, “Luv 2 all you killed” with a picture of a heart next to it, which looks and reads like children’s writing. Did an adult encourage children to do this? Did they write the messages on their own? Either way, whoever wrote this note needs a few grammar lessons and some delicious hummus.
Overall, there were 9 messages on the note, meaning there could be up to 9 hummus haters in this sad story. It’s hard to say how a person or group of people can grow to believe that an entire nation or religion is filled with murderers and terrorists, but the current political climate is certainly not helping. The teachers of this level of hate will be needing hummus, too.
Refugees are one of the world’s most vulnerable communities, and have endured a great deal of stress and danger in order to survive. Attacking them by way of an anonymous note is not only cowardly, but also cruel.
Tucson may not have a huge Arab American population, but there should be enough to pass the hummus around. Maybe if these marker-clad children or adults had some hummus, they would see the true benefit of having Syrians, and other refugees, in their community. There will need to be big servings of hummus to shake off these nasty, Islamophobic and anti-Arab prejudicial understandings of Syria.