Editor,
Hats off to you for having presented a seriously underreported side effect cruelly imposed on innocent bystanders of bombings, such as the one in Boston. Thus the false aspersion cast on student Salah Eddin Barhoum by the now backpedaling American media is but the tip of the iceberg of frigid hatred of brown-skinned Muslims in America, even of those of us who may look “Muslim” through the narrowed blinders of outright racists of the religious type.
What Barhoum now faces for the rest of his life, given the irrevocable memory of the Internet, is not just damaging to his reputation as a top-notch athlete — his very life will likely remain in danger. It is therefore imperative that he be given round-the-clock police protection for a good, long time, not just to make him feel more like a prisoner by telling him to make his social life even more constricted through some superficial decrease on access to his Facebook.
Furthermore, the New York Post and CNN need to announce very publicly that he and his friend Yassine Zaime are the wrong men, not make excuses for their premature announcement just in order to be the first to scoop up an exclusive.
Last but not least, one or more American lawyers need to sue any and all parties responsible for this discriminatory defamation on his behalf. This is the only way to send a message that will get the attention of a mainstream populace being fed false leads by the media. A similar paroxysm of paranoia already happened back when the media kept harping on the mere sighting of a “Middle-Eastern looking man” who just happened to be in the vicinity of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma right after it was bombed, only to discover in short order it was the doing of a white, homegrown terrorist.
Arun Anand Ahuja
UNM student
