An Ugly Crime Tied Up With A Pretty Bow

It appears that the NYPD have a suspect in this week's bizarre subway murder, where a man was pushed in front of a 7 train at the Lowery Street Station on Thursday.  Only the suspect raises some more ugly, ugly questions.

The woman, Erika Menendez of the Bronx, has been charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime, Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said. 

“The defendant is accused of committing what is every subway commuter’s nightmare,” Mr. Brown said in an interview. “Being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train.” 

Mr. Brown said that the woman was motivated by hatred, telling the police, that she “pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.” 

Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths both in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said. 

The victim, Sunando Sen, was born in India and, according to a roommate, was raised Hindu. 

So yes.  She's being charged with a hate crime because she thought she was killing a Muslim in cold blood.  Turns out her victim was Hindu, and she was too stupid to know the difference.  And a man died anyway, senselessly, tragically, because...why?

Because he looked like a Muslim.  And where were people in the NY subway getting the idea that Muslims were dangerous people who had to be killed pre-emptively?

Why, they saw ads like that daily thanks to our old friend, Pammycakes.

Anti-Islam activist Pamella Geller's "Support Israel, Defeat Jihad" ads didn't go over very well with subway riders, so she's is trying a different tactic. Her new ads, which go up next week, feature the Twin Towers engulfed in flames, along with this out of context quote from the Koran: "Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.” The New York Times reports that she's also made a much bigger ad buy, placing a sign beside each of the 220 clocks hanging in New York's subway stations. Geller notes that this time would-be vandals "would have to get a ladder." So when riders are accidentally covered in spray paint by activists aiming for the ads, we'll have Geller to thank.

That was earlier this month.  It seems this week Geller's ads claimed their first victim.  Somebody who had committed the crime of looking like a Muslim.   Did Geller push the man off the platform?  No.  Did her ads help?  Free speech, vile speech, only goes so far.

Perhaps as Adam Serwer suggests:

I await the NRA's press conference urging all Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans to buy guns nytimes.com/2012/12/30/nyr…
— AdamSerwer (@AdamSerwer) December 29, 2012

Won't that be fun.