DEARBORN — Less than 13 months after the Chapel Hill, N.C. shooting, which claimed the lives of three Muslims, activists are alarmed by the murder of three young Sudanese Americans in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Mohamedtaha Omar, 23; Adam Mekki, 20 and Muhannad Tairab, 17, were shot “execution-style” on Feb. 24 in a home police described as a “party house.” Two of the victims were Muslim.

As Muslim and Black advocates mourned the young men and demanded answers, Fort Wayne police said the crime was not motivated by hate, although the investigation has not concluded.

“We know that it’s not a hate crime,” a Fort Wayne police spokesperson told Vice News.

Many people in the community find this assertion bewildering.

The motives

Rusty York, Fort Wayne’s public safety director, told a local television station he does not believe the murders are a hate crime.

“Hopefully, you know, we’ll be able to focus in on exactly what the reason was,” he said. “But, as I said before, no reason to believe this was any type of hate crime or focused because of their religion or their nationality whatsoever.” 

Asha Noor, an engagement specialist for the Take on Hate campaign, said many activists suspect it was a hate crime because of the victims’ identities.

“Because of the negative political climate we are in, with so much anti-Black racism and Islamophobia, when we hear a Muslim sounding-name as a victim in a crime, our initial reaction is that it might be a hate crime,” she said.

Noor added that activists are simply calling for a comprehensive investigation into that possibility.

“These are three young men who were murdered,” she said. “Irrespective of the nature of the crime, it shouldn’t change the way we empathize and the way that we grieve.”

Noor criticized the police department for the way it handled the murders, saying that the way authorities ruled out the possibility of a hate crime was suspicious. 

She said police departments are generally reluctant to consider ethnic or religious bias as a motive for crime because it reflects negatively on their municipalities.

Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations in Michigan, said there is no logical explanation for the prompt conclusion by the police while the investigation is ongoing.

“It’s very odd that the possibility of a hate crime motive was dismissed so quickly,” he said.

Walid added that many activists are wondering if the murders are a hate crime because of the hostile environment of racial and religious tensions.

The CAIR director cited reports saying there has been a sharp increase in the membership of White supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan.

Walid blamed the “likes of Donald Trump and others with the GOP” for the rise of hatred and called on all Americans to condemn bigotry.

“Until there are more people in the broader society speaking out against this, I’m afraid that more of these attacks will take place,” he said.

#OurThreeBrothers

National mainstream media outlets largely ignored the murders until the beginning of this week.

Meanwhile, social justice advocates took to social media to make the story known. Tweeting under the hashtags #OurThreeBrothers, #OurThreeBoys and #BlackLivesMatter, they demanded coverage and accountability for the crime. 

“Since when did one’s religion or race make their blood a cheaper price than another? #OurThreeBoys,” wrote Twitter user ‏@palestyria.

‎@DebbiAlmontaser tweeted: “We want a full/complete investigation of the Fort Wayne shooting 3 Muslim boys! Don’t assume ‘gang related activity’, we want facts!”

Law professor Khaled Beydoun also took to Twitter to voice his frustration with the lack of coverage.

“Muslims are only newsworthy when villains, not victims,” he wrote.

Beydoun explained that the mainstream media rush to cover and over-cover Muslims when they are the perpetrators of crime or terrorism.

“When there is a Muslim culprit involved, a story is instantly a matter of national concern and existential alarm,” he told The Arab American News via email. “However, if we flip the script and the victims are Muslims, this receives little to no attention. This story illustrates that, as do many others.”

Noor said the social media campaign in support of the victims forced mainstream newspapers, including the Washington Post, to cover the story.

“Once national media coverage is there, that puts pressure on police and authorities to conduct a comprehensive investigation and be more transparent with press conferences and things of that nature,” she said.

Walid, of CAIR, echoed Noor’s comments on social media empowerment.

“We stand for ourselves and be counted or we stay silent and be discounted, as a community,” he said. “Our community no longer affords to be passive. We have the right to demand answers from law enforcement. If law enforcement is not talking to us directly, we can go to social media and that will perhaps trigger other forms of media to begin asking law
enforcement those questions directly.”

Criminalizing the victims

While thousands of Internet users were busy expressing sympathy and demanding justice for Omar, Mekki and Tairab, some people, even within the Arab and Muslim communities, rushed to claim the murders are gang-related.

“This is sad; however, these were not young men killed because they were upstanding Muslims. This was an abandoned houses used by junkies and others to party and in a rough area of town. Stop making something out of nothing,” one Facebook user wrote on The Arab American News page.

The victims’ family members have said that the slain young men were upstanding and were not involved in drugs or any wrongdoing.

Noor slammed those claiming the crime was gang-related. She said anti-Black racism has driven people to such conclusions.

“That line of thinking is very much rooted in the dominant narrative in this country, which is if Black individuals are victims of a crime, instead of empathizing and humanizing them and instead of thinking why would somebody do this to them, we criminalize them,” she added. 

She said there are certain stereotypes associated with Blackness in the community, which affected some people’s perception of the victims.

“It’s very disheartening,” Noor said. “It’s something that’s troubling and I see it times and time again.”

Walid said the police did not say the victims were a part of any gang.

“I would question the moral compass of any people who would even infer that these three young men deserved to be murdered,” he said. “These three people were murdered execution-style. They were oppressed and had their human rights stripped away from them.”

Walid said people are quicker to conclude that something is gang-related if it involves young Black men.