ADAMS condemns the heinous hate threat targeting Muslim students on the university campus of Virginia Tech. We understand that on Monday, November 2, 2015, Virginia Tech Police received a report about “graffiti left inside a bathroom stall in Price Hall”, which according to their alert, read “I will be here11/11/2015 to kill all muslims (sic)”.
(Reference: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/11/05/virginia-tech-warns-campus-about-threat-made-to-kill-all-muslims/)
As ADAMS President Syed Moktadir said, “Many of our ADAMS community members have children who attend Virginia Tech, and we are all deeply concerned for their safety and security. Our thoughts and prayers are with those Muslim students, and with all students at Virginia Tech at this time.”
Virginia Tech Board Member and ADAMS Member, Mehmood Kazmi, is in contact with President Sands and the VP for Student Affairs and has discussed the safety of all Students at Virginia Tech
ADAMS is please to note that the Muslim students of Virginia Tech are responding to this terrible threat with expressions of peace, courage and harmony. ADAMS very much appreciates that federal and local law enforcement are investigating this incident and working to protect Muslim students on campus. We thank people of all faiths who have reached out to Muslim students at the school to offer help in the past few days. We also appreciate the statement by Virginia Tech President, Dr. Timothy Sands, who stated his “hope (that) every member of the Hokie Nation will join in rejecting this violation of our Principles of Community, and affirming our support for our Muslim students, faculty, and staff. A threat against one of us is a threat to all of us.”(http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2015/11/110615-president-letter.html).
We agree fully, and we also join in President Sands’ call for us all to support efforts by Muslim students at Virginia Tech to promote harmony over hate, including the social media campaigns #WeStandTogether and #HokiesDontHate. The perpetrators of these hate threats and crimes deserve censure, and must be brought to justice. We urge the DOJ, FBI, and DHS to investigate this as a hate crime and work to ensure safety of all students at Virginia Tech and at all of our institutions of higher education in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
ADAMS deplores and continues speak out against the fear mongering, hateful rhetoric and vilification of all Muslims that can too easily lead to such hate threats and hate crimes. We believe the continuing rise in hate crimes against Mosques in Nebraska, Massachusetts and elsewhere, as well as the violence against Muslim women in Minnesota and Indiana, can be traced back to these types of incendiary statements, which contradict the very principles of religious freedom on which our great nation was founded.
We remember too well that Virginia Tech community was victim to a horrible shooting incident in 2007. At that time, Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean national and permanent U.S. resident, shot 32 people before killing himself. We sadly note that the biggest threat to schools are the overwhelming amount of school shootings (74 in an 18 month period from 2012 to 2014).
(Reference: http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/us/school-shootings-cnn-number/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States)
ADAMS continues to work with local law enforcement, and with national institutions, including the FBI Washington Field Office, FBI Headquarters, and the Department of Homeland Security, to assure the safety of all communities. On this troubling occasion, we reiterate our commitment to assisting law enforcement agencies to do everything possible to prevent hate crimes.