(Photo: WikiCommons)
Elham Asaad Buaras
A Muslim candidate running for a US Congress seat in central New Jersey has received a menacing death threat on her family.
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh is running in the Democratic primary for the 6th district Primary against Republican Frank Pallone and is the first Muslim woman in New Jersey to seek federal office.
Al-Khatahtbeh, founder of website MuslimGirl.com, received the call on April 22. In the obscenity-laced telephone rant, the caller threatens to violently kill her and her family.
Al-Khatahtbeh posted the recording on Twitter in which the unknown caller states her parents’ address and then promises: “I will [expletive] kill them and I will torture them.”
The callers also racially and Islamophobically abused her calling her an “ugly Arab Muslim” and “terrorist” and threatened to force-feed her and her family pork and vodka, during the tirade, which lasted for more than 2 minutes.
He also accuses Muslims and the Prophet Muhammad of paedophilia and threatens to kill a pig and “lay it on your [expletive] head.”
Al-Khatahtbeh decided to share the recording so people can get a sense of the hate that Muslims and minorities face.“This isn’t my first death threat, and I hesitated to share it, but it’s necessary to see the common experience of Muslims & minorities when hate is normalized by political leaders,” she wrote on Twitter. “This is what it feels like.”
Selaedin Maksut, Director of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said, “The chilling death threat exemplifies how Muslim candidates are especially targeted during election cycles. We know Islamophobia follows election cycles and is often exacerbated and amplified by the negative rhetoric of political leaders.”