Culture critic: A Troubling Silence

The case of Ameer Haiderah Ghalib, the first Islamic mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., near Detroit, is “indicative of a broader societal trend that privileges” Muslim “supremacists” and “lets them off the hook for bad behavior,” charges Benjamin Baird at The Federalist. Ghalib “was recently exposed for mocking black political demonstrations” and “endorsing” anti-black comments and “a post calling Jews ‘monkeys.’ ” Yet even in an “era of ‘cancel culture,’ ” journalists, black activists and “Jewish rights organizations” all stayed “silent”; Ghalib escaped “consequences for statements that would ruin another elected official.” Such “activist and media indifference” to his posts “provides a pessimistic outlook on the future of social justice and racial equality.”