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  • 2018-08-23 (xsd:date)
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  • Did the Mayor of Minneapolis Cancel 4th of July Fireworks But Allow a Muslim Animal Sacrifice at Vikings Stadium? (en)
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  • In August 2018, a bit of Islamophobic copypasta started making its way around social media, asserting that the mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota had canceled a 4th of July city fireworks display but allowed Muslim animal sacrifice to be held in the city's U.S. Bank Stadium (home of the Minnesota Vikings football team) the following month: This copypasta was based on a bit of fake news, a fear-mongering report about the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, and a misreading of two genuine news reports. Fake News On 10 June 2018, the Last Line of Defense web site published an article positing that the Muslim mayor of Minneapolis had canceled the 4th of July: This was not a genuine news story about the mayor of Minneapolis, who is neither named Ahneid al Ahmed nor a Muslim. (The city's actual mayor is Jacob Frey.) The Last Line of Defense is part of a network of sites that engages in political trolling under the guise of proffering satire. This junk news piece may have prompted some confusion, as it resembled a genuine news story about a nearby Minnesota city. The mayor of St. Paul did cancel the city's Independence Day firework show due to budgetary concerns: Minneapolis, on the other hand, hosted multiple firework shows on July 4th. Fear-Mongering Reports About Eid al-Adha The Muslim celebration of Eid al-Adha is also referred to as the Feast of Sacrifice. The holiday, which honors Ibrahim's (Abraham's) willingness to sacrifice his son at God's command, is celebrated by Muslims around the world. In many places, Muslims observe that holiday by sacrificing an animal and then sharing its meat with the poor: When it was announced that U.S. Bank Stadium would be hosting a Eid al-Adha festival, the Islamophobic web site Bare Naked Islam published an article about the upcoming event imploring readers to imagine 50,000 Muslims at the stadium and displaying various photographs and videos of animal sacrifices from around the world. The following photograph, for instance, was taken in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2008: These photographs led many readers to mistakenly believe that the Super EID festival at U.S. Bank Stadium would also feature animal sacrifices, but that wasn't the case. Ahmed Anshur, executive director of Masjid Al-Ihsan Islamic Center in St. Paul and one of the organizers of Super EID, attempted to quell these fears, telling Minnesota Public Radio that no animal sacrifices would take place at the event: The Minneapolis Star Tribune filed a report after the 21 August 2018 celebration on which stated that in fact no animal sacrifices had taken place at the stadium during the EID celebration: (en)
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