Hate-Crimes Follies

Let's start in North Side Chicago at the Shan Restaurant, a Pakistani bistro where South Asians like to hang out, among them Ifti Nasim, a 53-year-old Pakistani writer and radical who's also a leading light of Muslim gays, many of them mustered in the international gay Muslim organization Al-Fatiha. Nasim was sitting in the Shan on the night of March 12 when a man at the table called Salman Aftab began verbally hassling him for being "too visible" in his sexual orientation and an "embarrassment" to South Asians. Nasim apparently likes heavy jewelry and presented himself in drag on the cover of his latest book of poems.

Nasim says Aftab told him, "I'm going to stab you up the ass to tell God I'm getting rid of at least one sinner! I want to clean up the planet after your type!" Then, on Nasim's account, Aftab got a knife from the kitchen, yelled out "gandoo," meaning "faggot bottom," declared an Islamic "jihad" against Nasim and gay Muslims and lurched toward the poet. At which point two people in the restaurant restrained Aftab, and Nasim dialed 911.

The first Chicago cops on the scene reportedly told Nasim it looked to them like "an ethnic problem" and declined to take Nasim's complaint. Then police Sgt. Mary Boyle arrived and ordered Aftab to be arrested, charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor.

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