We're an easy target because people who hate others, in this case anyone who hates Islam and who hates Muslims, they're going to come here because they figure that this is the place to carry out their hate. It's sad because in this community, we get along. In this community, we're working it out really well, and we're all Americans. But, you know, people from other places who have strange ideas and who have limited information and don't care, they act out, and he's acting out . . . We had great leadership here, people from our Arab community who communicated and got the situation in hand, along with our police, we got the tempers down, and we got them back where they belonged.

XREF: Connects to broader research on how outside actors provoke local tensions, and how indigenous community leadership defuses conflict better than external intervention.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 681