Florida Republican Faces Backlash Over Celebrating Turkish-American Activist’s Death
Randy Fine, a Republican state representative from Florida in the United States, is under major criticism and charged with Islamophobe stemming from his congratulatory utterances following the death of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American protester killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. The ethnic remarks made by Fine provoked many people’s anger, especially when Eygi, a U. S citizen, was said to have been killed while protesting.
“Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerrorist #FireAway,” Fine posted on the X, which was formerly known as Twitter, in response to the news that Eygi was killed last weekend. Eygi was killed by shelling from the Israeli forces at a protest against unlawful Israeli settlements near Ramallah. According to the eyewitnesses, she was a mere woman with no weapon on her; she was shot dead stone-cold while standing beside another woman.
This is exactly what Fine did in his post that spurred a lot of negativity, raising people’s apprehensions over increasing Islamophobia among officials in the United States. Some sources also said that many people were surprised by what they saw as Fine’s approval of the extrajudicial execution of an American citizen by a foreign military. A user condemned the comment as a U.S. lawmaker cheering for the extra-judicial assassination of an American.
Such looseness of sexual conduct has been criticised, with critics pointing to what they called hypocrisy in how celebrity women are treated differently. Some users compared the situation with the one involving Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who was criticised for using the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’. At the same time, Fine did not receive as much backlash for his use of inflammatory words. “White dudes can say anything, apparently,” said one user.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organisation that is claimed to be the largest Muslim civil rights organisation in the United States, and the CAIR-Florida have demanded that the Florida Legislature censure Fine. The national deputy executive director of CAIR, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, was also angered by Fine’s statements, saying that one could barely recall a period in contemporary American politics when an elected officer would blatantly support the assassination of an American by another country and call for more of it. ”
Mitchell went further to say, and I quote: “We demand that the Florida House of Representatives officially rebuke him for the hate-filled, un-American diatribe he unleashed. ” End of quote, he said this on Monday.
Following the anger, Fine’s account on X was closed for some time, but the account has since been opened again. This post is currently accompanied by restrictions and a warning from X, which may “violate rules against violent speech”; other users cannot share it. However, Fine has continued to attack Palestinians and Muslims in his account and the use of hashtags such as #MuslimProblem and #MuslimTerrorists.
CAIR has also given examples of anti-Muslim slurs that Fine has used, some of which are below, where he called Palestinians ‘animals’ and supported Israeli force with the hashtag #NoMercy.
With more Palestinians injured and killed by the Israelis since October 7, there are over 41,000 reported dead, and at least 16,825 of them are children, fuelling more global concern in the prolonged fight and human rights abuses.
