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Man nabbed for screaming, window-punching incident at Ruggles T station last month
By adamg on Tue, 08/01/2017 - 11:43am
Transit Police report arresting Ilirian Ziu, 50, of East Boston, on civil-rights and destruction-of-property charges for an incident on July 13 at the Ruggles station on the Orange Line.
Police charge Ziu screamed ethnic epithets at two women on the Orange Line platform and punched out the window of an outbound Orange Line train that evening.
Police say a TPD officer recognized Ziu as he walked through Back Bay station around 5:15 p.m. yesterday and arrested him.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
The claim is still a little vague
Was he allegedly screaming Albanian slurs at the victims? Or was he allegedly screaming things based on the victims' perceived ethnicity at them?
He was making nasty comments
He was making nasty comments about Muslims to a couple ladies in hijabs.
I'm confused
Islam isn't an ethnicity.
In all honesty, I am happy they caught this guy.
And The Most Pedantic Jerk of 2017 Award Goes To...
This argument is frustratingly common and transparently stupid. What an "ethnicity" is or a "race" is is not well-defined: they are in the eye of the beholder, and often defined on a case- by-case basis. No matter how formal or philosophical the internal rules might seem, it's a shell game.
And so:
"You can't say anything racist about Muslims because Islam isn't a race!" - neither is white/black/Asian/etc because "race" doesn't exist in homo sapiens. But "racism" sure does.
With "ethnicity" it's a little more complicated because "ethnic group" is a scientifically defensible concept. But, yes, making slurs against Muslim strangers IS an ethnic attack: the whole point is this guy put some strangers into a group that's not "his" and started harassing them based on that.
For you to pretend that this guy was making abstract comments about Islam and not making an ethnic attack is more than just being naive or pedantic - it's an immoral erasure of the unambigious fact that anti-Muslim sentiment in Western countries arises from ethnic discrimination, not a theological dispute.
Let me put it to you this way
If someone stands in front of Sacred Heart while mass is letting out screaming about how horrible Catholics are, they would not be making ethnic slurs. "Papist" is not an ethnic slur. Serbs, Arabs, Indonesians, Somalis, and Pakistanis are ethnicities that have as much to do with each other as Irish, Croats, Mexicans, Liberians, and Filipinos do. So, yes, it is pedantic, but it's true.
I mean, what's so wrong with saying someone uttered anti-Muslim (or anti-Catholic) slurs, if that is what is done.
I think you are conflating
I think you are conflating nationality with ethnicity.
Maybe
The concepts are similar, though not the same. Some of the groups I mentioned were definitely nationalities, and I was a bit lazy and didn't go that level below (and avoided mentioning Nigerian ethnicities for fear of putting them in the wrong religion category.)
That said, I never conflate ethnicity and religion.
Very tricky with Albanians anyway
Ask an Albanian, and they will typically tell you that they are Albanian first, then what ever other religious or ethnic subgroup might matter.
When the Iron Curtain collapsed and young Albanians began coming to the US in substantial numbers, St. George's in Southie (an Orthodox Christian Congregation where my in-laws were married) had a lot of young people hanging out at coffee hour who did not attend the services. Many were Muslim by heritage, but they clearly felt that heading to the cultural center of their ethnic community was more important. (all religion was suppressed during the Communist era, but people retained some ties to their varying faiths).
Which is why this guy attacking Muslim women is really not in typical cultural character of Albanians. My graduate program had students from Albania who were from three separate faith traditions, but I toured them around the supermarkets with my husband's cousin (so they would know what equivalent foods were - like combining cottage cheese with cream cheese to get something approximating what they grew up with) and they got together to cook on a regular basis.
About the Albanian thing
I'm not certain he is Albanian, but I took the stereotype route since I found people with the same first name and Albanianesque last names in a database, and the guy once lived in Roslindale.
I also wanted to steer clear of giving them as examples of ethnicities within a faith tradition due to the multi religious nature of the ethnicity.
That said, mental illness is a tough thing, and that is a theory that is out there with this case.
While we're being pedantic...
Guessing you might have meant to say "Bosniaks" there, and not "Serbs".
Ouch
I mean, I could say that I was just throwing ethnicities out there, and technically no one could offer any proof otherwise, but yeah, I was in fact trying to show ethnic groups that are predominantly Muslim and accidentally listed the one ethnicity in Europe that demonstrated a strong dislike for Muslims.
But I will leave it up there and feel shame.
Comments about this guy in
Comments about this guy in first report make me think he is mentally ill.
I just have one question.
I just have one question. What does this guy do for a living?
Diplomat.
.
I mean
A job for a skilled communicator just opened up in DC
Avoid This Guy!
I am pretty sure I saw this guy in Copley Sq an hour ago, do not approach him! He is nuts he was just screaming at cars and people on the side of Boylston St. near Dig Inn. He punched one car and was yelling about something. Violent dude and def unstable.
Speaking of the MBTA, what
Speaking of the MBTA, what happened to last night's video blog about the A line?
http://www.universalhub.com/2017/green-lines-missing-letter
Appears to have been eaten by the server gnomes or kidnapped by the turkeys.
Sorry, I took it down
Turned out the video was from a copyrighted DVD that I didn't have permission to post (I'm doubting the person who posted it to YouTube did, either).
Not ready to hire a Fair Use
Not ready to hire a Fair Use Defense Quick Reaction Team?
There wasnt anything fair use about it
It was a five-minute video, not a screenshot or something like that, and, to be honest, my reason for posting it was because it was this way cool thing, not to provide in-depth commentary about the changing state of Boston transportation or anything like that (and even then, claiming fair use on it might be a stretch).
hmmmmm
When people can Identify an target a specific group of people based on race or jihabs, ethnicity or whatever you do not get to use the excuse mentally ill.
It is most certainly an
It is most certainly an excuse.
Interesting name
Is he Puerto Rican?
I agree with another poster, he probably has a serious mental illness.
Why do you care?
In any case, no, it's an Albanian name.
Now tell me why you think you can distinguish a Puerto Rican name from a name somebody from any other Spanish-speaking place (or, hey, even the US) might have.
It's Al Bundy!
It's Al Bundy from married with children. I guess he's gone through a lot since his wife left him for Fry.