Los Angeles, USA: Graffiti-marred highway sign a chilling reminder

Ironically, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, according to its literature, is one of the few Muslim sects to categorically reject terrorism of any sort and to endorse separation of church and state. It participates in many charitable endeavors, including, it would seem, freeway cleanups.

Ahmadiyya Muslim Community's nation-wide highway adaptation

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch |
Source & Credit: Daily Breez | Los Angeles
By Renee Moilanen | July 16, 2010

For a long time, I never noticed the sign, which blended in among the weeds and urban clutter on the side of the freeway. But once I saw it - a standard, run-of-the-mill Adopt-a-Highway marker with the most curious graffiti - I could never look away again.

Red paint mars the face of it like a bloody warning. It all but conceals the words below: Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

I would like to believe that it's just a random act of vandalism. But the way the paint so completely targets the underlying words, the choice of color - so violent and menacing - and the absence of graffiti on other Adopt-a-Highway signs along the South Bay's stretch of the 405 Freeway make me doubt its randomness.


It leads me to think that someone deliberately pulled to the side of the road, eyed the words "Ahmadiyya Muslim Community" and hurled an angry bucket of red paint across them.

Every day, hundreds of motorists drive past. Maybe they notice. Maybe they don't. I don't know which is worse.

This kind of nameless, faceless hate unsettles me, especially seeing it here in the South Bay, where we all do a pretty good job of getting along despite our differences, progressing while other communities languish.

I went to college in a small town in central Florida, one county over from where the notorious Rosewood race riots took place in 1923, leaving eight people dead, almost all of them black, and destroying the town. Until I went to college, I never thought of Florida as "the South." But it turns out, somewhere around the mid-state line, Florida transitions from progressive, diverse big cities into rural small towns still bitter over the Civil War.

We had a fraternity on campus that claimed Robert E. Lee as its "spiritual founder" and proudly flew the Confederate flag from its windows. Only this year did the national chapter ban members from wearing Rebel uniforms to their "Old South" parties.

And my sophomore year, I had a roommate who, upon learning I was Jewish, expressed surprise and awe. "I've never met a Jewish person before," she told me. "I never knew what they looked like."

When my husband and I drove out west to California, we threaded in and out of small Southern towns, stopping at roadside diners filled with locals who looked us up and down, tightened their lips and grudgingly served us coffee.

And then somewhere in the mountains of Utah, we found a town that seemed to telegraph its hostility. As we trundled down the one-lane road entering its borders, we passed a house with a large tree in front. Hanging from the tree was a dark figure, a stuffed dummy of some sort, rope looped around its neck and swinging in the breeze.

My husband and I didn't know what to make of it. It was a strange sight, but surely it had some other meaning. So we kept driving. But then we passed another house with the same figure. And another. And then we hit the center of town, and there, hanging from the main building for all to see, was a dark effigy dangling by its neck. My husband and I looked at each other, and I said, "Don't stop. Just keep driving."

I still don't know what to make of that Utah town. Maybe those dark figures meant nothing at all, and we were just paranoid. But I can still remember the icy unease of seeing those dark figures, of feeling as though they were a warning to outsiders. And even though my husband and I, with our white skin, may not have found any trouble at all, we weren't about to test it. Because that sort of hate is irrational. And we all have reason to fear it.

Which is why the Adopt-a-Highway sign bothers me. Even if that red paint is just random vandalism, I perceive it as a threat.

Ironically, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, according to its literature, is one of the few Muslim sects to categorically reject terrorism of any sort and to endorse separation of church and state.

It participates in many charitable endeavors, including, it would seem, freeway cleanups.

Whoever targeted this particular sign got it wrong, just like the people who attacked Sikhs and Arab Christians and anyone else with dark skin in the days after 9-11.

Fortunately, in the South Bay, such overt hate is rare. We have a thriving Muslim community, a diverse collection of Asian supermarkets, Indian sweet shops, Middle Eastern restaurants, carnicerias, and we all live remarkably well together. There has not been one major hate crime here in the past 10 years.

Happily, our community is known for tolerance seminars and interfaith events and school programs to promote peace, diversity and understanding.

A little red paint should not mar these efforts. If anything, it should remind us to stay vigilant, to look out for each other and to defend against such hateful acts, random or not.

Former Daily Breeze reporter Renee Moilanen is a freelance writer based in Redondo Beach. Her column runs Saturdays. She can be reached at rkmoilanen@yahoo.com.



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