An Arab-American marine was branded a terrorist for showing compassion toward Iraqis

Evidence

A few of his fellow marines didn’t take well to his sympathies. “Fuck those guys. Get rid of them all,” they would say, and then Sami would stop them and ask, “Do you really think we should just kill everybody here?” “Hell yeah, fuck them all!” they replied. Sami would just shake his head, and they would call him “terrorist.” With his friends, at least, there was none of this talk. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 234

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the ironic re-application of the anti-Muslim slur onto a serving U.S. marine, a pattern that recurs in the reader’s work on identity and allegiance.