THE Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has pointed to a flaw in how government officials are looking at Thursdays crashing of a small plane into an Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas. CAIR, through its spokesman, Executive Director Nihad Awad, has demanded that the perpetrator of the attack, Andrew Joseph Stack, who killed himself and one IRS employee when he flew a lightweight plane into the building, be declared a terrorist. American officialdom is looking on the act as a 'criminal act by a lone individual, according to the head of the local police, or rather 'an assault on a federal officer according to the FBIs San Antonio office, which has also joined the investigation. Local Congressmen also have difficulty calling the act terrorism, including those who are ranking Republicans on the Houses Homeland Security Committee. The Obama White House is showing a similar reluctance. This contrasts with how Timothy McVeigh, who also blew up a federal office building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in April 1995, killing 168, was labelled a terrorist. Mr Awad has claimed that if the Austin perpetrator had been Muslim, the labelling as a terrorist would have been done by now. He is most probably right. The incident once again highlights the USAs anti-Muslim prejudice, not just at the peoples level, but at the very highest level. The lawmakers have no hesitation in not just blaming Muslims, but also invading Muslim countries, on the basis of suspicion of involvement in terrorism, but where US non-Muslim citizens are involved, the reluctance is noticeable; it is almost as if the word 'terrorism has now been reserved for criminals who happen to be Muslim. CAIR has been asking the US to end its anti-Muslim bias. Being a Muslim, even if not necessarily a very believing or practising one, means being labelled a terrorist in the USA.