Islam: The New Label for Terrorism
David Steinfeld
Undergraduate/Psychology
On August 15, 2009 Bollywood’s most famous actor Shah Rhuk Khan was detained and questioned at Newark Airport for almost two hours due to his Muslim name that came up on a computer alert list. The incident sparked major outrage in India and its Information Broadcast Minister Ambika Soni suggested that India adapt similar procedures for American tourists.
It might be that the media made too much of a fuss about the incident since Khan did not suffer any harm from his detention. He was quoted as saying that it was “…a necessary but unfortunate procedure.” Additionally, with a significant rise in Islamophobia, an incident like this is not uncommon. Ever since 9/11 America and other countries have become more paranoid and protective due to a new form of terrorism that has emerged in our century.
However, if you take a rational approach towards the incident one might wonder if America’s paranoia of Islamist terrorism in particular hasn’t gone far beyond rationality. When certain Americans say they are fearful of Barack Obama being the next president because his middle name is Hussein and that he attended a Muslim school, I wonder if America’s Islamophobia hasn’t gotten out of control. How rational is someone’s fear when someone’s religion equals being a terrorist or when anything that sounds Arabic is an automatic threat? A poll by the Washington Post in 2006 concluded that “Since January 2002 the proportion of those who believe mainstream Islam promotes violence against non-believers has risen from 14 percent to 32 percent” as mentioned in Suzanne Goldberg’s article “Islamophobia worse in America now than since 9/11, survey finds.”
Marilyn Elias’ article “USA’s Muslims under a cloud” mentions just a few post 9/11 stories of discrimination against Muslims in America, such as a Muslim kid refusing to go back to school after being beaten in gym class for being Muslim or someone like Jafumba Asad, born and raised in the states, who stopped dressing in traditional Muslim clothes. “It's bad enough just wearing a headscarf. I get nasty stares every day. Wearing full cover makes it harder to get a job. It scares people“(Elias, 1). Once more it seems that America’s paranoia has led to an overgeneralization and it doesn’t help that Muslims over the entire world denounced the 9/11 attacks.
Following 9/11, my high school religion teacher in Germany made sure that we would not confuse the religion of Islam with being a breeder of Islamist terrorism. He showed us a video of a Muslim in one of the biggest Muslim communities in Germany and the interviewer asked him what he thought about Bin Laden representing Islam. The man replied that he was confused by the reporter’s question and later added that he would never affiliate with Bin Laden or call Bin Laden a representative of Islam. Thanks to that class and my political science classes I gained enough insight to distinguish between Muslims and Islamist fundamentalists/terrorists.
According to a definition in Germany’s newsmagazine “Der Spiegel,” Islamist fundamentalism is a modern political ideology which evolved after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. This ideology blamed the lack of sticking to the traditions of Islam for the Empire’s demise. Hence, Islamist fundamentalism seeks to re-establish a way of life where people have to obey Islamist laws and live in theocracies, meaning that there is no separation between religion, the state and society. In addition, Islamist fundamentalism rejects the modern way of life embodied by Western Europe and the USA whom it perceives as a threat. Basically, the ideology averts its eyes from modernity and tries to go back in time. The most radical form of this ideology today is known as Islamist terrorism which abuses a peaceful religion to justify its atrocities.
Islam on the other hand is a complex monotheistic religion whose only God is Allah as mentioned in “Der Spiegel.” Its followers are Muslims who live their lives according to the laws of Islam that are contained in the Koran, the holy scriptures of the Islam faith. There are several viewpoints among Muslims, ranging from secularists and liberals who wish to see a separation between the state and the religion, to the traditionalists who do impose Islamist laws but do not reject the West. A German homepage on Islam further continues that, whereas Islam demands one’s submission to Allah, it also stresses other goals, such as love between humans, social mobility, exploring nature, political responsibility and peace. Doesn’t that sound similar to values found in the Bible? I’d say when I look at Islamist terrorists I find neither the mentioning of peace nor the love for others.
Nonetheless, we have been victims of terrorist attacks and it’s unfortunate that innocent people suffer discrimination because they resemble terrorists. My question is: Who or what actually embodies terrorism? In Oxford’s Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, terrorism is defined as “the use of violent action in order to achieve political aims or to force a government to act.” When I think about terrorism I do associate it with the fall of the Twin Towers, the attacks on the Pentagon, the train attacks in Madrid, the subway bombings in London and several bombings of U.S. embassies abroad by a variety of groups who claim to do it in the name of Allah. But it’s also applicable to American Christian fundamentalists who bomb abortion clinics, the deportation and mass murder of millions of Jews, the colonization of African and Asian countries on behalf of France and Britain. Not to mention Native Americans who were forced to give up their land to white European settlers, the Japanese whose lives were eradicated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki within seconds, the Vietnamese who suffered severe burnings from Napalm attacks or the millions of Latin Americans who became victims of brutal dictatorships and military death squads thanks to Fort Bennings’ School of Americas. Did our countries act in their best intentions to achieve their goals?
We are pointing out all these terrorists who wish to do our countries harm while our histories contain evidence of using violent means against people to attain political goals. Has there ever been a point in our lives when we asked ourselves how we would feel if all these countries discriminated against us white Americans and Europeans for something we were not responsible for because thanks to our skin colour we do resemble the people who committed these atrocities? So many of us would probably feel comfortable if these countries reacted to us in a hysterical way or started spying on us if we were to visit or reside in them. Certainly, we would shrug our shoulders if we or our children were discriminated against in connection to our names, religion and skin colour. Nobody would ever call us terrorists though because that would simply be…absurd and unfair, right? And why would it occur to us anyway since our skin color is still the most privileged in the world?
Consequently, did we ever bother about asking how Muslims felt about the 9/11 attacks or thought about how they felt when they were discriminated against? Probably not. It really has to drag on until several Muslims speak out in anger and frustration, someone like Suheir Hammad, an Arab American writer, social activist and feminist who has to write a heart wrenching poem like “First writing since” to depict her reactions to 9/11 as well as to decry the injustice that has been happening to Muslims in America and across the world after 9/11. Here are a few quotes from Hammad’s poem published in “In Motion magazine”:
“One more person assumed that they know me, or that I represent a people. Or that a people represent an evil. Or that an evil is as simple as a flag or words on page…We did not vilify all white men when Mc Veigh bombed Oklahoma. America did not give out his family’s addresses or where he went to church. Or blamed the bible or Pat Robertson…And when we talk about holy books and hooded men and death, why do we never mention the KKK…I don’t give a fuck about Bin Laden. His visions of the world don’t represent me or those I love…” (Hammad, 1).
At last, here is another quote of a Muslim’s sentiment that some prejudiced people never seemed to have contemplated, as quoted in Elias’ article. “I don't think Americans understand what's happened. Muslims have the same anxieties and anguish about terrorism as everyone else in the U.S. At the same time, they're being blamed for it. They're carrying a double burden” (Elias, 1). We say that we are at war with an enemy. But apparently there are many amongst us who are not even capable of clearly defining the enemy and like always, others have to bear the consequences for their ignorance…
Sources:
Goldenberg, Suzanne. “Islamophobia worse in America now than after 9/11, survey finds”. The guardian. 10 March 2006. 19 October 2008. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/10/usa.religion>
Elias, Marilyn. “USA’s Muslims under a cloud”. USA Today. 10 August 2006. 2009.
< http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-09-muslim-american-cover_x.htm>
CNN. “Bollywood actor detained at Newark Airport”. CNN. 15 August 2009. 15 August 2009. <http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/15/indian.actor/ >
Hammad, Suheir. “First Writing Since”. In motion magazine. 7 November 2001. 2009.
<http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/ac/shammad.html>
Spiegel Wissen. “Islamismus”. Spiegel Wissen. 18 May 2009.
<http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/dokument/dokument.html?titel=Islamismus&id=65119418&top=Lexikon&suchbegriff=islamismus&quellen=%2BBX%2CWIKI%2C%2BSP%2C%2BMM%2CALME%2CSTAT%2C%2BMEDIA&qcrubrik=politik>
Spiegel Wissen. “Islam”. Spiegel Wissen. 23 January 2009.
<http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/dokument/dokument.html?top=Ref&dokname=BERTEL_LEX-tid-1746999&suchbegriff=islamismus&quellen=%2BBX%2CWIKI%2C%2BSP%2C%2BMM%2CALME%2CSTAT%2C%2BMEDIA&titel=Islams>