After the shooting that left 14 dead in San Bernardino, California last week, the nation is searching for a way to heal.
Some have held vigils. Others have offered prayers. Yet for a significant number of people, healing has taken the form of hate. To many, the shooting has come to represent the dangers of Islam and the people that practice it.
Claiming the actions of the few represent a much larger whole is patently illogical. To the rational observer, it may seem outrageous that this needs to be spelled out for the American people.
But the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and its recent high-profile massacre in Paris have created a climate of fear and paranoia in the United States, a climate that is facilitating the proliferation of hatred and bigotry against Muslims, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the aftermath of 9/11. The slaughter in San Bernardino may very well be the spark that causes the powder keg to explode.
UCLA’s Muslim students aren’t exempt. In response to the shooting, the Muslim Student Association held a rally against Islamophobia and condemned the violence committed by the perpetrators.
Disassociating themselves from murderers who share their religious background has become a sad necessity for Muslims in the United States. In another depressing sign of the times, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Janina Montero had to send a campus-wide email to assure the student body of one of the top-ranked universities in the world that “Muslim students at UCLA bear no relation to the extremists who have committed these acts of violence.”
Muslims at UCLA often talk about how many of their fellow students interrogate them about their faith or suspect them of being affiliated with terrorist organizations that claim to act in the name of Islam. Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t some social phenomenon we observe from a distance. It occurs right here in our own backyard.
What often gets lost among the backlash is the initial crime itself. It’s reasonable to expect outrage after one of the largest mass shootings in American history. But there is no worse way to react to a tragedy than to follow it with hatred that could only produce more tragedies, even if they are smaller in scale.
Unfortunately, that’s the direction this country is headed in. And it doesn’t seem like we’re going off course anytime soon.
Nobody on Planet Earth says all Muslims are terrorists. Is this the state on higher education in California, I.e. making unsupported claims of unjustified fear and false assertions of Islamophobia? I’m embarrased for my university.
I wish that were the case, but you’d be surprised at how many people believe that all Muslims are terrorists. There’s immense mistrust of Muslims in this country, because so many people think we’re automatically in support of ISIS, and they think regular Muslim theology allows for this stuff. Which is nonsense, because the most credible (and even most conservative) Muslim scholars have all denounced ISIS.
There’s legitimate fear of backlash. Most of the time, students may not get anything worse than a dirty look for being visibily Muslim, but it has materialized into worse things in many places.
There are 1.6 billion Muslims as of 2010 or 23% of the world’s population. Muslims make up about 1% of the US population but will make up 2.3% of it by 2050.
A Pew Research Center survey of Muslims in 39 countries finds Muslims mostly say that suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam are rarely or never justified, including 92% in Indonesia and 91% in Iraq. In the United States, a 2011 survey found that 86% of Muslims say that such tactics are rarely or never justified. An additional 7% say suicide bombings are sometimes justified and 1% say they are often justified in these circumstances.
7% of US Muslims think suicide bombings are sometimes justified in the name of Islam. 14% of US Muslims do NOT say that suicide bombings are rarely or never justified.
We have a problem.
From the Pew poll in 2013.
Fraction of Muslims who think that suicide bombings and other forms of violence are SOMETIMES or OFTEN justified:
Albania 6%
Kosovo 11%
Turkey 15%
Indonesia 7%
Malaysia 18%
Afghanistan 39%
Bangladesh 26%
Pakistan 13%
Egypt 29%
Iraq 7%
Jordan 15%
Morocco 9%
Tunisia 12%
These data do not mean that all Muslims are terrorists. But claiming that the beliefs of millions of people do not matter is patently illogical. Reform is urgently needed.
You realize that you’re talking about 7% of 1% right? At 0.0007% of the population you are talking about such a tiny portion of people that the prevalence rate of most mental illnesses are higher.
Stop being a sensationalist.
Let’s do the math correctly, please. 7% of 1% is 0.07%, not 0.0007%. And 0.07% of the US population is 225,000 people. That’s close to a quarter of a million.
Thanks, reader. Dealing with immigrants should be a no-brainer. Trump is right. A moratorium is in order. There is no constitutional right of foreigners to visit or live in the US.
As for American citizens with mental illness, they have constitutional rights. And there is precedent for dealing with the dangerously mentally ill — although political correctness is preventing those measures.
If Muslims want to be treated with less suspicion and hostility they need to do a much better job of assimilating into America. That process would include the discarding of atavistic, medieval clothing, the cessation of terrorist activities (both passive and active) and the full acceptance of secular Judao-Christian values.
The muslim religion is not at fault when it comes to terrorism. So why should they have to assimilate to American culture?