In the wake of San Bernardino shootings that killed 14 people and injured 21, the presidential debate in the US took a rather nasty turn when one of GOP’s front runners, Donald J. Trump called for a ban on Muslims from entering the USA, including tourists and American Muslims overseas, in a statement released to the media on Monday (12/7/15) through his presidential campaign team.
“Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” Trump said.
According to a senior Republican strategist who works for a company that advises campaigns, Trump has a group of "hard-core followers" equal to about 20-25% of the Republican vote. "In a race of 15 candidates, 20 to 25 percent makes you king," he observed. "But it doesn't win you the election." (Source: Bloomberg Politics)
However, his remarks of Monday on banning Muslims have received much well-deserved backlash from not only the American Muslim community but the American community as a whole, including Democrats and Republicans alike.
The statements I personally found awesome were:
“This is not conservatism. What was proposed yesterday is not what this party (GOP) stands for, and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.” – Paul Ryan, House Speaker
“The fact is what Donald Trump said yesterday disqualifies him from serving as president… The question now is about the rest of the Republican Party and whether or not they're going to be dragged into the dustbin of history with him." – JoshEarnest, WH press secretary
“I am hereby barring Donald Trump from entering St. Petersburg until we fully understand the dangerous threat posed by all Trumps.” – Rick Kriseman, Mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida
Even non-political persons couldn’t hold back from commenting on how absurd and rude Trump’s words were.
“How horrible. Voldemort was nowhere near as bad.” – J. K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter series
“The hysteria and xenophobia has gotten completely out of control, and it runs totally contrary to our country's commitment to religious freedom and especially to the teachings of Jesus. If a pastor, family member, friend, or acquaintance expresses support for violent rhetoric against minorities, speak up. Call it out. It's not okay.” – Rache lHeld Evans, New York Times best-selling author
"This man is encouraging the same kind of hatred as Daesh." – Ayoub Mustafa, a 42-year-old Major with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces battling ISIS
Not to mention the countless uplifting messages from various segments of the country, candid videos from friends that make your heart sing because you know that your countrymen got your back even if they don’t share your faith.
I thank them all for speaking out for us and calling out the bigots because hate should never be endorsed.
The one thing that resonated with me the most about all of the above comments is the power they wielded simply by coming from within the community of the offender, Donald Trump in this case. We see that Christians have called him out, his political peers, even members of his own party have shown immense outrage at his bigotry. Many have gone to the extent of calling him un-American.
This is the attitude that we constantly need to see from them as well as from us when the criminals are from amongst us, the Muslims. Yes, I’m aware I used the ‘us versus them’ term here but in this one instance we do need to do just that for clearer perspective.
I’m a Pakistani expat, hence, I have a good idea what the Muslim dynamics are in the country that I come from and the one that I’m currently residing in.
In America, the Muslims are a minority, about less than 1% of the entire population and we are the most racially diverse group here because Islam is not a racial or regional thing. Muslims come from all over the world plus many locals convert as well. Since we migrate from other places, we are required to have a special set of skills to make it in this new country. Therefore, it is important for us to educate ourselves so we can run the race and not be left out. Muslims in America are the second most educated group in the country. We are physicians, lawyers, real estate agents, entrepreneurs, teachers, media reps – let’s just say we’re big on being professionals, men and women alike. Since, we’re educated, we are also bound to understand things better, bound to be more law abiding, bound to be more sophisticated, bound to be more tolerant and pluralistic and open to new ideas. This mindset not only develops as part of understanding Islam better but also as a virtue of being a member of a minority and a racially diverse one at that.
With the rise of terrorism in the name of Islam, the American Muslims have been proactive. They have not only spoken out against terrorism but been vigilant and alerted the authorities of every possible threat that they could recognize as being harmful to the community and country. On an intrafaith level, scholars have long begun to realize that sectarian differences are neither useful nor affordable because no matter how much you toot your horn of this fiqh and that practice, the rest of the country views you as one entity – Muslims.
The Muslims don’t want the ‘us versus them’ debate. We want it to end because we want societal integration. We strive for it daily when we go out to work and mingle with our white coworkers and black bosses and clients of ethnicities other than ours. Our children do the same at school. The only Sharia that we impose is upon ourselves when we bow down in prayer, fast from dawn to dusk, wear a hijab or recite the Quran. Or when we abide by the law of the land that we live in, respect the Constitution of the country that we call home, raise money for burned down churches or victims or terrorism or hunger or natural calamity because our Sharia requires us to do exactly all that as well. Hence, when a few overzealous media representatives hyperventilate over a string of prayer beads as if it’s the terroristic find of the century, we cry out of pity for the fools. May Allah give them brains!
The only thing that makes me really cry, though, is the truth about Islam being used as a motivating factor for spread of terrorism and how we will not stop that from happening even when the roots lie in Muslim majority lands. Pakistan, for instance.
I’ve said it before and it didn’t sit well with quite a few people so I’ll say it again. Scholars have divided Islam into roughly 72 sects and each sect is sending the other one off to Hell. And if I conform to none, I'm going to hell in every sect. You may argue that it’s not this ideology but that one, the evil one that is funded by the enemies of Islam, but when you have a local Imam standing at a podium of a tehsil mosque telling his congregation that the followers of that other mosque or that other scholar have all strayed from the true path, when he is dishing out fatwas for someone being a sinner or an apostate and unworthy of mercy, when he’s calling upon his followers to be true soldiers of Allah and take it upon themselves to set things right no matter the cost and behavior, you’ll have to be a special kind of stupid to not recognize seeds of extremism he’s just sowed by creating a hard divide right there and then.
This divide and this hate speech is not peculiar to any one sect. It is in the allegiance that Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa pledge to Daesh instead of to the constitution of Pakistan, it is in the hailing of Mumtaz Qadri as a hero, it is in the persecution of minorities of all sorts simply because we as a majority have the power to dictate their future, and it is in standing by and watching it all happen in mind-numbing silence. Until we bridge this divide, until we stop calling someone mushrik for the qawalis they listen to or the greetings they send out to others, until we let person of a different sect be buried in our graveyard on their own terms, until we learn to respect a Muslim for simply being a Muslim, we too are contributing to extremism in Islam. It doesn't matter how many speeches our scholars give about peace. If they don't make peace within their own sects, their words mean zilch!
We have an equal responsibility to call out the bigots and haters in our own country just as much as we expect the westerners to do in theirs.
A few days ago, Muhammad Chirani, a French Muslim declared an open war, a jihad, against ISIS. There needs to be more declarations like his. Just as there needs to be more denouncement in the West for hate speech against Muslims.
A fight for peace is a good fight. We all need to fight that good fight.