Many people use “ISIS,” “Islam” or “Muslims” as interchangeable nouns to describe anyone and anything from acts of terror in Syria to people attending their friendly neighborhood mosque. This is not just simple confusion, but blatant ignorance.
Countless Islamic groups around the globe have also passionately rejected ISIS. Even Egypt’s Grand Mufti has lambasted the group, and Dar al-Ifta, one of the most influential Muslim schools in the world, has launched a global campaign to strike the word “Islamic” from ISIS’s title, seeking to rebrand it as “al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria,” or QSIS, saying the organization has “tarnished image of Islam across the globe.”
Our favorite presidential candidate -- Mr. Donald Trump -- has been using the recent mass shooting in Orlando as a way to back his claim to “keep Muslims from entering the country.” His rhetoric boasts myriad unsupported claims; here are a couple of assumptions Trump made about the Muslim community on CNN:
"For some reason the Muslim community does not report people like this?"
And this gem:
"Last thing we need is to take in more people like this guy."
Trump said “many people” thought the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, “was a whack job,” but they didn’t report him. In fact, Mateen’s co-workers in 2013 reported that he boasted of having terrorist ties, and the FBI investigated and interviewed him. Although the Orlando shooter did pledge ISIS allegiance, ISIS does not represent or speak for the Muslim community.
As a caliphate, ISIS claims religious, political and military authority over all Muslims, ISIS is an outlaw and a militant group. They do not speak for the faith they claim to belong to, a faith that definitely denounces and does not support the murdering of innocent human beings. They are extremist, and like any extremist group, they are not an accurate representation of what Islam stands for.
Trump also called for a “stop [to] the tremendous flow of Syrian refugees into the United States.” The civil war in Syria has displaced nearly five million Syrians since March 2011. Under Obama, the U.S. has accepted about 6,000 Syrian refugees — which represent 1.2 percent of all refugees who have been placed in the U.S. during that time.
So when Trump says we need to "keep Muslims from entering the country" for our safety, he is mistaken in thinking that the people of the Islam faith are a threat. The refugees trying to come to America are not ISIS; most of them are trying to escape from ISIS because they have been displaced.
Trump reiterated his calls for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., and a halt to accepting Syrian refugees. He also broadly accused “the Muslim community” in the U.S. of being complicit in the attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando without any evidence. The Dec. 2, 2015, shooting in San Bernardino was carried out by Syed Rizwan Farook, who was born in the United States.
We are quick to call horrific attacks like these “terrorism” because of who is holding the gun. Even if the Orlando shooter did claim ISIS allegiance, he was not taking orders from them. He was one person who believed in ISIS ideology; there is no justification in labeling an entire religion violent when one person decides to use that religion to justify their own horrifying deeds.
