Having watched the Democratic debate Saturday night, a big issue that came up consistently was that of national security focusing primarily on terrorism at home and abroad. Terrorism is a haunting ghost that has followed this country since 9/11. It is a problem and it is something that must be combated. But what I am seeing a rise in throughout the United States is not a unification of all American people against terrorism, but instead a misplaced blame on the entire Muslim community.
What the terrorist attacks in Paris, and most recently in San Bernardino, did was ignite a flame of fear, a fear of terrorism being an issue not isolated to just the Middle East but a Western issue, something that could happen anywhere. Suddenly, people were being forced to take notice. Terrorism wasn’t something that you could just place on the back burner; it was something affecting our allies and more importantly, it was happening in one of our own states. Ideally this would have made Americans unite in a fight against terrorists, regardless of their religion, but it didn’t. Instead people looked for a place to blame, and ignorantly they blamed an entire community.
When I see public individuals like Donald Trump calling for a ban of all Muslim immigration to the United States, I wonder why his poll numbers continue to rise, as he leads in a most recent Monmouth University poll of Republican voters. It isn’t a coincidence that in the midst of his continued anti-Muslim rhetoric, where he calls for Muslims to take responsibility of the terrorist attacks occurring in the name of ISIS as if their religion is one that preaches hate. The issue with Trump's ignorant statements is that it spreads Islamophobia like a disease. The United States is sick with fear and we are alienating an entire community with it.
Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate, recently said in an interview with Channel 4 News that "the more you speak against Islam and against all Muslims, the more terrorists it will create." While many people might perceive this as a threat, what it speaks to is that alienating an entire community, blaming them for extremists that thwart and twist their religion into something that it is not, pushes people to dark places that they shouldn’t have to go.
With people like Trump on the front lines of anti-Islamic rhetoric, we are showing the world an ugly, fearful and Islamophobic side of the United States, one that does not help those innocent refugees fleeing from ISIS or Muslims that would like their religion to stop being automatically associated with terrorists. What this horrible side of the country does succeed in doing is helping the very organization they stand against, ISIS, giving them a great tool for recruitment.
If the Christian community doesn’t have to apologize or take responsibility for Christian fundamentalist terrorists, don’t hold all of the Islam community responsible for ISIS or those that evoke ISIS. It’s not as if the religion itself is to blame for radicalists, because it’s not. Terrorists are radicals that take a faith that so many in the world hold close and twist it into something unrecognizable, something that is not a religion. Terrorism has no religion.
Does being a Muslim mean that you are not an American? Does it mean you are not a human being? Because last time I checked, being an American means being innocent before proven guilty, it means having the freedom to live freely regardless of your faith or beliefs, and it means you aren't automatically labeled as an enemy of the state. The noun Muslim isn’t a synonym for terrorist, something that presidential candidates, the American media, and the American public need to stop forgetting. I, for one, stand with anyone, regardless of their religion, that condemns terrorism.
