Time to Think,
Not to React
By Eric E. Vickers
American Muslim Alliance
American Muslim Council
US
Last
Monday, September 11, 2006 – on the 5th
anniversary of the 9/11 attack – the Muslim
community in America quietly celebrateed its patient
endurance of being this century’s test of
America’s democratic and constitutional
principles. Very quietly and discreetly, it also
celebrated the indelible planting of one of the
world’s oldest and largest religious faiths,
Islam, into the fiber of American life and consciousness.
As the American Muslim community mourned with
the rest of the nation the devastation visited
on our country that fateful morning, it should
humbly tell the nation that it is now time to
reflect. That is, time to think and not simply
react.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the American government
embarked on a prosecutorial campaign that literally
suspected every Muslim of being a possible terrorist.
Thus, with the twenty-first century hardly underway,
in a throwback to Jim Crow and McCarthyism, thousands
of American citizens were rounded up by the federal
government, denied access to lawyers and courts,
and just nakedly stripped of their constitutional
rights for no reason other than their religion
and ethnicity. Although Muslims have been in this
land since at least the arrival of the first African
slave ships, 9/11 marked a turning point for Islam
in this part of the world.
Suddenly, after the Twin Towers fell so dramatically
and traumatically, seven million American Muslims,
almost instantly, were put on the spot - forced
to bear the cross for nineteen hijackers. Just
as suddenly, the religion of Islam was placed
in the American spotlight. While the president
- before reflecting - was announcing to the world
an American military “crusade,” sales
of the Qur’an at American bookstores were
skyrocketing. And while the attorney general was
splashing headlines for busting suspected domestic
terrorists, mosques across the nation were being
packed with visitors to open houses hosted by
the Muslim community.
For five years now the Muslim community has lived
under this duality of having their faith so widely
projected yet so pilloried. Nothing reflects this
more than the conduct of the nation’s leader,
who visits a mosque and declares Islam “a
religion of peace,” but in his speeches
associates the faith with fascism and terrorism.
Consequently, this five-year anniversary of 9/11
came on the heels of recent polls showing that
Americans are vastly conscious of Islam, but fearful
of the faith and suspicious of Muslims. Only Muslims
can cure this. By having the courage to call this
nation to think.
Muslim Americans must dispel the notion (and political
tactic) that our country faces in the “war
on terror” some rabid religious ideology,
rather than an enemy opposed to America’s
policies and practices abroad. For as long as
the president and the government refer either
subtly or directly to Islam as the common terrorist
denominator, the American public will view Muslims
negatively. And not view America’s foreign
policy.
If the fifth anniversary of this tragedy teaches
this nation nothing else, then it should be that
America cannot win the war on terror without winning
back what it had on 9/11 but later lost: the hearts
and minds of the Muslim community.
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