Islamophobia Hurts All Americans
By Bob Roberts and Charles C. Krulak
Just as our nation accepts its 10,000th Syrian refugee, calls to ban future Muslims from entering the country have reached a fevered pitch. In recent weeks, the patriotism of an American Muslim soldier has been called into question without cause; a New York-based imam and his associate were murdered and a county commissioner in Georgia temporarily blocked the construction of a new mosque.
Thankfully, Americans of all political and religious backgrounds are pushing back, which is good news as we marked 15 years since a group of Muslim terrorists attacked the US on Sept. 11, 2001.
Many Americans understand that that hatred of Muslims is an assault on American ideals. We've spent our lives working in different spheres -- one of us is an evangelical Christian pastor, the other a retired US Marine general -- but we've both seen firsthand how Islamophobia diminishes us all and weakens our country.
Of course, Muslims are the primary victims of Islamophobia, which prevents them from exercising their basic rights, including their right to religious freedom. It also threatens their lives. Violence against Muslims spikes after high-profile incidents of terrorism, and a recent Georgetown University report found that an upsurge has coincided with the presidential race. Between March 2015 and March 2016, 12 American Muslims were murdered in bias-motivated attacks.
Yet Islamophobia isn't a Muslim issue. It is an issue for anyone who cares about the United States and the values that undergird it.
This shouldn't need to be said, but lies have gained so much traction that we feel we need to: terrorist groups represent a miniscule fraction of Muslims worldwide, who are, after all, both the primary victims and primary opponents of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. According to the FBI, the vast majority of terrorist attacks in the United States are committed by non-Muslims. Terrorists speak for Muslims no more than the Ku Klux Klan speaks for Christians.
Nearly all Muslims are part of the American mainstream. More than 5,000 Muslims are in the US military, and thousands more serve their country in other ways, as teachers, doctors, lawyers, social workers and public officials.
Muslims stand ready to combat extremism, but the bigoted rhetoric of public officials and discriminatory policies could make them reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement. A similar dynamic takes place overseas, where American hostility toward Muslims alienates communities whose cooperation the United States needs to wage a smart and effective battle against terrorism.
Calls for a blanket ban on Muslims refugees appear to validate the clash-of-civilization propaganda of the Islamic State, which uses such rhetoric to recruit followers. Conversely, openness to Muslim refugees shines a light on ISIS propaganda. Make no mistake: Islamophobia weakens US national security.
It's also important to remember while Christians are a majority in the United States, they are a minority when they travel or move to many other countries. Treating Muslims with proper respect here improves America's standing to defend the religious freedom of Christians and other religious minorities around the world.
In this way, and in many others, hostility toward Muslims cuts against our own best interests.
These debates are understandably intense and full of emotion, but emotion should never lead us to turn our backs on the values that have made us strong as a people and have made us a light for the world. Millions of Americans share a passionate commitment to our founding ideals, and no ideal is more foundational than freedom of religion. It is this freedom that allows us to practice our faith without from government interference and that has formed a society of astonishing religious pluralism. That's America, a place where people are free to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience. - Dallas Morning News
(Bob Roberts is the pastor of Northwood Church in Keller. Charles C. Krulak is retired commandant of the US Marine Corp.)
