After NYC Bombing, U.S. Muslims Feel Threatened, Not Threatening

By Greg Noakes

The Feb. 26 bombing of New York's World Trade Center, the subsequent arrests of Mohammed Salameh, Ibrahim Elgobrowney, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmoud Abouhalima and Bilal Al-Kaisi, and the media speculation swirling about Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman have been an unmitigated disaster for American Muslims. The issue now facing the community is how to refute the overwhelmingly negative press coverage and dispel the renewed public image of the Muslim as terrorist. While the first reaction of many Muslims in this country is to turn inward, what is needed are even greater efforts to educate the public, the media and government officials about the true nature of Islam and of the U.S. Muslim community.

American Muslims emerged from the holy month of Ramadan in a state of shellshock, buffeted by media coverage of the bomb blast that has been speculative at best and vicious at its worst. Years of educational outreach by American Muslims across the country have been undone by the alleged actions of a handful of men and a few weeks of uninformed reporting and analysis fueled by innuendo and anxiety. Muslims in the U.S. have been transformed from respected citizens into suspected cogs in a worldwide terror machine, their mosques from simple places of worship to nerve-centers in an Islamic revolution, and their religion from a rich spiritual faith to nothing more than a violent political ideology.

To be fair, a number of prominent political and law enforcement officials including President Bill Clinton, New York Governor Mario Cuomo and FBI Director William Sessions stressed that the Muslim community as a whole should not be made a scapegoat in the wake of the bombing. Many articles and broadcast reports sounded a similar cautionary note and carried statements by Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. who condemned the bomb attack and pleaded for the protection of the legal rights of the accused.

Once the caveats were out of the way, though, the media generally gave full rein to fanciful conjecture, outrageous simplification of complex political and theological issues and timeworn Western stereotypes of Muslims. "Counterterrorism experts" (many of them Israelis) are getting the same kind of media exposure that was lavished on "military experts" during the Gulf war, while "Middle East specialists" cut from the same cloth, like Fouad Ajami, Daniel Pipes and Judith Miller, are back in the public spotlight.

Nearly all warn of a shadowy, monolithic "Islamic international" that has at last turned its sights on the U.S. and Americans. At the same time, they explain, the Islamic fundamentalists are using these shores as a safe haven to construct elaborate terror networks designed to lash out at Israel and the rulers of Egypt, Jordan, Algeria and other Arab states. When not planting bombs in skyscrapers, it seems, American Muslims are busy funneling financial aid and technical assistance to the leadership of groups like Hamas and Egypt's Gama'at Islami, unless one believes that the leaders in question already are operating clandestinely out of New York, Chicago, Northern Virginia or Southern California. As a result of all these "warnings," any American with access to a newspaper, magazine or television set is familiar with the grim visage of Sheikh Abdul Rahman, though few could name another living Muslim religious leader or scholar either in the U.S. or abroad.

With such prompting, it is likely that many Americans are experiencing the stirrings of real fear or apprehension concerning a possible hidden dimension to the thoughts or beliefs of their Muslim friends, neighbors or co-workers. Exposure to U.S. media coverage of the past six weeks could easily result in this reaction.

Most American Muslims, though, feel more threatened than threatening at this point. Press coverage and analysis of the people, actions and motives involved in the New York bombing and of the activities of Sheikh Abdul Rahman may be both necessary and desirable. American Muslims, though, wish that at least some air time and a few column inches were devoted to a factual presentation of the beliefs and teachings of Islam. This might lead to an appreciation that the violent rhetoric and tactics practiced by Abdul Rahman and other militant Islamist leaders are rejected by the vast majority of Muslims in the U.S. and abroad. In short, what American Muslims hope to see in the media are attempts to portray their community in all of its rich variety, rather than the current unblinking focus on a lunatic fringe.

Stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs is not a new phenomenon, of course; the spectre of Islamic terrorists running amok in the U.S. was raised during the Gulf war, the Libyan hit team disinformation scare of 1981 and the Iranian hostage crisis. Many Muslims in this country felt, though, that some of the old stereotypes were dying out and that barriers of distrust were beginning to come down.

This is because Muslims have made inroads into American political, social and economic life that few would have thought possible two or three decades ago. Most American Muslims had hoped their impact and influence in American society would continue to expand.

Strengthening the Rejectionists' Hands

Instead, the revival of old fears and suspicions among Muslims and non-Muslims alike seems to confirm the views of those in the American Muslim community who argue that Muslims will never be fully accepted in the U.S., and that the West is and always will be the implacable enemy of Islam. The hand of these Rejectionists has been strengthened by the reaction to the Trade Center bombing, and there will be a temptation within the Muslim community to turn inward to a greater degree than before Feb. 26.

The dilemma now facing American Muslims is how to reverse that trend. The vast majority of the community rejects the notion that Muslims should isolate themselves, since whether they were born here or chose to immigrate to the U.S., this is their home. The minority position that America's political, social and economic problems are no concern of the Muslims is fatally flawed. Directly and indirectly, all of these issues affect the interests of American Muslims, as well as their ability to live their lives in accord with their religious beliefs and standards of individual and social conduct. No ethnic or religious community in the U.S. exists in a vacuum, and American Muslims should not lose sight of this fact in the midst of the current public hysteria over Islamic "fundamentalism."

It is crucial for American Muslims to pick themselves up, take stock of their current situation, their goals and their abilities, and begin again the process of educating the American people in general, and the media, public officials and the leaders of other religious and ethnic groups in particular, about the true nature of the Muslim community. In spite of what many Muslims believe, most poor public policy decisions and biased reporting about Islam result from ignorance rather than malice.

The problem is that most of the information on Islam widely available in the U.S. is either tainted by long-standing cultural stereotypes about an "exotic" religion, or is put forward by "experts" who have ulterior motives and are not above playing the "Islamic card" to advance them. Rather than retreating, American Muslims must renew their contacts with officials and journalists and work to correct inaccuracies and misunderstandings through constructive criticism and positive reinforcement. Should Muslims ignore this educational mission, their antagonists will dominate the public discourse about Islam in this country.

The immediate need is for a clear articulation of Muslim condemnation of the kind of random violence visited upon the occupants of the World Trade Center last February. It is true that Islam allows the use of violence in specific circumstances to combat aggression or rectify injustice, but it also clearly prohibits attacking certain human and material targets, including women, children, the elderly and vital infrastructure.

Far from being condoned or even tolerated by Islam, an indiscriminate attack like the Trade Center bombing, in which innocent people are killed and injured and others placed in imminent danger, is indisputably un-Islamic, regardless of the possible motives behind it. If the Muslims arrested in the New York case committed their alleged crimes with the notion they were somehow furthering the cause of Islam, they in fact have betrayed the very belief system they claim to advance. Their actions deserve the unmitigated condemnation they have received from American Muslims.

While there is near-unanimity regarding the bomb attack, the issue of the public positions taken by Sheikh Abdul Rahman is admittedly less cut-and-dried. The need to fight injustice is an imperative in Islam, as in most organized religions.

Long before Rousseau, Islamic political theory sanctioned the right of the community to revolt against an unjust ruler who ignores the precepts of the faith. That same political philosophy, though, also warns against the danger posed to the community fitna, or sedition, and the anarchy which results from the absence of stable political leadership.

The painful distinction between combating injustice and creating fitna is an old one for Muslims, but orthodox scholars have generally decided that patience and forbearance are preferable to violence and bloodshed. As Hamid Enayet notes, "Endurance of the status quo acquired the dignity of a pious act."

Thus, even if the present Egyptian government is unjust and anti-Islamic (which itself would be a matter of contention among scholars), Sheikh Abdul Rahman's calls for violent attacks against the regime's representatives and interests are of dubious legitimacy in terms of Muslim tradition, and are outside the mainstream of Islamic political thought. The vast majority of Muslims in the world have rejected the violent strategy and rhetoric of Abdul Rahman and other militant Islamists who advocate armed attacks against government and civilian targets, whether in the U.S. or abroad.

While not one in a hundred American Muslims would condone the tactics used by the World Trade Center bombers, and only a tiny minority shares Sheikh Abdul Rahman's views on the need for violent confrontation, there is indeed widespread concern for the state of the worldwide Muslim community. Muslims are raped and murdered in Bosnia, oppressed by military occupation in Palestine and Kashmir, targeted by bloody attacks in India and Burma, discriminated against in Western Europe, and subjected to grinding poverty and political and economic underdevelopment throughout much of Asia and Africa.

American Muslims are rightly outraged at the treatment of their co-religionists throughout the world, at the inability of Muslim governments to relieve their plight and at the apparent double standard employed by the West when dealing with international political, economic and humanitarian issues involving Muslims. It seems from the selective application of U.N. resolutions that some populations and states are created more equal than others. Seldom are Muslims on the winning end of things.

The long-term challenge facing American Muslims, and particularly the community's leaders, is to channel their outrage and indignation over the condition of the world's Muslims in a way that will produce positive changes, not a negative backlash. Educational campaigns, fundraising for and participation in relief and development activities in the Muslim world, and the exchange of ideas and opinions both among Muslims and with interested non-Muslims are infinitely more effective and enduring than rhetorical or actual fireworks.

Muslims and non-Muslims should recognize, however, that a lack of progress achieved through cooperation and compromise will inevitably lead some to opt instead for confrontation. "By any means necessary" is not an Islamic concept. It is one, however, that appeals to frustrated people of all creeds who, in their search for needed solutions to pressing problems, find all peaceful paths blocked.

Greg Noakes, an American Muslim, is the news editor of the Washington Report.