Islamophobia in the US

The recent spate of Islamophobic incidents in the West, mainly in the US, does not augur well for the safety and security of millions of American Muslims. One feels reassured by the responses to some of these incidents at the institutional level, with the US Supreme Court giving a ruling in favour of a Muslim woman’s right to don the headscarf at her workplace and an airline apologising to a Muslim passenger for the behaviour of a flight steward. But the conduct of institutions strikes a rude contrast with that of the public in the US who, despite being the most democratic polities, seem to have become increasingly wary of Muslims and Islam. Moreover, the very democratic nature of these societies, in the wake of such unhealthly mindsets, may have the potential to adversely influence the behaviour of institutions as well. Which is worrying.

Recently, about 250 mostly-armed anti-Muslim demonstrators — many wearing T-shirts bearing a profanity-laced message, denouncing and deprecating Islam — faced off against a crowd of roughly the same size defending Muslim sensibilities in front of a Phoenix mosque. It was deemed a patriotic sign of resistance by the organiser, against what he deemed was the ‘tyranny’ of Islam in America. The incident occurred after two Phoenix residents carrying assault rifles were killed by the police outside a cartoon-drawing contest in suburban Dallas. The organiser of the protest claimed that he had received threats from ‘terrorists’ on Twitter, and that he and his family no longer felt safe in their home.  Although the event was marked by inflammatory messages and a tangible divide between the two sides, it wasn’t without some reconciliation. However, one of the members of the group defending the mosque was quoted as saying: “A lot of them, they’ve never met a Muslim, or they haven’t had interactions with Muslims. So when you sit down and talk like rational people, without all these slogans, without being bigots, without bringing guns, they will find out that they’re talking to another human.”

The radical registers of liberal thought in the US continue to propagate a ‘freedom’ which fails in freeing anyone. It colonises the sensitivities of millions of Muslims and disowns their sentiments. It capitalises on one-off tragedies to trigger permanent misery. Poisoning the lives of peaceful Muslims in the West is no way to battle the atrocities of terrorists. But the blame for this disconnect between American Muslims and mainstream Americans also rests on the shoulders of the former. It has been widely observed in the US that most American Muslims tend to live within their own tightly-knit, exclusive communities. Many make it a point to avoid social contacts with non-Muslim communities of the US. In such an arrangement, even the slightest misunderstanding between the two communities can turn into red-hot conflict within no time, threatening to break out into armed clashes. So, it is in the political, social and religious interest of the American Muslims and Muslims living in Western societies to closely interact and engage with their non-Muslim countrymen at all levels, so as to let them know that you are as humane as any civilised human being.

The misunderstanding between the Muslims living in the West and the mainstream communities in these countries has not yet reached a point of no return and neither is it as deep-seated and deadly as the one that had existed between Christians and Jews in recent centuries. So, while one cannot but worry about the recent developments in this regard, it is time that Muslims living in what appears to them to be an alien culture made genuine efforts to integrate into the mainstream without of course abandoning their own unique identity. Integration, people-to-people contact and regular cultural exchange is how the Jews of America and Europe came out of their long years of persecution.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 7^th, 2015.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.