One long week after the Paris
attacks, as Republican presidential candidates mounted an arms race over who can
express the most overt and virulent prejudice toward Muslim Americans, MSNBC's
Chuck Todd did something pretty unusual for a cable news host. He invited on an
actual Muslim American person, Dalia Mogahed, who also happens to be an expert
on Muslim attitudes in the US and globally, to politely ask her about all this.
Their whole exchange is worth watching, but I wanted to pull out one particular
moment, at about 4 minutes and 40 seconds, which came as Todd was asking her
about American leaders who demand that more Muslim leaders come out to condemn
ISIS. Mogahed, rather than pointing out that they already are condemning ISIS,
made an important point: this is the wrong question entirely, and we need to
stop demanding that Muslims condemn terrorism.
I think we should take a step back and ask a different question, which is: 'Is
it justified to demand that Muslims condemn terrorism?' Now that might sound a
little radical. The reason I say that is this.
Condoning the killing of civilians is, to me, about the most monstrous thing you
can to do. And to be suspected of doing something so monstrous, simply because
of your faith, seems very unfair. Now when you look at the majority of terrorist
attacks in the United States, according to the FBI, the majority of domestic
terror attacks are actually committed by white, male Christians.
Now that's just the facts. When those things occur, we don't suspect other
people who share their faith and ethnicity of condoning them. We assume that
these things outrage them just as much as they do anyone else. And we have to
afford this same assumption of innocence to Muslims.
She's absolutely right. This ritual, in which Muslim leaders and regular Muslims
alike are expected to repeatedly denounce terrorism, is bigoted. (Will McCants,
a scholar of jihadist ideology at Brookings, thinks it might also be
counterproductive.) It implies that every Muslim is under suspicion of being
sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise. The
implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility
of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion.
What we're asking for isn't really a denunciation, it's an apology: an apology
for Islam and for Muslims. This sort of thinking — blaming an entire group for
the actions of a few individuals, assuming the worst about a person just because
of their identity — is the very definition of bigotry.
Later in the interview, Todd asks Mogahed about Donald Trump and his anti-Muslim
comments, for example saying he would consider putting all Muslims on a
registry. What is the one thing that Mogahed thought Trump should read or do to
better understand Islam?
Mogahed's answer, I thought, was pretty perfect: "I don't want him to understand
Islam. I want him to understand the constitution."
(Special thanks to "Max Fisher" for this Article)