Don’t ask Muslims to condemn terror
Saffie Rose Roussos’ molasses-colored eyes are what got me. It was as if my 10-year-old son Jibreel was staring back at me — sweet, vulnerable, trusting. But Saffie’s mother will never hear her daughter’s voice again, won’t kiss her goodnight again, all because of the act of a murderous criminal.
Police have identified 22-yearold Salman Abedi as the suicide bomber who carried out the horrific attack on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, targeting mostly children and girls no older than my 10- and 17-year-olds. I cannot begin to fathom the motivation behind this monstrous violence, but because of my faith and the color of my skin, many suspect me of condoning it.
“Why don’t Muslims condemn terrorism?” is the question I cannot escape a public lecture without hearing.
Anyone with an internet connection and a search engine will find that Muslims have and continue to condemn terrorism. Muslims have issued thousands of public statements, held conferences, seminars, lectures, workshops, created organizations, penned Op-Eds, written books, taken out full-page ads, held rallies, created television series and even developed video games, all to condemn terrorism.
There isn’t a mode of communication through which Muslims have not tried to communicate to the world their disgust with terrorism in their name.
But is this a reasonable expectation?
Asking Muslims if they condemn terrorism carried out by a Muslim may seem legitimate to many Americans: “People carry out acts of targeted violence in the name of Islam and as a follower of said religion, how are we to know you don’t agree? We will suspect you until and unless you sufficiently convince us otherwise.”
The question is an accusation of monstrosity — cheering for the literal murder of children — for no other reason than the faith I practice and the way I look.
Imagine if white folks were collectively suspected of condoning the actions of Dylann Roof, who walked into that black church in Charleston and shot and killed African-Americans in supposed defense of the white race. Or Anders Behring Breivik, who slaughtered 77 people, mostly children, in Norway in defense of white Christian Europe against brown and black Muslims.
When Robert Dear shot and killed three people in a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, I didn’t ask my neighbor, a vocal pro-life evangelical Christian, if she condemned it. I assumed she did — because anyone with the most basic human decency would abhor the murder of innocent people.
Yet this basic assumption of innocence is often denied Americans who are Muslim.
Some readers, including many Muslims, will bristle at this argument, questioning its pragmatism, even if they accept its merit: “People are afraid. Give them what they need to feel safe. Just condemn terrorism again so people will be comfortable,” well-meaning advisers often tell me.
What many fail to realize, however, is that suspecting someone of something as despicable as condoning the murder of children because of their ethnicity or faith is the definition of bigotry.
And bigotry has never been coddled out of existence. Quite the contrary — accommodating it reinforces its legitimacy and reproduces its false logic.
In a fascinating study, researchers found that the belief that Muslims are collectively guilty for acts of terrorism carried out by a Muslim was linked to support for discriminatory policies toward Muslims, U.S. military intervention in Muslim-majority countries, and the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.
But the same research found that people could reconsider Muslim collective guilt — not by Muslims condemning terrorism, but when they challenged the exclusive expectation to do so.
Turns out that “unintentional bias,” as researchers call it, is overcome not by treating it as a given, but by raising it from the part of the brain responsible for “passive autopilot thinking” to the part responsible for active critical thinking.
As we mourn the loss of Saffie and the others murdered, let us not allow our pain to be exploited in the service of prejudice.