The media didn’t even wait for the preliminary details of the investigation into the killing of three Arab-American students by Stephen Hicks — two Palestinian sisters and the husband of one of them, a Palestinian-Syrian. The American media rushed to write off the crime as an altercation about a parking lot. The Arab media, on the other hand, rushed to make it all about discrimination against Muslims.
But American Arabs know well the difference between the society of their new homeland and the politics of the biased governments of their old homelands in the Middle East. This realization is completely lost on the “Caliph” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, from his visit to Mexico, criticized what he called the silence of the U.S. president, his vice president and secretary of state toward the crime, threatening that, “The world will stay silent toward you.” Erdogan’s criticism comes in the context of accusing the West, without distinguishing between governments and their people, of hating Muslims. Meanwhile, the voices of political Islam cover up the responsibility of the countries of origin in causing and cultivating this hatred.
American Muslims, and among them Arabs, hadn’t known the problems of discrimination against them, particularly over other immigrants, until after Sept. 11, when Islam was raised as a banner for a terrorist operation that shook America and the world. Until that point, global terrorism had been associated with marginal extremist political parties whose crimes did not lead to the stigmatization of the religion of its masterminds or those who carried out the crimes. Only Muslim extremists have brought their religion into their wars all without respecting Islam or asking Muslims if they’re okay with their religion being used as a banner for heinous crimes.
Here Recep Tayyip Erdogan joins Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi – actually he’s competing against them – in exploiting the crime of a fanatical American citizen in order to reach the hearts and minds of Muslim- and Arab- Americans. But these will not comply with real and potential terrorist leaders, because they know America well, and they realize that their society enjoys tolerance and a legacy of accepting the other, especially both ancient and modern religious beliefs. No other country in the world enjoys the freedom given to religious groups that we find in the United States.
As for the demands of American Muslims and their complaints as citizens, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee will take up their case. There is no need for the opinions of leaders from the Arab world, who, because they are unable to solve the problems of their own societies, extend their hands to reform American society. The actions of the home country in most circumstances have been a curse on American Muslims. Their image has declined since their beloved status attracted athletes such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor) and Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) and civil rights leaders. That attractive image has been replaced by the picture of Major Doctor Nidal Hasan who is sitting in prison after shooting and killing 13 and injuring 10 of his military colleagues in Fort Hood, Texas, responding to a fatwa of Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki fled to his country of origin, Yemen, to lead terrorists under the banner of Islam, but then was killed by an American drone.
The leaders of the inter-Islam war, destroyer of the modern state, and those calling for intolerance, prejudice, social isolation and hatred, these are the ones to direct the appeal: Do not implicate Muslim-Americans with the poisonous ideas yielding victims and desolation. Congratulations to you, your legal cases that guarantee food, knowledge, freedom and peace to the people you govern, like, for instance, calling on the Turkish State Media Board to ban the use of foreign translations in pronouncing the Majesty [of God] and restricting the use of the word “God” [Allah] even if in the language of the text [the Koran] or the Hadith. The Turkish fatwa was preceded by the supreme court of Malaysia, which banned non-Muslim citizens from pronouncing the word “Allah,” writing it, or publishing it because Muslims alone have a monopoly on the word.
Who is really harming Muslims these days?
It would certainly help the Americans of the Muslim faith if the United States ended its cozy relationship with every rotten, undemocratic, theocratic, royalist regime in the Middle East. It can start with freezing out Saudi Arabia. Then Jordan and Egypt. And the United States must end this undemocratic nonsense of ” our special relationship with Israel. Ordinary Americans never decided that we have a SPECIAL, sentimental, and extremely indulgent relationship with Israel. We must compel Israel to give up its nuclear weapons and make significant concessions to the Palestinians.Too many of our political leaders slobber over Zionist Israel. What is Democratic about a self-absorbed, self-righteous JEWISH state ?
Bush’s War on Iraq was the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history. There were documented war crimes. We just now have no moral authority to LEAD any war against terrorists.Let the logic of civil war take its own course. Let Allah have the last word, so to speak.
( http://radicalrons.blogspot.com/ )