A war of words is waging in the United States. After the uprising of the Islamic State (IS) worldwide, U.S. politicians have used fiery language to threaten the extremist group. But those same statements have also induced fear and hate against another group: Muslims.
Political effect
Ben Carson insisted if a Muslim were to become president, they would “have to reject the tenets of Islam.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said, “I’d like for Barack Obama to resign if he’s not going to protect America and instead protect the image of Islam.”
And Donald Trump has said he would consider requiring Muslim-Americans to carry special identification. Just last week, he called for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S.
But many say comparing Muslims to IS is a controversial mistake.
Politicians are trying to connect “people who just feel alienated from the political system and, especially with Barack Obama’s presidency, who feel angry and are looking for scapegoats,” said Shannon Dunn, assistant professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University.
It’s history in repeat, Dunn said.
“I think it’s a combination of fear combined with a need to blame another group for the insecurity they’re feeling,” Dunn said. “Muslims have been an easy target since 9/11 because Americans associate Islam with terrorism.”
Spokane Muslim Admir Rasic said everyday-Americans have formed opinions of Muslims because of shoddy journalism or fear-mongering websites.
“It’s so much easier to say you should be afraid (of Muslims) instead of addressing it and saying we need to rethink these fears,” Rasic said.
When politicians speak publicly and erroneously of Muslims, Arsalan Bukhari, executive director of Washington State’s Center on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said they don’t realize “the impact they have on real people’s lives and the violence they inspire. When Muslims see that, that conversations tells them they are somehow less than.”
Who are Muslims?
Dunn, who teaches a class on interreligious dialogue and an Islamic study survey course, said most Muslim-Americans’ faith is a far cry from the fundamentalist beliefs extremists claim.
“Of course I want to end extremism,” said Rasic, who attends the Spokane Islamic Center.
But he also has the same ideals as most Americans. He wants to care for his wife, a lecturer at Washington State University, as well as raise his daughter to be the best she can be.
“I want to feel safe,” he said.
In his faith, though, Rasic isn’t so unique.
Washington state is home to about 100,000 Muslims, 55 mosques and three full-time Islamic schools, Bukhari said. While the majority resides on the West Side, he said approximately 5,000 Muslims call Spokane home.
While still a minority, some Muslims wonder why they are grouped with IS.
“I really think that people need to understand there is no essential core of Islam. It’s a living tradition interpreted by people. Just like Christianity,” Dunn said.
She warns against making generalizations about religions.
“Christianity and Islamic fundamentalists share a desire to interpret their Scriptures literally, to read them as providing guidance without any kind of interpretation,” Dunn said. “Ignoring the difference in context in the way script can be applied is a really dangerous thing.”
Most Muslim-Americans are not fundamentalists, she argued. In fact, most Muslims are committed to doing good in their communities, Bukhari said.
According to a 2001 U.S. Department of Defense statement, between 10,000 and 20,000 Muslim-Americans serve in the U.S. military. The American Medical Association released data in 2006 revealing 1 out of 10 American medical doctors are Muslim.
A 2009 Gallup poll found Muslim-Americans are the most racially diverse religious group surveyed in the U.S., with African Americans making up the largest contingent within the population, at 35 percent.
Rasic said his blue eyes, blonde hair and uncovered wife don’t advertise the typical Islamic couple.
“We went out and helped during the windstorm,” Rasic said. “A lot of Muslims are like that.”
Americans’ view
A HuffPost/YouGov poll compiled in April found 55 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of Islam. And that was before much rhetoric was said by presidential candidates.
Skyler Oberst, president of the Spokane Interfaith Council (SIC), said misunderstanding the Muslim faith comes down to a simple lack of education.
“There’s a lack of religious literacy,” Oberst said of the city.
Ayesha Malik, a Spokane Muslim and board member of the SIC, said Muslims are viewed as the “other.”
“So, foreign and different from the stereotypical ‘white Christian’ American,” Malik said in an email. “It’s easy to become a target when your neighbor feels like they can’t relate to you on any level. That is pure ignorance too, because in reality, we both are from Abrahamic religions. We have much more in common than you think.”
Muslims’ view
Despite religious commonalities, Islam is commonly stereotyped as a violent religion.
Malik said she is often selected for intensive TSA searches, especially when traveling internationally or entering the U.S. A few times, she has been placed in special rooms for hours, “with my luggage viewed as Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
One time, as Malik was leaving the mosque on Eid al-Fitr, she was pulled over for speeding to rush to a math test that was not excused by her teacher despite the religious holiday.
“(The officer) was more concerned about my ethnic identity and religious tradition than my traffic ticket,” she said.
“Did Allah tell you to break the law by speeding?” he asked her.
He assumed his laughter would cancel out his insensitive remarks, but Malik said it wasn’t a laughing matter.
“My first year at (Eastern Washington University), a professor joked that the only way to get out of the final exam was if ‘a Muslim came in and blew up the building,’ ” Malik said. She left class early to cry in her car.
Following the San Bernardino shooting, Rasic said the Muslim community felt it more than anyone.
Mosque attendance was down by at least 25 percent the following Friday, he said, because some members felt it would be safer to stay at home. A threat was phoned in that day to the Pullman Islamic Center, dangerously close to where Rasic’s wife works. Pullman Police were put on alert, and monitored the center following the call, but it’s not the first threat the center has received. (Threats aren’t new to Spokane either; Rasic was the first person to see “Death to Islam” spraypainted outside his mosque earlier this year.)
Rasic said these mass shootings are unfairly portrayed.
“It works like this: If you are a member of a dominant group, you are always an individual,” Bill Savage wrote in the Stranger. “If you are a member of a marginal group, your identity is always the group identity as understood by the people who feel prejudice toward that group.”
Muslim shooters are viewed as part of a terrorism network, while white, Christian shooters, for example, are seen as lone individuals, Savage explained.
“Rather, we label these acts as hate crimes or acts of violence by deranged individuals, never questioning if their religious affiliations had any underlying influences like we do when the shooters are Muslims,” Rasic recently wrote.
Every morning before Malik gets out of bed, she prays “Bismillah hir-Rahman nir-Rahim,” meaning “in the name of God, the most Gracious, the most Merciful.”
“I do this, because I need some comfort before I scroll down my newsfeed,” Malik said. “Every time there is a mass shooting or a terrorist attack, I pray that it was not committed by a so-called ‘Muslim.’ Our community takes one step forward every time we make a positive impact on our society, but every time an extremist is in the news, our community takes two steps back. All the good we do goes unnoticed.”
Rasic also shared a common verse of the Qu’ran in light of current events. It goes like this: “Whoever kills a soul … it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one — it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.”
What can be done to improve America’s view of Islam?
CAIR has worked hard to remove any obstacles that get in the way of Muslim families, Bukhari said.
In 2014, more than 400 civil rights cases were filed through the center. These cases not only included Muslims, but crimes against people who are perceived to be Muslims — Sikhs or darker-skinned citizens, for example.
Locally, Obsert with the SIC said a January Meet the Neighbors event will take place at the Spokane mosque, in hopes to combat anti-Muslim sentiments, fears and intolerances.
With 5,000 Muslims in town, “that tells me, religions aside or spiritualities aside, that Spokane is a great place to live,” Oberst said.
Still, living in Spokane isn’t easy for a Muslim, professor Dunn said.
“But obviously it’s better than other places,” she said. “It takes a special effort to educate people in the community about the varieties of Islam. There needs to be more education on religious extremism.”
“We have an obligation as citizens to be in relationship with each other,” Dunn added. “We need to talk about these national issues, and how they impact us at a local level and a global level.”
Some political figures have finally stepped in the way of Trump’s vicious words.
“This is not conservatism,” U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said this week. “Some of our best and biggest allies in this struggle and fight against radical Islam terror are Muslims.”
Decades from now, SIC’s Malik said Americans who feared Islam will look back and see they were no different from the people who segregated colored people.
“They are no different from the people that forced Japanese-American internment camps,” Malik said. “They are no different from Nazis belittling the Jews for their identity.”
So, Dunn said more people need to speak up.
“We need to shut people like Trump and Carson down,” Dunn said. “If no one talks about it, then bad things are going to happen. We’re not going to wait until he gets elected. I’m not waiting. We’re done.”
SpokaneFAVS reporter Lindsey Treffry can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @LindseyTreffry.
(Shannon Dunn, Skyler Oberst and Admir Rasic are columnists for SpokaneFAVS).
So when is the SpokaneFavs Quran reading group going to take place. Let’s read it together and examine its teaching. I’m game.
AND allow the SpokaneFAVS group to read the Bible in parallel and examine its teaching.
Is reading it a combative act to you Bruce?
Do you accept the teachings of academic scholars on the Bible?
That’s an odd question coming from the guy who literally just suggested doing this exact same thing regarding following the teachings of Mohammed vs the teachings of Jesus. So, are you prepared to answer your own question? Do you see the comparison as a combative act, Eric?
Would you have said that if he said “and the Torah” instead of the bible?