by Mohamed Marei
Joseph McCarthy.
The name has become a curse, representing irrational fear and intolerance. Preaching hatred and bigotry, McCarthy managed to petrify the United States during the “Red Scare” into fearing what turned out to be bloated figments of his Imagination.
When we came to our senses and realized the damage McCarthy had done, we denounced him and subjected him to a dark comer of our nation’s collective mind— remembering him only to remind ourselves of the depths to which we can sink when gripped with senseless fear.
But somewhere, sometime, we must have lost sight of McCarthy; he’s now so close to us that we can’t even see him.
In light of the bombing of the World Trade Center and other recent incidents, it has become quite fashionable to single out Muslims and blame them for everything.
When someone who happens to be a Muslim is accused of wrongdoing, the fact that he is Muslim is highlighted, underlined, boldfaced, and all but put to music. When a person of another faith commits a ghastly deed, his religious affiliation is either downplayed or completely dis missed.
When was the last time you heard about the “Buddhist drug lord” or the “Jewish gunman” or the “Christian rapist”? When Mohammad Salameh, the main suspect in the bombing of the World Trade Center, was arrested, his name wasn’t mentioned unless the adjective Muslim was included. Suddenly, not only did he become “another Muslim extremist,” but the became “another Muslim.” In other words, he was now the representation of Muslims and became the definition rather than the exception.
Would respectable Christians quickly accept a headline regarding the incidents in waco. Texas, beginning with “Christian extremist David Koresh…””? Could anyone seriously attribute the tile of Christian to this crazed man’? Even though Koresh’s madness involved what he claimed were religious issues, a serious treatment of “Christianity as represented by Daid Koresh” was never even considered. In contrast, the accusation brought against Salameh’s involvement indicates that the actions he was accused of were politically motivated and had no religious basis, Why is it that in a case where religion was an issue, I wasn’t reported as one. and in the later situation, when religion isn’t even a factor, it was made into the factor’?
Singling out Islam as espousing violence defies all reason and historical fact. While the operators of the Inquisition in Europe were torturing and killing those who didn’t conform in religious thought, the Islamic empire co-existed peacefully alongside its non-Muslim neighbors.
How can a religion whose people greet each other with the phrase Asalaama Alaykum, meaning peace be upon you, be so falsely associated with violence? Never the less, the media has blatantly ignored objective history and opted instead to portray Muslims as oil rich, turban wearing, woman oppressing Arabs with a tendency toward violence. However, most of us would be shocked to learn that less than 20% of the world’s 1 billion Muslims reside in Arab countries,
Generalizing about I billion individuals from the characteristics or actions of a few creates a distorted, inaccurate picture, it’s time to reexamine this picture.
We are now at a critical point in the development of our national conscience. How we view individuals and groups that constitute a minority will play a key role in our national growth. One options is to arbitrarily stereotype groups by the actions of a few individuals. If we do this. We will return to intellectual barbarism and view all African Americans as thieves, Latinos as lazy workers, Jewish individuals as money lovers. Caucasians as racists and Muslims as terrorists.
As a nation, we need to rise above this practice of unflattering, dam aging and distorted stereotyping.
Asalaama Alaykum,
Joseph McCarthy is knocking on the door of our national con science. Keep it closed. Mohamed H. Marei, a native of Cairo, Egypt, has lived in California for a decade. He just graduated with honors from Lodi High School and is attending UCLA, (Courtesy of The Stockton Record).
Article extracted from this publication >> April 2, 1993
