Fighting
the Wrong Enemy: Why Americans Hate Muslims
By Ramzy
Baroud
August 21,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Two officers sought me from within a crowd at
the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. They
seemed to know who I was. They asked me to
follow them, and I obliged. Being of Arab
background, often renders one’s citizenship
almost irrelevant.
In a back
room, where other foreigners, mainly Muslims,
were holed for ‘added security’, I was asked
numerous questions about my politics, ideas,
writing, children, friends and my late
Palestinian parents.
Meanwhile,
an officer took my bag and all of my papers,
including receipts, business cards, and more. I
did not protest. I am so used to this treatment
and endless questioning that I simply go through
the motions and answer the questions the best
way I know how.
My first
questioning commenced soon after September 11,
2001, when all Muslims and Arabs became, and
remain, suspect. “Why do you hate our
president,” I was asked then, in reference to
Bush.
On a
different occasion, I was held in a room for
hours at JFK International Airport because I had
a receipt that revealed my immortal sin of
eating at a London restaurant that served Halal
meat.
I was also
interrogated at an American border facility in
Canada and was asked to fill several documents
about my trip to Turkey, where I gave a talk at
a conference and conducted several media
interviews.
A question
I am often asked is: “what is the purpose of
your visit to this country?”
The fact
that I am an American citizen, who acquired high
education, bought a home, raised a good family,
paid my taxes, obeyed the law and contributed to
society in myriad ways are not an adequate
answer.
I remain
an Arab, a Muslim and a dissident, all
unforgivable sins in the new, rapidly changing
America.
Truthfully, I never had any illusions regarding
the supposed moral superiority of my adopted
country. I grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp
in Gaza, and have witnessed, firsthand, the
untold harm inflicted upon my people as a result
of American military and political support of
Israel.
Within the
larger Arab context, US foreign policy was felt
on larger scale. The invasion and destruction of
Iraq in 2003 was but the culmination of decades
of corrupt, violent American policies in the
Arab world.
But when I
arrived in the US in 1994, I also found another
country, far kinder and more accepting than the
one represented – or misrepresented – in US
foreign policy. While constantly embracing my
Palestinian Arab roots, I have lived and
interacted with a fairly wide margin of
like-minded people in my new home.
While I
was greatly influenced by my Arab heritage, my
current political thoughts and the very
dialectics through which I understand and
communicate with the world – and my
understanding of it – are vastly shaped by
American scholars, intellectual dissidents and
political rebels. It is no exaggeration to say
that I became part of the same cultural
Zeitgeist that many American intellectuals
subscribe to.
Certainly,
anti-Arab and Muslim sentiments in the US have
been around for generations, but it
has risen sharply
in the last two decades. Arabs and Muslims have
become an easy scapegoat for all of America’s
failed wars and counter-violence.
Terrorist
threats have been exaggerated beyond belief to
manipulate a frightened, but also a growing
impoverished population. The threat level was
assigned colors, and each time the color
vacillated towards the red, the nation drops all
of its grievances, fights for equality, jobs and
health care and unites in hating Muslims, people
they never met.
It mattered little
that, since September 11,
the odds of
being killed by terrorism are 1 in 110,000,000,
an extremely negligible number
compared to the
millions who die as a result of diabetes, for
example, or
shark attacks,
for that matter.
‘Terrorism’ has morphed from being a violent
phenomenon requiring national debate and
sensible policies to combat it, into a bogeyman
that forces everyone into conformity, and
divides people between being docile and obedient
on the one hand, and ‘radical’ and suspect, on
the other.
But blaming Muslims
for the
decline of the
American empire is as ineffective as it is
dishonest.
The Economic
Intelligence Unit had recently
downgraded the
US from a “full democracy’ to a “flawed
democracy”. Neither Muslims nor Islam played any
role in that.
The size of the
Chinese economy is soon to surpass that of the
US, and the powerful East Asian country is
already roaring,
expanding its influence in the Pacific and
beyond. Muslims are hardly the culprits there,
either.
Nor are Arabs
responsible for the
death of the ‘American dream’,
if one truly existed in the first place; nor the
election of Donald Trump; nor the utter
corruption and mafia-like practices of America’s
ruling elites and political parties.
It was not
the Arabs and Muslims who duped the US into
invading Iraq, where millions of Arabs and
Muslims lost their lives as a result of the
unchecked military adventurism.
In fact,
Arabs and Muslims are by far the greatest
victims of terrorism, whether state-sponsored
terror or that of desperate, vile groups like
Daesh and al-Qaeda.
Americans,
Muslims are not your enemy. They never have
been. Conformity is.
No
Advertising
- No
Government
Grants
-
This
Is
Independent
Media
|
“In this age, the
mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal
to bend the knee to custom, is itself a
service,” wrote John Stuart Mill in
‘On Liberty.’
The English philosopher, had a tremendous impact
on American liberalism.
I read his
famous book soon after I arrived in the US. It
took me a while to realize that what we learn in
books often sharply contradicts reality.
Instead, we now
live in the ‘age of impunity’,
according to Tom Engelhardt.
In a 2014 article, published in the Huffington
Post, he wrote: “For America’s national security
state, this is the age of impunity. Nothing it
does – torture, kidnapping, assassination,
illegal surveillance, you name it — will ever be
brought to court.”
Those who
are “held accountable” are whistleblowers and
political dissidents who dare question the
government and educate their fellow men and
women on the undemocratic nature of such
oppressive practices.
Staying
silent is not an option. It is a form of
defeatism that should be outed as equally
destructive as the muzzling of democracy.
“One has a
moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws,”
wrote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Barring
citizens of Muslim countries from travelling to
the US is a great act of immorality and
injustice. Sadly, many Americans report that
such discriminatory laws already make them feel
safe, which itself is an indication of how the
government and media manipulate consent in this
country to produce the desirable results.
America is
changing fast, and is certainly not heading in
the right direction. Shelving all pressing
problems and putting the focus on chasing after,
demonizing and humiliating brown skinned men and
women is certainly not the way out of the
economic, political and foreign policy quagmires
which American ruling elites have invited upon
their country.
“If
liberty means anything at all, it means the
right to tell people what they don’t want to
hear,” wrote George Orwell.
No matter
the cost, we must adhere to this Orwellian
wisdom, even if the number of people who refuse
to hear has grown exponentially, and the margins
for dissent have shrunk like never before.
Dr.
Ramzy Baroud is
a US-Arab journalist, media consultant, an
author, internationally-syndicated columnist,
Editor of Palestine Chronicle (1999-present),
former Managing Editor of London-based Middle
East Eye (2014-15), former Editor-in-Chief of
The Brunei Times, former Deputy Managing Editor
of Al Jazeera online.
http://www.ramzybaroud.net
This article was first published by
Politico
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