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A Dec. 1 column in The Maine Campus by Ryan Campbell (“Swelling scrutiny for Muslim Americans warranted,” Dec. 1, 2011)[1] exhibits an extremely poor argument as to why Muslim Americans — or any nationality that prescribes to Islam as a religion — can be connected to the broad and complex notion of terrorism.
There is no question about it: The attacks carried out on the World Trade Center were horrifying crimes against innocent, unarmed people. However, Campbell’s reasoning is skewed toward a short-term gain of gathering intelligence to prevent attacks on our civilian population.
If left unchecked, this short-term gain in conjunction with a long-term deterioration of civil liberties will provide for that Orwellian world of conformity we all fear — a world that seeks to punish those who don’t agree with the management of military and intelligence operations abroad, and operations increasingly closer to home as well.
Since its founding, our government has valued the rights of one group over those of others.
As we have progressed, the benefits of equality under the law have prevailed and have proven to be extremely influential. This universal idea, if we follow it, can win over the continuing cries of desperate hate we have heard at home and abroad for so many years.
Perhaps we can finally come to some level of civility and put our weapons down. But ending the violence begins with putting away our preconceived notions of Islam as well.
It involves reaching out to individuals who want their countries to have living standards like those we enjoy in the industrialized world, and individuals who want their faith and beliefs to be interpreted as love and acceptance, in place of violence and intolerance.
By following Campbell’s mindset, we expend much more effort that doesn’t lead to any type of solution. We further feed the concept created by radical Islamists that the United States is fighting a war against Islam and against Muslims.
It appears the wars and interventions in the Middle East, which seem as though they’ll never end, have more to do with geopolitics than the religions of my brothers and sisters studying here at the University of Maine. Maybe I should call up Homeland Security to run a background check on them.
Better yet, I’m going to write my representatives and ask that they introduce a bill to perform investigations on all Muslim men and women in Maine. That could be costly and increase the deficit further, considering that a study last year conducted by the Pew Research Center Forum on Religion and Public Life estimates that roughly 25 percent of the planet’s population will be Muslim by 2030. Perhaps it would be better if I just tell a story.
In May 2011, I had the opportunity to travel with faculty and students in the School of Policy and International Affairs to Abu Dhabi. We went to a conference that invited scholars from around the world — along with former ambassadors — to discuss one issue.
To have a discussion and to counter the seemingly impossible notion of civility between Islam and the West wasn’t too difficult. I speak very little Arabic, but many UAE students and staff who worked at the hosting institution —The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research — did. And they spoke English too!
Having been raised Catholic, I learned almost everyone I encountered was about as likely to join al-Qaida as I am to take up arms with the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
Perhaps a way to avoid terrorist attacks is to promote an effective, long-term policy that analyzes the issue of what we’re actually dealing with. Religion is simply the vehicle in which extremists invoke a commonality among a particular demographic. Politics, not religion, is about promoting the radicalization that carries out sporadic, violent episodes of a very narrow group of people.
It is simply not justifiable to favor national policy that broadens the scope in which individuals may have their civil liberties suspended for simply belonging to a large demographic. There has to be another option. Otherwise it is the stepping stone to so many other occurrences throughout history in which innocent people are no longer people, but a stigmatized concept or idea that we fear and then persecute.
Viewing Muslim Americans as potential terrorists because “Muslim extremists were the ones who carried out the attacks on Sept. 11,” so “the idea isn’t absurd,” truly is absurd.
Just remember, Mr. Campbell: Your nonsensical argument that the government also seems to favor is viewed by many as an approval of granting fewer rights to your peers. It’s something that should not be tolerated.
It appears the extremist here is you.
Anders Beal is a graduate student in the School of Policy & International Affairs studying global policy.
