Pacific Views

Muslims Condemning Terror

Al-Muhajabah (congratulations on the new job, btw :) posts the following article about a Muslim who spends half his time condemning terror, and the other half getting asked if he condemns it:

You could tell he'd had enough. I'm talking about Ibrahim Hooper. If the name is familiar, it's because Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., has become the news media's go-to guy on issues related to Islam and terrorism. This particular morning, he was being interviewed on an all-news radio station in Washington when the anchor asked a pointed, predictable question: Why don't we ever hear Muslims and Muslim leaders terrorist atrocities carried out in the name of their faith?

You could almost hear the vein in Hooper's temple begin to vibrate. He answered in a frustrated voice that he in fact condemns such barbarity all the time, and that he e-mails statements saying so to a wide variety of news outlets, including this particular anchor's own station. The newsman said he'd never received such a statement. Hooper asked for his e-mail address.

...I support CAIR's contention that it s Islamic terrorism, having frequently seen such statements in news coverage and on the group's Web site. "I don't know what more we can do," Hooper said...

..."This thing of, you've got to jump through these certain hoops, and if you don't jump through these hoops you're with the enemy, it's getting kind of old," he said.

Indeed, it's a paradigm that's as old as pluralistic society. It would never occur to us to require that the Rev. Billy Graham condemn Eric Rudolph, the nominal Christian who allegedly bombed two abortion clinics, a gay nightclub and the Atlanta Olympics.

...At the end of our conversation, I thanked him for his time. He asked for my e-mail address.

You'd think that after the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, cyanide bombers, mail bombers, clinic bombers, and mail order poisoners, that people would learn. But no.

When white Americans do it, particularly if they're Christian or right wing, it doesn't count as terrorism. And none of the people who nominally share the traits of being white, Christian, or right wing, fall under any sort of suspicion. Nor are they required to denounce the acts of their 'fellows.'

It can only be hoped that the rest of the world is less myopic than this. I certainly don't want to have to answer to anyone for the Bush administration.

Posted by natasha at September 27, 2004 03:53 PM | War on Terrorism | Technorati links |