Daily Times

The assassination of 14 young men and women in San Bernardino, California on December 2, 2015 has sent shockwaves all over the US and beyond. Rizwan Farooq and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, chose to kill the same people with whom Farooq had worked for a long time. Farooq and his wife were invited to a work party, which they turned into a killing field. As expected, the police launched a massive search to unearth the motive behind the murders. They raided the house where the killers lived and found a large stock of deadly weapons, some not meant for use by civilians. The police disclosed that the weapons had been purchased legally by someone else and then delivered to the couple. Hours before the shooting, the assassins left their six-month-old baby daughter in the custody of her grandmother.

The following day, the Muslim community in San Bernardino denounced the killing in unequivocal terms. They termed the episode as cruel and reiterated that Islam does not sanction the killing of neighbours regardless of their faith, colour and traditions. Last weekend they assembled in a hospital and donated blood for the injured in the attack. Muslims living in other parts of the country condemned the killing in the strongest possible language and asked Muslim community members to cooperate with the police in case of suspicious behaviour or incidents in the neighbourhood.

Since the San Bernardino tragedy there has been a renewed debate about Muslims’ relations with the west. Some posed questions on why Muslims are involved in terrorism, others attributed the unrest that has shaken the Middle East and has posed a danger to the west and the unjust Iraq invasion. The invasion resulted in the deaths of around a million Iraqis and over 100,000 severely wounded, apart from colossal damage to infrastructure. Around six million Iraqis became internally displaced and the Sunni population alienated. The Islamic State (IS) leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, reportedly spent a few years in Basra prison, witnessing the torture and death of fellow prisoners. These narratives are genuine yet they do not provide a rendition for the killings of innocent civilians.

The Iraq invasion took the lives of over 4,400 American soldiers. Another 30,000 marines were injured, many of who will never return to a normal life. The families of the fallen and wounded soldiers have the right to demand the trial of those responsible for dragging the country into a war that took the lives of their near and dear ones. The trials and indictments of the perpetrators will bring some comfort to aggrieved families in the US and in Iraq.

IS has killed more Muslims than non-Muslims, enslaved Muslim women and destroyed ancient treasures in Iraq and Syria. Even if its combat troops are estimated at 30,000, it is still insignificant compared to the 1.6 billion Muslim population. How is it justified to put the entire community in the dock? Every episode is terrible in its own way: 23 schoolchildren were gunned down in Sandy Hook, a dozen movie patrons in Aurora were killed by a gun man, innocent churchgoers in Charleston were killed by brush fire. A Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado was attacked and the doctor on duty was killed, and in all these incidents the assassins were White Christians. No one came out branding the murderers Christian terrorists or demanding the White Christian community make loud condemnations of the incidents. Why is there a double standard in the case of San Bernardino? Terrorists are neither Christian nor Jewish nor Islamist — they are criminals.

The Times of India reported that about 70,000 Muslim clerics assembled at the South Asian Sunni Muslims annual meeting in Uttar Pradesh last week and issued a fatwa against the Taliban, al Qaeda and IS. About a million endorsed a document that stated, “This terror group (IS) has killed far more Muslims than Christians, westerners or any other religious community. It is a terror group with political ambitions.” The chairman of the gathering said that the attacks in Paris had inspired clerics to pass the fatwa in order to spread the message that Muslims condemn terrorism. Muslim clerics in the US and Europe should do the same.

Muslims comprise less than one percent of the US population. They are hardworking, law-abiding citizens and the majority belong to the low-income group. They do not have the luxury to donate to radical groups nor buy guns from the stores. If they are left with savings, they invest in real estate or in small business. They are striving to assimilate in the mainstream of western society, which is evident from their enrollment in government services. According to the Pentagon, over 6,000 Muslims are serving the armed forces and many were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan; 14 were killed in action and buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Immediately after the San Bernardino tragedy, Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the US until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” He also suggested a database for Muslims in order to track their activities and close down the mosques. President Obama dismissed the proposal as “un-American and something that stands against everything that we stand for”. The mainstream media has condemned Trump for his divisive policy. But Trump is not alone in the anti-Muslim rhetoric. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson and Rand Paul conveyed a similar message in different words.

The war against terrorism cannot be won by alienating the Muslims. Obama said the Muslims are our neighbours and friends, and their cooperation was needed. He also said, “We have a no-fly list where people cannot get on planes. But these same people can go into a store right now in the US and buy a firearm, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. The law needs to be changed.” Trump’s rhetoric is not inconsequential. A 12-year-old girl in New York was beaten and her hijab nearly torn. A shop owner in Queens was attacked by a man shouting, “I will kill Muslims.” Rocks were thrown through the window of a family in Plano, Texas. A pig’s head was found in a mosque’s premises in Philadelphia. Some patients in a Texas hospital refused to be treated by Muslim doctors. Even a marine reported how he had been ignored by his fellow comrades. This is a small sampling of recent hate crimes against the Muslims. In this new height of hate crimes against the Muslims Martin O’Malley, a presidential hopeful, and a group of Congressmen visited mosques in Virginia and expressed solidarity with the Muslims.

Americans have now two options: they can alienate the Muslims, ban their entry, freeze the issuance of new visas and keep them under surveillance. Gradually, they will be marginalised and a good number of them will slide into poverty. This is exactly the trajectory IS has outlined for them. Trump and the hardliners are falling into the IS trap.

The other option is to promote the assimilation of Muslims into the mainstream of society, accelerate their participation in government services, including the armed forces, and let them be stakeholders in nation building. Muslim youth born and raised here love only this country, the US. Now make the choice.

The writer is a former official of the United Nations