Don’t let tragedy ignite anti-Muslim sentiment

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LONDON- Terrorism is the unauthorized use of violence for political gains — not a facet of a specific culture. Terrorism is a fear tactic that anyone can instigate — not a doctrine certain religious sects must follow. Terrorism is an annihilation of basic human rights — not the consequence of wearing a certain article of clothing.

Considering the response to the tragedy that struck Paris over the weekend, it’s time to challenge such preconceived notions about terrorism, Islam and cultures east of Europe. Three teams of ISIS terrorists are responsible for the growing Parisian death toll, according to The New York Times. But this doesn’t mean the entire Muslim nation is inherently dangerous.

In the wake of global tragedy, we can’t solely stand in solidarity with victims if we hope to affect change — we must completely re-evaluate the way we conceptualize terrorism. Specifically, we must address and eliminate instances of anti-Muslim sentiment in response to terrorism within Western cultures — particularly in the United States, United Kingdom and France.

I recognize why Western society turns to anti-Muslim sentiment for comfort — there is an archetype for the common terrorist, an easy pitfall for you to mistakenly place your anger. It’s a jihadist screaming “Allahu Akbar.” It’s a woman wearing a burka. All terrorists are Muslims — except for the 94 percent who aren’t.

As of February 2013, Muslim-Americans have orchestrated only 33 of 300 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, according to the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. By the same token, FBI data collected between 1980 and 2005 reveals that during this time period more Jewish extremists carried out terrorist attacks than Muslims.

So, Jewish radicals can commit acts of terrorism without others immediately stigmatizing them for their actions, yet Muslims are automatically terrorists. In short, if a white person did it, it’s murder or a massacre. When the perpetrator is brown, it’s terrorism. This presents a damaging paradigm.

Skin color does not correlate to extremist agendas. According to Pew Research Center, roughly 1.6 billion people are Muslim — or about 23 percent of the world population. By my estimates, if Islam advocated for violence, we’d all be dead by now.

But if you don’t trust me, look to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency. According to its 2014 European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report, only two of the 152 terrorist attacks in the EU in 2013 were “religiously motivated.”

The reality is that most terrorist attacks are a product of separatist organizations with political agendas. Unfortunately, we have branded Islamic separatists to represent nearly one-fourth of the world’s population, as illustrated by Western conceptions of Muslim people.

In the United States, anti-Islamic actions have been on the rise since 9/11. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, anti-Muslim hate crimes increased by about 1,600 percent since 2001, compared with the number of similar instances in 2000. Most visibly, Craig Hicks, a neighbor of two of the students, murdered three Muslim students in a hate crime this year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Sadly, even two of our presidential candidates made anti-Islamic comments. In September, Ben Carson told NBC that he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” and Donald Trump said “a certain segment [of Muslims] are certainly a problem.”

In England, Londoners spat on Muslim women who choose to wear the niqab or burka and covered them in feces. Overall, anti-Muslim crime in London rose by 70 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to the BBC. Discrimination against British Muslims is so pronounced that a report produced by the Islamic Human Rights Commission came out this year to argue that “people who commit such acts are provoked to do so by an environment of hatred caused by policy, media and law that targets a hated society.”

This “environment of hatred” can help explain the current situation in France.

In 2010, the French government introduced a veil law that banned women from covering their face in public, an outward form of discrimination against Muslim women.

Anti-Muslim hate rhetoric in France has flourished in a post-Charlie Hebdo climate. Following the attacks on the satirical Parisian newspaper earlier in 2015, anti-Islamic attacks increased by about 23.5 percent, according to a report by Collective Against Islamophobia in France.

These examples cover just three Western countries’ perceptions of Muslims, so don’t tell me anti-Muslim sentiment isn’t real.

In response to the tragedy in Paris, people set fire to the Calais migrant camp — which houses primarily Muslim refugees. This reciprocal violence is unfounded. There is no reason to deny Muslim refugees a safe place. It is asinine to think that allowing these refugees into a country will increase the number of terrorist attacks simply because they are Muslim. It is inhumane to blame an entire nation for the workings of a few separatists. It is naive to fight violence with more violence.

As Westerners, we have a tendency to stigmatize what we don’t understand. About a year ago, I wrote about the misconceptions Muslim women face for simply wearing headscarves in a column called “Behind the Veil.”

Today, not only has the status of Muslims not improved, it has consistently declined.

We should be angry about the attacks in Paris. We should be enraged that ISIS has this much freedom to militarize our homes. But we should not misplace these emotions and blame an entire religions for the actions of a smaller sect.

As a whole, we in the West must not only grieve the fallen in Paris. We must grieve all those affected by terrorism — whether in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Beirut or Baghdad. And finally, we must grieve those affected by terrorism simply for following Islam — that is, we should pray for the 1.6 billion Muslims the world will blame for crimes they would never condone or commit.

Terrorism has no face, no religion and no home. Quit stigmatizing Muslims simply for existing.

Courtney Linder is a senior columnist at The Pitt News, primarily focusing on social issues and technology. Write to her at CNL13@pitt.edu.