Every time an act of terror or shooting occurs,
Muslims closely watch the news with extreme trepidation praying that the
suspect is not Muslim. This is not because these terrorists are likely to be
Muslim but rather because in the instances where they happen to be, we see
amplified mass media coverage and extreme unjustified hatred towards Muslims. I
can easily remember just not less than a year ago, there were many mass
shootings in schools across the United States, and coincidentally, they
happened to be non-Muslims; however they were tagged “lone-wolf”, “drugs”, “mentally
disabled” or something similar excuse being recycled when the suspect in a
terrorist attack is a Caucasian. Just recently
on may 18th 2018, my friend Auwal Ahmad’s classmate, Sabika sheik from
Pakistan and both attending the Youth exchange and study (YES) program along
nine others were killed in Santa Fe, Texas during a school shooting, but that
too like any other attack involving Muslims attracts little media attention.
As a
Muslim, I am tired of condemning terrorist attacks being carried out by
inherently violent people who hijack my religion. I am tired of condemning
these attacks to people who are calm and apathetic when Muslims are killed by
these same radicalized terrorists. Therefore I see it as a compulsory upon
myself to write this article and backed with facts for clarity to silence this Islamophobia.
I decided
to use the picture of German chancellor Angela Merkel and the comrade Turkish President
Tayib Erdogan because firstly the two
represent the two religions and secondly because of an incident that happened during a press conference in Ankara the Turkish capital last year. Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rebuked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for
using the expression "Islamist terrorism", saying the phrase was not
correct and saddened Muslims.
Speaking
after a critical bilateral meeting with Erdogan, Merkel spoke of the need for
Turkey and Germany to cooperate even further to fight against terror, including
"Islamist terrorism" and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.
"We
spoke in detail about... the questions of the fight against Islamist terrorism,
against every form of terrorism, also the terrorism of the PKK," she said
alongside Erdogan at his palace in Ankara. "We agree we want to cooperate,
we are all affected by this. We agreed to have closer cooperation in the
future," she said.
Erdogan,
sitting next to Merkel, was stony-faced as she spoke.
 |
| German chancellor Angela Merkel and the Turkish President Tayib Erdogan during a press conference in Ankara in 2017. |
Many
Muslims oppose any equating of Islam and terror, arguing those who commit
crimes purportedly in the name of Islam have nothing to do with a religion that
espouses peace.
"This
expression 'Islamist terror' seriously saddens us Muslims," Erdogan
replied, glancing sternly at the German chancellor.
"Such
an expression is not correct because Islam and terror cannot be associated. The
meaning of Islam is peace."
He said
it would be "saddening" if the term was used because of the crimes of
the so-called Islamic State (IS) extremist group, which has been blamed for a
string of attacks in Turkey over the last year.
"Please
let's not use it. As long as it is used we need to stand against it. As a
Muslim president personally I cannot accept that," he said.
The
phrase is controversial and previous US president Barack Obama refused to use
the phrase "Islamic terrorism", saying such crimes distorted and
perverted Islam.
But now
President Donald Trump has not shied away from using the term, speaking of
"radical Islamic terror" during the election campaign and condemning
Obama for not using the term. Anyway that Trumps’ view, any way he is use to
being controversial.
My next
five points will prove once and for all that Muslims are not terrorists:
1. Non-Muslims
make up the majority of terrorists in the United States:
According
to the FBI, 94% of terrorist attacks carried out in the United States from 1980
to 2005 have been by non-Muslims. This means that an American terrorist suspect
is over nine times more likely to be a non-Muslim than a Muslim. According to
this same report, there were more Jewish acts of terrorism in the United States
than Islamic, yet when was the last time we heard about the threat of Jewish
terrorism in the media? For the same exact reasons that we cannot blame the
entire religion of Judaism or Christianity for the violent actions of those
carrying out crimes under the names of these religions, we have absolutely no
justifiable grounds to blame Muslims for terrorism.
2.
Non-Muslims make up the majority of terrorists in Europe: There have been over
one thousand terrorist attacks in Europe in the past five years. Take a guess
at what percent of those terrorists were Muslim. Wrong, now guess again. It’s
less than 2% .
3. Even
if all terrorist attacks were carried out by Muslims, you still could not
associate terrorism with Islam: There have been 140,000 terror attacks
committed worldwide since 1970 . Even if Muslims carried out all of these
attacks (which is an absurd assumption given the fact mentioned in my first
point), those terrorists would represent less than 0.00009 percent of all
Muslims. To put things into perspective, this means that you are more likely to
be struck by lightening in your lifetime than a Muslim is likely to commit a
terrorist attack during that same timespan.
4. If
all Muslims are terrorists, then all Muslims are peacemakers: The same
statistical assumptions being used to falsely portray Muslims as violent people
can be used more accurately to portray Muslims as peaceful people. If all
Muslims are terrorists because a single digit percentage of terrorists happen
to be Muslim, then all Muslims are peacemakers because 5 out of the past 12
Nobel Peace Prize winners (42 percent) have been Muslims.
5. If
you are scared of Muslims then you should also be scared of household furniture
and toddlers: A study carried out by the University of North Carolina showed
that less than 0.0002% of Americans killed since 9/11 were killed by Muslims.
(Ironically, this study was done in Chapel Hill: the same place where a
Caucasian non-Muslim killed three innocent Muslims as the mainstream media
brushed this terrorist attack off as a parking dispute ). Based on these
numbers, and those of the Consumer Product Safety Commission , the average
American is more likely to be crushed to death by their couch or television
than they are to be killed by a Muslim. As a matter of fact, Americans were
more likely to be killed by a toddler in 2013 than they were by a so-called
“Muslim terrorist”.
When a drunk
driver causes a car accident, we never blame the car manufacturer for the
violent actions of that driver. This is because we understand that we cannot
blame an entire car company that produces millions of safe vehicles just
because one of their cars was hijacked by a reckless person who used it to
cause harm. So what right do we have to blame an entire religion of over 1.6
Billion peaceful people because of the actions of a relatively insignificant
few?
I will
not deny that terrorism is a real threat, it definitely is. However, it is
extremely incorrect to associate the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” when
literally all the facts implore you to do otherwise. The only way that we as
Americans can defeat terrorism at home and across the world is by accurately
targeting its root causes. There have been 355 mass shootings in the United
States this year and falsely blaming Muslims for the San Bernardino shooting
will do absolutely nothing to address this serious problem. It is time that we
begin addressing terrorism on an educated and factual level.
I plead you all to deeply consider the facts
mentioned here the next time you see a news headline about Muslims and
terrorism. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Hate cannot drive out hate, only
love can do that”. We cannot allow the disparity in media coverage to blind us
from the facts and turn us into hateful people, we are smarter than that. and lastly to answer the question you can agree with me based o the above mentioned facts that there is one connection between islam and terrorism.
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Yusuf Yusuf Yakubu is a corp member cum blogger
interested in global affairs, politics and good governance in the world.
