"I hope more people can not be so narrow-minded and realise how Islam should not be blamed for an individual’s act because Islam stands for peace not terrorism."
Posted by The Guardian on Tuesday, November 24, 2015
It was like being back in late 2001 and early 2002. Fresh from the 9/11 attacks in which members of the Al-Qaida deliberately crashed one airplane into the Pentagon and one airplane each into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, anti-Islam sentiments were on the rise. Fed up with the violence against innocent members of the Muslim community, Prince released this controversial music video:
Now, it's one thing to sympathize with perfectly harmless people who happen to be Muslim. But it's another thing to see all these attacks by Muslim extremists and keep defending them. "Not all Muslims are terrorists. The terrorists are extremists." "I have friends who are Muslim, and they are good people." "Well, Christians massacred Muslims in the Crusades, too."
Let's face it: Most of these attacks were conducted by Muslim groups. Why should the rest of us not feel fear or even a bit of apprehension toward our Muslim brothers? Why are the people who claim to be forward-thinking so quick to defend "innocent" Muslims when our Christian and Jewish brothers are literally dying by their brothers' hands? I'm pretty sure some of them want this animosity to stop too. But to start that, they have to recognize that the hostiles are among their group, and these peaceful Muslims ought to learn to stand with the rest of us if they want peace.
We ought to not turn a blind eye to what these stories tell us. As soon as we ignore the common denominator in these attacks, the hashtag #NeverForget becomes null and void. We have effectively forgotten. Let me share raw video footage from someone who was actually there:
9/11 - September 11, 2001. Raw, Real and Honest video recorded by ANDRES BARRILA from andres barrila on Vimeo.
Do you remember now? Do you remember the fear, the pain, the rage? I do.
If this were happening today, there would be a spike in social media about this tragedy, and within hours, a vocal minority would complain about news and social media attention that New York is getting and then point out that other cities in the Middle East have been suffering worse for a long time. Sounds familiar? But this isn't a new phenomenon of misplaced compassion. It was December of 2001 or early summer of 2002 when a young speaker visited my school to talk about 9/11. I don't remember his name, but I sorely wish I did. It was a young man, probably a college student or a graduate student. Seems intelligent enough, but he was incredibly antipathetic toward 9/11. I remember feeling an incredibly rage when he began mouthing off about how the attack on the World Trade Center was in retaliation for America apparently "stealing oil" from Iraq and abusing the people there. Being female and 13 years old at the time, I felt utterly helpless. I wanted to yell at him about how wrong he was. But the rage I felt effectively blew the words out of my mind. It didn't matter that, at the time, I was a 13-year-old Filipina girl living halfway around the world. I could only imagine the horror: What would it have been like to have seen it with my own eyes; the terror that anybody I love were there, in the towers or in the planes or in the surrounding areas? Thousands of New Yorkers died that day, and thousands more lost people they loved. In late 2001, it didn't matter to me that most victims were upper-class white Americans. They were people with families, friends, loved ones. Some of them died without knowing what happened. Some of them died screaming in the fire. And some of them died holding hands as they plummeted to the pavement at the foot of the towers. None of this is something anybody deserves, ever. And how is crashing two airplanes into two of the tallest buildings in the world, full of people, proportionate with stealing oil? The attack is wrong, and justifying it is wrong.
Maybe some Muslims have nothing to do with it. I appreciate that many people have the good sense to recognize that and leave them alone. It just infuriates me whenever a Muslim gets attacked and plays the victim, like she or he has no idea where the attack was coming from. People have been hurt and have lost lives and loved ones in these terrorist attacks. We have the right to be angry. We have the right to be wary. These terrorists live in a better, more enlightened world than the Crusaders did. If we want peace, let us strive for solidarity.
