A Peaceful Muslim Majority in the U.S. Tarred by Acts of a Few
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Version 0 of 1. The United States is still grieving the tragic massacre of 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. The deranged killer was a Muslim. The attack has prompted concern about a culture of terror sweeping America, leading to demands for actions against Islam and its followers. A year ago, Dylann Roof, a neo-Nazi, shot dead nine black congregants, including the pastor and a state senator, at a church in Charleston, S.C. He’s referred to as a lone wolf white supremacist. The calls for banning Muslims, greater surveillance of mosques and even creating a new House Committee for Un-American Activities focusing on jihadists raise two questions: Do Muslim Americans present a threat greater than that posed by any of their fellow citizens, and could much more be done to prevent such attacks? Counterterrorism experts believe the answer to both is no; most Americans wouldn’t agree. The shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., last year, and in Orlando on June 12 were horrific, says Richard A. Clarke, the counterterrorism czar under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But such events “are rare,” Mr. Clarke says. “In the entire Obama administration, there have been six incidents involving eight people.” Before Orlando, more Americans had been killed since the Sept. 11 attacks by white-nationalist terrorists in the United States than by Muslims, according to research by New America, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington. Robert McKenzie, an expert on relations between the United States and the Muslim world at the Brookings Institution, says the United States has resettled about 800,000 refugees over the past 15 years; five have been arrested on terrorism charges. Critics assert that Muslims don’t assimilate, but researchers paint a different picture. Surveys by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and the Pew Research Center suggest that the attitudes of United States Muslims about country and community are similar to those of adherents of other religions. They watch sports on television and play video games at the same rate as other Americans. Mr. McKenzie complains that the news media rarely captures the civil engagement of Muslims. When the water supply in Flint, Mich., was found to be toxic, the state’s Muslims worked with members of other religions to aid distressed citizens while state and local officials failed. “They were very helpful,” says Lee Anne Walters, a Flint resident who blew the whistle on the contamination. “It was great seeing everyone come together.” There are controversies. A handful of communities with large Muslim populations have promoted the use of Shariah law, a fundamentalist doctrine that would offend most Americans, including many Muslims. A few radical imams and vulnerable young men and women are susceptible to propaganda from the Islamic State. The militant group has demonstrated a sophisticated grasp of social media, putting out more than 90,000 messages daily in multiple languages. Mr. Clarke says the United States needs to institute a “much more thorough program” to counter that propaganda. He also says that preventing terrorism suspects from having easy access to lethal weapons should be a no-brainer. But he warns that there are no panaceas. “When a guy one minute suggests he may be sympathetic to ISIS and the next minute decides to kill people, catching that minute is really, really hard,” he says. In the longer term, experts say Islamic radicalism needs to be addressed at its source overseas. No one, other than a few vote-seeking politicians, argues that can be done easily or quickly. There will be more terrorist strikes in the United States and elsewhere. So it’s worth remembering that the vast majority of American Muslims go to school, work hard, pay their taxes, participate in their communities and serve in the military. That’s why they resent being told they are on the front lines in the fight against radical terrorists, Mr. McKenzie says. “They don’t know who those people are.” |