By Abdul-Rahman Baban
Saibo
The
arrest, a misconception (?):
On Monday 14th
of this month, Ahmed Mohammed a freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving,
Texas, was in class whence an alarm sounded in his school bag. His English
teacher’s attention was caught and she asked Ahmed what was making the noise in
his bag? Ahmed opened his bag and brought out his new invention. “It’s a
digital clock I created.” He tells the English teacher. “It looks like a
Bomb to me”, was his teacher’s first reply, but of course the boy retorted “it
doesn’t look like one to me.”
Moments later Ahmed was
in police custody. And so it took just an invention to end a fourteen year old
American Muslim kid’s day in an interrogation room. How gravely
unfortunate for Ahmed whom thought of impressing his science teacher with the digital
clock he (Ahmed) invented with a pencil case, instead, it made him prime crime
headliner of the day.
In Ahmed’s words “They
arrested me, and told me I committed the crime of a hoax bomb-a fake bomb.” He
then explained that “I repeatedly told them ‘it’s a clock’, but no matter how
much I told them, I guess that’s not a bold enough answer to them.” But of
course, they wanted to hear him say he’s a terrorist for that’s what he
is to them.
Elhassan Mohammed (Ahmed’s
father) a Sudanese immigrant whom happened to run twice for Sudan’s presidency,
tells the media that “the boy was just trying to create something nice for
humanity.” He then went to making excuses for what happened, “but because of
what happened on September 11th he got mistaken for a terrorist.”
The question here is, would September 11th forever remain to be an
excuse for Muslims in America and the West to keep being discriminated,
humiliated, harassed and segregated?
Islamophobia:
A legitimate Fear or a reason for Hate?
Islamophobia (the fear
of Islam) has now grown to becoming the worst fear as well as the most justifiable
reason for discrimination and abuse of Muslims and Islam in the West. The
average American is made to believe that Islam is a pugnacious religion which
promotes violence. Unfortunately, despite the West’s ceaseless propagation of
blemishing Islam, the West records its highest number of converts to Islam more
than ever in history. Today in the West, Islam grows by the second, thus the
reason for the bedlam.
The West and America
had created the fear of Islam to globalize their hegemonic might of occupation
and invasion of the Muslim lands. After September 11th the world
came to sympathize with America for the misfortune that befell her. But in
order for America to exercise vengeance, it needed to set the whole world in
trance, and for that they crafted a space in the project “New World Order”
for “Islamophobia” just so
their outraging massacre in the Muslim lands and excessive discrimination of
Muslims at home would be justified in the name of ‘war against terrorism’, and
‘security’. And of course the world would find the absolutism to remain numb
toward America’s violation of human rights and ungodly acts over the Muslims. –
See: “Why the West fears Islam: The
enemy within.” On; www.twf.org
Quiet queer for Muslims
out-side America (like myself) to apprehend why Islam is a threat to Americans
and the West. We so often hear Islam is the most tolerant religion in the West,
we so often register that Islam and Muslims are the most victims of racial
discrimination. Yet, seldom do we see them walking the streets to protest their
so often violated rights. It is confusing when a particular subject remains
constantly under attacks from others and yet it is claimed to pose a terrifying
phobic status to the public. Paradox!
If Christianity is the
most practiced religion in the West, and still remains to be the most racist religion
there, why is there nothing like Christianophobia in the Western world? And
that is besides the fact that over eighty percent of the American military
personnel that drops the endless bombs on Baghdad and Afghanistan killing
innocent people are Christians. Yet again, aside the Israeli massacre of
thousands of Palestinian men, women and children, the Jews happens to control
more than fifty percent of American security, Economy and Political power. I
ask again, what happened to Jewophobia?
The war against Islam
in the Western world, cannot wholly and solely be blamed on September 11th,
the war against Muslims is way beyond that story which is given the title Islamophobia, this war is a war raged
against truth, against good, and against the plausibility of both
reigning in a world where hypocrisy and evil are the predominant
ruling factors.
But, “who speaks for
Muslims?” asks Dalia Mogahed (senior analyst and executive director Gallup
Center for Muslim Studies), when it’s “a community that is often discussed but
seldom heard.” Dalia described the occurrence as a “Hollow clash between the
West and Islam.” But of course the world would come to stand with Dalia in
asking ‘who speaks for Muslims’ of the Western world? According to Dr. Ali
al-Mazrui, “Muslims of the world are more sinned against than sinning.”
It is a habit of the
Americas and the West to blame every terrorist act on the religion of Islam, and
that have been only to castigate Islam’s image. But yet the multitude of
converts to Islam believes that “Islam’s doctrine is simple and rational, all
believers are equal, and it is a ‘practical’ religion which lacks priesthood.”
And that’s according to an American-Christian convert to Islam.
Again, Dr. Ali
Al-Mazrui asks “what about relations between the American People and the Muslim
people?” in his paper “Islam between clash and concord civilization: changing
relations between the Muslim world and the West” (presented at Chatham house in
2007), he explained “there has also been increasing evidence of desecration of
the Holy Quran by Americans guarding devout Muslims. This is quite apart from
the harassment of Muslims at American airports.” He further goes to tell of his
experience as a victim of the airport harassment. “Muslims who are harassed at
American and international airports are beginning to multiply. On august 3rd
2003, on arrival from overseas, I was detained at Miami airport for seven hours
under repeated interrogation. Detaining a 70year old man as a potential
terrorist,” he said “is a case-study of the new paranoia at airports.”
Dr. Ali al-Mazrui in
the same paper asked again “But are there global war-games unfolding at the
expense of the Muslim world in this day and age?” Dr. Ali iterates further, “In
this new 21st century, the values of America have continued to
diverge from the principle of Islam. As the new century unfolded, homosexuality
was not only legalized, it was in the process of being religiously
legitimated.” And that is the Western motive against the world; to degenerate
humanitarian etiquettes of moral virtues and modest characters; to promote ills
and corrupt acts; to regard nudity as ones’ self pride of beauty; to embrace
fornication and adultery as acts of freedom; to faithfully, morally and ethically
adulterate the basic mores of humanity.
And if Islam is a
religion with doctrines and dogmas that supersedes every individual rights and
ideas of its believers, which gives room only to puritanical judgments, yet
still, about twice the number of converts to the Christian faith in the Western
world submits to it (Islam) every year, why then won’t the West be
Islamophobic?
So, whither the
living-hood of the Muslims of the West? And “How can America learn to trust the
Muslim world a little more? How can the Muslim world in turn, be better
protected from American militarism? Both (trio in this case) solutions need to
restrain America’s arrogance of power.”- Dr. Ali Ameen al-Mazrui
A
Fortunate Ordeal;
“It made me felt like I
wasn’t human,” says Ahmed. “It made me felt like I was a criminal.” Little did
he know that so long he keeps bearing “Ahmed” and continues to practice Islam
in America, he’ll always be regarded as a ‘criminal’. But if his name were Dylan Roof or Craig Hicks, he’d have never been mistaken for a terrorist even if
his invention succeeded in killing nine black innocent Christians or three
young innocent American-Muslims.
Fortunately for young
Ahmed, his predicament transcended him to becoming great. President Barack
Obama invited him to the White House, and along his “hoax-bomb”. Now NASA tells young Ahmed #EngineersForAhmed. And millions around the world tweeted with
pride and compassion #IStandWithAhmed.
Something tells me Ahmed’s English teacher wishes she never accused the boy of
hoaxing a bomb, for Ahmed has transcended to becoming someone neither she nor
the entire school staffs would ever dream of becoming.
Hence, my little advice
to my young brother Ahmed is but of three great principles, with which the
noble Prophet of Islam lived; “Keep relations with those who cut you off. Do
good to them, even if they harm you. And speak the truth even if it is against
yourself.”
And to my Muslim
brothers and sisters in the West, I dedicate to you INVICTUS:
“Out
of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank
whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.
In
the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeoning
of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond
this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shades, and yet the
menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It
matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll, I am
the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”
-
By William E. Henley.
