A new strategy to combat Islamophobia

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Last week Islamic imam Hassan Sharif was fatally shot in a New Jersey mosque at predawn prayers. At a time when Islamophobia appears rampant nationwide, this attack has shocked and frightened not only New Jersey Muslims but Muslim communities across the country.

In its wake I propose to all Americans, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, a strategy that might mitigate the underlying cause of Islamophobia rather than react to its symptoms.

Who am I? I am a Muslim, a grateful immigrant to the United States for the past seven years. It may surprise many Americans that I believe in freedom of religion and freedom of speech, not only because I am here in America, but because I am a Muslim. It is part and parcel of my Islamic faith.

I bridge two cultures. I was born, raised and educated in Yemen through high school, after which I chose to go to the United States to pursue my higher education. I now hold a bachelor's degree in Islamic studies from the University of Miami, a master's in educational development from the University of Pennsylvania, and I am pursuing a Ph.D. in international educational development at the University of Minnesota.

Having lived in Yemen, the same country that bred Osama bin Laden, I intimately understand the fundamentalist Islamic ideology that often incites terrorism. Having been educated at the finest American universities, I also intimately understand the profound American doctrine of human rights.

This campaign would expose Americans to a simple message — that Islam is much broader and richer than the fundamentalist and extremist interpretations that dominate the news, and that it includes moderate interpretations, to which most American Muslims subscribe. These interpretations are strongly consistent with America's foundational constitutional human rights, including freedom of religion and freedom of speech for all people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

If done well, such a media campaign should reach all Americans — not just the minority sympathetic to building bridges but also the great majority who are indifferent or actively hostile. If done well, it would enlighten most Americans that moderate Islam is a long-standing strain in Islam that is distinct from and opposed to fundamentalist and extremist Islam and that it supports human rights and is compatible with America's Constitution. If done well, such a campaign should work rather quickly.

Moderate American Muslims are under attack, tarred with the same brush as fundamentalist and extremist Muslims. The blanket vitriol against all Islam presents a ripe opportunity for moderate American Muslims to mount this public educational campaign as a gentle but effective response. The proposed campaign would aim to remove American fear and hostility toward moderate American Muslims, to isolate any extremists in American Muslim communities, and eventually to use the voice of moderate American Islam to spread the teachings of moderate Islam worldwide as a weapon against fundamentalist and extremist Islam everywhere in the world.

Would this not be a better way to advance human rights than bombing the extremists?

Moderate American Muslims are those who not only subscribe to the Islamic faith or culture but also embrace the rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution as integral to their faith and culture. These rights include, explicitly, freedom of religion and freedom of speech, and they condemn all violence against anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, exercising these rights.

None of this means that moderate Muslims do not maintain the firm conviction that Islam is the one true faith for the world. Neither America nor the strategy I propose here asks Islam (or any other religion, for that matter) to surrender such convictions. Rather, moderate Muslims believe that true Islam — correctly interpreted from the Qur'an, the life of the Prophet, and centuries of Islamic scholarship and jurisprudence — calls for peace and mercy toward all faiths. They believe that God (Allah in Arabic) will bring all people to himself in his own good time and way without help from human coercion and violence. They consider fundamentalist Islam an atavistic distortion of their religion that has lost its way.

Two strategies are currently in use to reduce American hostility toward Muslims — anti-Islamophobia campaigns and interfaith efforts. The first is ineffective and dangerous, the second excellent but slow.

The first strategy, anti-Islamophobia efforts, attributes American hostility to bigotry and aims to reduce bigotry by showing Muslims as good, likable, normal people. While there are certainly plenty of bigots, I believe bigotry is a misdiagnosis of why the great majority of Americans are hostile to Islam and Muslims. An anti-bigotry strategy is ineffective because, missing the correct diagnosis, it is unconvincing to most Americans. It is dangerous because it protects extremist Muslims as much as moderate Muslims, allowing them to hide under the virtuous banner of American tolerance.

The second strategy, interfaith efforts, seeks to forge strong, knowledgeable personal relationships between moderate Muslim Americans and other Americans by bringing them together for mutual dialogue and service projects. Interfaith efforts are important and should continue. However, they take years and reach only those open to building interfaith bridges, not the great majority of Americans who turn away at any mention of Islam.

The new strategy, aimed at this broader American audience, is additive to interfaith efforts and is in no way intended to supplant them.