Obama’s reassurance

Published February 5, 2016

AMERICA’S Muslim community in particular and the Muslim world in general must welcome the comforting words President Barack Obama uttered when he visited a Baltimore mosque on Wednesday to reassure his listeners that “you fit in here” and that Muslims were part of the American nation.

In what can be considered his second major outreach to the Muslim world since his historic 2009 Cairo address, President Obama’s supportive words come at a time when the fire of Islamophobia in the aftermath of the St Bernardino atrocity is being stoked by right-wing elements, including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Without naming Mr Trump, President Obama denounced in unequivocal terms what he called “inexcusable political rhetoric” emanating from the election campaign, with children being “bullied” and “mosques vandalised”.

He was categorical that Americans must reject “a politics that seeks to manipulate prejudice or bias, and targets people because of religion”.

The visit, his first to an American mosque since becoming president, was, of course, made with an eye on the presidential election, but its contents should be seen in the correct perspective, for Muslims worldwide have to suffer in more ways than one because of the horrific deeds of a tiny minority among them. As the Baltimore community leaders told the president in a meeting, they had to suffer discrimination, feared their neighbours and were “constantly under surveillance”.

President Obama’s speech coincided with yet another crime that added to the disgrace heaped on Muslims: the Afghan Taliban shot dead a 10-year-old boy, who had been a child soldier, on his way to school. The incident underlines the extent of extremism — in fact, militarisation — in Muslim societies.

Not only did the Afghan militants have no qualms about taking their revenge on the boy, his own family had allowed him to take part in the fighting.

The boy’s murder cannot be dismissed as specific to Afghan society; in Nigeria, the Boko Haram militia has used boys and girls as soldiers and suicide bombers, because the brains behind terrorism are following an age-old axiom — catch them young. What are Muslim societies and governments doing about this?

As last year’s Safoora Goth incident in Karachi shows, mass murderers do not emerge from madressahs alone; even institutes of higher learning can produce killers. A military response to terrorism is no doubt needed, but a greater challenge lies in saving the younger generation from falling prey to brutal ideologies couched in religious terms.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2016

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