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While teaching one of my classes several years ago, I had the students discuss the situation of Muslims in America. One student said he could not understand why a devout Muslim would want to immigrate here. “If Islam is so central to their lives,” he asked, “shouldn’t they remain in a majority Muslim country? Or at least immigrate somewhere with larger, more established Muslim communities, such as France?” Then another student, who was the president of the university’s Muslim Students’ Association, jumped in. He said “Actually, I cannot think of a country anywhere, including in the Middle East, where a Muslim can practice their religion more freely, no matter what kind of Muslim they are.
His point was that in many Muslim states, certain approaches or denominations of Islam are sanctioned by the state while others are discouraged or repressed. To put it bluntly, Shiites may have a rough time in Saudi Arabia or Sunnis in Iran may face some issues at times. But not in America, where you can practice your religion, whatever it is, as you please. And while countries like France and Switzerland are enacting bans on certain kinds of religious coverings or minarets, everyone remains free of the state’s interference in secular America – where ‘free’ includes the freedom to be religious in whatever manner you prefer.
This is something Americans should be proud of. They should also take pride in the fact that after 9/11 and following other incidents, the government in Washington – both under George W. Bush and Barack Obama – did not succumb to any temptation towards “Muslim baiting.” It would have been easy for leaders in Washington to shoot off some vindictive words about Islam, about Muslims in general, and they may well have gotten more votes for doing so in the nationalist charged atmosphere following attacks by Islamists. They refrained, however, always insisting that theirs was not a war against Islam and that America was proud of its Muslim citizens, who are overwhelmingly hard working, honest folk contributing to the basic fabric of the country. I can think of more than a few top political leaders in other states who might not have shown the same response.
Where Americans might take less pride, unfortunately, is in a few well known individuals’ approach to the issue and American media’s attitude towards Muslims. The example comes from a week ago, when someone at a town hall election rally in New Hampshire asked Republican candidate Donald Trump the following question: “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. We know he’s not even an American. Birth certificate, man! We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?”
Although Mr. Trump was not too pleased with the question, grumbling a “We need this question? This is the first question?” before the man even finished speaking, he answered with: “We're going to be looking at a lot of different things. You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We're going to be looking at that and many other things." This set off a media frenzy almost immediately.
Which is when the really shameful part of the event occurred – most media outlets carried headlines or comments from others about how Mr. Trump should have corrected the questioner and replied that “President Obama is not a Muslim.” Chris Christie, another Republican candidate, quickly went on the air to state that “I would just tell you that if somebody at one of my town hall meetings said something like that, I would correct them and say, now, the president’s a Christian and he was born in this country.” Something similar happened during the 2008 election, when a questioner in Arizona asked John McCain about Mr. Obama being “an Arab.” Mr. McCain replied “No ma'am, Obama is a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues." It is as if “Arab” is the antonym of “decent family man and citizen.”
American media and key elites are acting as if accusing someone of being a Muslim or an Arab is an insult. That's the really glaring issue here. People with varying mental capacities are free to think whatever they want about Mr. Obama, but the correction that Trump, McCain and the media should have made centers on the Islamophobia and racism of the comments, not whether or not Obama is a Muslim or an Arab. The correction should have been along the lines of "America is an open, diverse country where anyone should be able to become President if they are born American -- it shouldn't matter if they are Christian, Jewish, Hindu, black, Arab, atheist or Muslim (which Obama is not)."
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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