Dear Islamophobes: Your Racism Is Putting Us All In Danger

WASHINGTON — Former President George W. Bush was a lot of things, but one thing he wasn’t was soft. He responded to the attack on 9/11 by invading not one but two countries, authorized the use of torture and indefinite detention and launched a mass surveillance program. When the occupation of Iraq turned against the U.S., he surged more troops at it.

Bush did all of this, he felt, to keep the country safe. (He was wrong, of course; his decisions essentially created the self-described Islamic State.) But there was one more thing he did, not because he was soft or in the grips of political correctness, but because he knew it would make the country safer: He embraced Muslims and regularly referred to Islam as a «religion of peace.»Whatever horrors befell Muslims overseas on Bush’s orders, here at home, he worked to be as inclusive of the Muslim community as possible.

Surprising as it may seem today, that effort mostly worked. Anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political parties in Europe have stirred up a tremendous amount of Islamophobia there, and such attitudes naturally drive feelings of anger and betrayal. For a young man or woman on the edge, it can be just enough to push them into radicalization, and it’s not a coincidence that Europe has seen far more homegrown attacks. Yet we here in the U.S. seem to be barreling headlong for that same cliff.

For members of the national security community, Bush’s approach is 101-level strategy, which accounts for its longstanding bipartisan support. It’s why Bush refused to say «radical Islamic terror» and why President Barack Obama followed his lead. But with the rise of the ultra-conservative wing of the GOP, and the surge of presidential contenders like Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz, all of whom have demonized Muslims in one way or another, it is nearly a requirement for a GOP candidate to dog whistle, or worse, against Muslims. And voters have rewarded them: Trump, Carson and Cruz are now vying for the lead.

In his Oval Office address on Sunday night, Obama took aim at Islamophobia.

«We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam,» he said.

On Dec. 2, an American citizen of Pakistani descent and his wife, a Pakistani-born legal resident, had become radicalized enough to launch an attack in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people.

It is not easy, but it is doable for global spy agencies to track the movements of known or suspected militants. It is impossible to track the mind. If someone already in the United States goes through a personal evolution and decides to lash out violently, there is very little authorities can do to prevent it — especially when Congress has shown no ability to control the flow of weapons of war within the United States. Instead of focusing on Syrian refugees literally fleeing from ISIS, the goal instead should be to stop people already here from joining them in spirit.

In his address, Obama also argued that anti-Muslim bigotry plays right into the hands of ISIS.

«If we’re to succeed in defeating terrorism, we must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies, rather than push them away through suspicion and hate,» Obama said.

When politicians push to block Syrian refugees from coming to the United States — or, more grotesquely, as Cruz did, suggest only the Christian refugees be welcomed — they are pretending to be advancing the national security interests of the U.S. But the Muslim-Americans already here, and others on the path to conversion, see this bigotry and scapegoating. Some chalk it up to political expediency and do their best to ignore it; others see it as an affront to their human dignity and resent it; a few become furious; fewer still combine that fury with some mental instability or vulnerability. And from there, it’s not hard to get an assault rifle.

The challenge for the U.S., which Obama attempted to address in his speech on Sunday, will be how to put the racist genie back in the bottle. Now that politicians sense an opening by exploiting Islamophobia, the less scrupulous ones will drive right through it.

GOP leaders, if such a thing exists, seem incapable of stopping it. Only voters can stop it. If voters decide that bashing Muslims only makes the country less safe in the long run, and reject candidates who stir up fear, fewer candidates will try it in the future. That’s how politicians work. And without politicians amplifying the racism, it can dissipate on the ground, as it did when Bush tamped it down.

But the politics have turned so sharply since then that even Obama felt the need to say a few lines about the Muslim community’s responsibility to reel in radicalism. It’s a trope that many find offensive, as Christians are rarely asked to condemn violence by Christians, or white men to condemn an attack carried out by a white man.

We cannot deny «the fact that an extremist ideology has spread within some Muslim communities,» Obama said. «It’s a real problem that Muslims must confront without excuse. But just as it is the responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization, it is the responsibility of all Americans, of every faith, to reject discrimination.»