This image was screencapped from a video put out by
Etudiants Musulmans de France (Muslim Students of France)
in response to the Paris attacks.
At least 130 people have been confirmed dead in the terrorist attacks on Paris on Friday, November 13th. ISIL has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and French authorities are still searching for suspects.
The news is shocking and horrifying. Many of us know people in France – had loved ones whose safety we feared for on Friday night.
These are the facts of the violence on Friday, and yet, the attacks on Paris have sparked even more violence reverberating around the Western world: an apparent rise in overt Islamophobia. Prior to the attacks, Paris was far from a necessarily welcome place for Muslims, but since the events of the thirteenth Islamophobic acts specifically in supposed retaliation for ISIL’s terrorist attacks have spiked.
Arsonists burned down a mosque in Peterborough, Ontario. Mosques in the States were vandalized and attacked in Nebraska, Texas, and Conneticut. Two American men have been arrested for threatening to attack other mosques.
Muslim places of residence have also been targeted: an Egyptian student’s dorm room at the University of Conneticut was vandalized the same night as the attacks in Paris, and a house shooting occurred at a Muslim family home in Orlando, Florida.
A Toronto couple placed a sign outside of their home asking if Muslims were sorry about what happened in Paris. The demand that Muslims apologize for the terrorist attacks in Paris is reflective of a highly selective perspective of who is responsible for violence. As has been noted, whenever Christians commit acts of terror, even when the terror is enacted in the name of Christianity, the Christian community is not asked to apologize for these acts, or to explicitly express their condemnation of them. Condemnation is assumed.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made frighteningly Nazi-like comments suggesting that he would have Muslims wear a marker to identify themselves. Terror, it seems, has sparked more terror. The reactions to the terrorist attacks in Paris have created a heightened fear that Muslims in Western countries will be attacked or killed. Particularly vulnerable are women who wear the hijab and the niqab, as they are very visible targets for violence. If we want to eliminate terrorism from among us, then we cannot afford to exclude the terror inflicted upon Muslims by non-Muslims in the Western world.
I do not fully understand the reasons why so many Westerners are so ready to think of all Muslims as terrorists, or terrorist-sympathizers, nor do I know what I can say that has not already been said in attempt to convince people otherwise. I think the best thing I can say right now is to encourage us all to remember that no religion is a monolith. As YA author John Green has noted,
“Religion is a response to revelation, and different people respond to revelation differently…With every revelation some people respond by making the world better and some respond by making it worse…The revelation isn’t the problem. We are.”
Here’s to making the world better.