Muslim leaders: Paris attacks misrepresent Islam

It was a goal that was nearly immediately achieved as Muslims, mosques, and Muslim-owned businesses across Paris, and in a few cases, the United States, were harassed and vandalized in the days following the brutal attacks.

The American people depend on all leaders and media for an open and disciplined debate about acts of terror and ways to respond relying on historical context and multiple perspectives, including those from Muslim, Sikh, Arab, South Asian and other communities here in the US and overseas. “Then ISIS will be able to say, ‘I told you so”. His thesis is that once the Muslims reach the figure around 10 percent of a country’s population, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population by demanding the introduction of halal, hijab and Sharia law for themselves. Those youth whom ISIS wants to attract to their barbaric cause instead see first hand that a response of love from non-Muslims is far more powerful than the hate to which ISIS invites them.

The day after the Paris Attacks, TERRORISM HAS NO RELIGION trended on Twitter, indicating we are on the right track of understanding.

In other issues of the magazine, ISIS announced plans to “drag the masses into battle… such that each individual will go to the side which he supports”. And often the two groups are falsely associated.

He says fighting Islamophobia doesn’t mean shutting down those who need help, such as the Syrian refugees.

And firstly, one of the most important answers is that there is no one simple answer. And most certainly my heart sank as I saw the horrific aftermath of the Paris attacks.

Even if the Paris attacks turn out to be transformative event; they’re likely to represent another turn in the very long war against global jihad. A succession of governors, mostly Republicans, announced that they would not allow any Syrian applicants to be placed in their states, vowing to block the government’s plans to resettle a mere 10.000 of those fleeing the war in Syrian into the US. (There is an all-too-real record of extremists operating through mosques.) How should we balance compassion for refugees and a liberal border regime against the risk of terrorist infiltration?

There’s precedent for such a backlash. After the assault at the office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo early this year, Azhar cleric Modi Al-din Afifi said, “We distance ourselves from these criminal acts and we emphasize our rejection of these criminal acts, because we recognize the right of all people to live in a peaceful world”. Where are the million Muslim anti-ISIS protest marches? The solution to the insane chaos into which we have been dragged since 9/11 begins with an active rejection of the ugly dualisms of “us” and “them”, of believers vs infidels and of Westerners/Europeans vs the Muslim other.

Muslim leaders said such divisive discourse only fuels the identity crisis facing young Muslims.

The attacks on Paris this weekend seemed to follow Al-Suri’s script. Four of the terrorists have been identified as French or Belgian nationals who were recruited in the West. And if these early incidents are any indication, anti-Muslim sentiment will again surge in Europe, further distancing Muslim communities.

Nonetheless, ISIS’s strategy is not a fait accompli. It is up to the citizens of the world to limit the playing field of fanatics by realizing that the essence of every faith tradition is based on compassion. “Responsible governments have to communicate that terrorism, while terrible, does not present an existential threat”.

Still, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Micah Zenko notes that “terrorism represents only a small fraction of overall violent deaths”. British scholar Karen Armstrong has rightly said that “the ISIS is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century”.