The Wrongly Accused

The act of bombing in itself is not remarkable. It happens on a daily basis across the globe. Be they by religious fanatics, suicide bombers or other organizations, deaths occur from bombings every day. Yet on Monday, April 15, bombs went off on U.S. soil at the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring nearly 200 participants and spectators. That was reason enough for panic and alarm. However, a group of competitors hailed from Newtown, Conn., who were running in honor of those lost at Sandy Hook this past December. The bombs went off at the end of the marathon, with the final mile dedicated to Newtown. The bombers ravaged not only the marathon participants but also affected those involved with Sandy Hook.Now, as we did in December, my fellow Exonians took to Facebook and Twitter, posting statuses reading, "May our prayers be extended to the victims of the Boston Marathon," or, "Our hearts go out to Boston. The terrorists who did this must be held responsible." I agree, as most do, that the perpetrators of the attack must be put to trial for their actions and sentenced accordingly. Yet words and their phrasing have power. Too many people were writing about the Muslims, how it must have been their doing: first 9/11, now this. This is by no means acceptable.The bombers turned out to be Muslim, or at least were identified by the media as Muslim. However, nobody can judge their religious beliefs and values except themselves. Yet with the older brother dead and the younger brother injured in the hospital, those on the case have had to investigate the brothers’ faith. The older brother, they found out, acted out one Friday during Jummah prayers, when the speaker compared Martin Luther King and his message of peace to Muhammad. He told the speaker he was an unbeliever and said he was contaminating people’s minds. The mosque officials told him to either refrain from sharing his opinions or to leave the mosque. The imam at the same mosque, the Islamic Institute of Boston, spoke out, saying, "I would not be willing to do a funeral for him. This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim." As much as we might wish to classify him as a Muslim, he was, in many ways, not. For better or worse, we have freedom of religion in this country, allowing the practice of Tamerlan’s form of Islam. Yet what he practiced is not the same Islam most American Muslims practice. A tweet I saw summed it up perfectly: "Muslims view ‘Islamic’ terrorists the same way most Christians view the Westboro Baptist Church..." Their Islam is not the Islam of nearly all American Muslims. When we stereotype all Muslims as jihadists and terrorists, we are characterizing a group of people by the extremists, not the majority.As a community, we cannot stereotype and pass judgment on one group of people because of the extremists’ actions. The adherents to Islam on this campus are wonderful people. If you don’t already know one, try to meet someone. If you don’t know anything about Islam, I recommend taking a class to fix that. We simply cannot allow a tolerance of hate and distrust to continue. For those of you uneducated on Islam, among the five pillars of Islam are charitable giving to the poor and fasting, so that adherents can better understand the hardships of hunger and starvation. The religious values are peaceful. As in all religions, however, some believers take cultural customs and certain religious doctrine and combine them to the extreme. These are the people whom Americans often call terrorists.I think, however, we must ask ourselves how responsible we are for helping to create them. How welcoming are we to them? How much do we respect their culture and religion? How many snide, Islamophobic remarks do people make both on purpose, and on accident? I was in a grocery store one time and overheard another shopper saying loudly, "That woman should take her headscarf off. That isn’t necessary [to be worn] in this country." I know people who don’t consider the Qur’an a sacred text. If we had more respect for the religion, people would be less likely to make stereotypes of Muslims bombing every time a tragedy occurs. Many iconic bombers are not Muslim: the Atlanta Olympics bombing, the Oklahoma City and the Unabomber are all examples of this.Although the stereotyping of Muslims is an issue in American media, a change needs to occur on how the media portrays the news. Elaborate tales of manhunts, however enthralling, garner the country’s, if not the world’s, attention. They allow the bombers a much larger piece of history than they deserve. The focus should be on the victims, the city and their acts of heroism. Many runners kept on running to the hospital to give blood. People, while the bombers were still on the loose, opened up their homes to marathon guests. The resilience of Boston and the U.S. should be the media’s focus, not the actions of the bombers, thrilling as they may be. Maybe eventually we can get to the point where we can focus on how we can help those affected by tragedy, instead of idolizing those who have caused it no matter what religious or ethnic ties the instigators might have.