Does Tragedy in Boston Mean Persecution for Regular Muslims?

[This was an article I wrote for the student newspaper - it was changed by them without my knowledge, so I have re-published the version I want to be read here].

This week, the bombers involved in the recent Boston marathon massacre have been identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnev. The two brothers - of Chechen origin and Muslim faith - are naturalised U.S citizens. Whilst the arrest of these suspects has been met with joy by the majority of the American population, for the American-Islamic community, this arrest is a bitter-sweet occurrence. 

Not long before the dust had settled in Boston, Muslim groups had begun to urge their members to display an active presence on social media: calling for prayers for victims, promising to provide aid, and vehemently condemning the perpetrators of the crime. On Monday April the 14th, Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was quick to issue the following statement: ‘American Muslims, like Americans of all backgrounds, condemn in the strongest possible terms today’s cowardly bomb attack on participants and spectators of the Boston Marathon’. Meanwhile, the Muslim Public Affairs Council called upon ‘all of us as Americans to work together to bring those responsible to justice.’ Why have individuals and organisations felt the need to be so blatant and vocal regarding their support for justice - and, implicitly, eschew any suspicion of Muslim involvement in the crime?

As David Gibson, journalist for ‘religionnews.com’ argues, ‘almost as soon as the smoke cleared around Copley Square [the Muslim community] knew that some would immediately point the finder of blame in their direction’. At times of tragedy and terrorism, the Muslim community recognisably suffer an increased level of persecution and suspicion towards them; even when, in cases such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing the perpetrator of said crime was uncovered to be Timothy McVeigh, a white, American militiaman. ‘The Los Angeles Times’ corroborated Gibson’s argument, suggesting that there has been a great fear in the Muslim community, because they have ‘dark memories about the pervasive suspicion‘ they the received following the 9/11 attacks. Gibson and the Times’s arguments are not without evidence: from the moment of explosion, Muslim’s became the target of a backlash. On his radio show, conservative host Glenn Beck - seemingly unaware of evidence contrariwise, i.e. Oklahoma, or the various mass-shootings in American history, such as the 2012 Aurora massacre - declared that ‘no American citizen blows up random people; that’s a Middle Eastern scene, that’s not an American scene’. Affirmations such as this would suggest that, for many, it never crossed their mind that the perpetrators could be anything but Islamic. 

Christina Warner, campaign director of Shoulder-to-Shoulder - a national interfaith alliance committed to combatting religious prejudice - argues that ‘discrimination against Muslims has been a real dynamic in the United States’. Before the Tsarnevs were arrested, a Saudi man - himself wounded in the bombing - was falsely accused and taken into custody, causing a substantial rift with the Saudi community. Arguably, when a tragedy such as the Boston bombing occurs, every individual with a Middle Eastern background becomes a suspect; as spokespeople from CAIR have commented, ‘Sikh men who wear beards and turbans as part of their faith are often targeted by bigots who mistake them as Muslims’.

However, speaking last week Naeem Baig, President of the Islamic Circle of North America said that he had been impressed by the ‘cautious and balanced approach from the media’, asserting that ‘it shows a lot of responsibility on their part, not jumping to conclusions’. Yet, Baig also added that the religion and ethnicity of the criminals proved to be a ‘matter of concern’ for the Muslim community; now the perpetrators have been found to be Muslim extremists, these concerns have become even more pressing. Steve King, a congressman from Iowa suggested that if a Saudi or other Middle Eastern national was involved in the bombing, serious immigration reforms could be in order. King, speaking to the ‘National Review Online’ stated that the nationality of the bombers would almost definitely require the U.S. government to ‘take a look at the picture’: suggesting a further tightening of already strict laws on movement within America. 

Looking at another side of the argument, perhaps Americans are to some extent justified in harbouring suspicions against the Islamic community. A 2011 report by the American National Counterterrorism Centre revealed that 70 percent of terrorism is committed by Muslim terrorist groups. And, as many anti-islamists Americans might be keen to note, the 9/11 bombings - recognised as the worst terrorist attack in the U.S in recorded history - were indeed committed by Islamists, 15 (out of 19) were from Saudi Arabia alone. As the website ‘Religion of Peace’ has observed, since 1st January 2013 2,807 individuals worldwide have been killed as a result of terrorist attacks committed by Islamists. 

In addition, some have claimed that Muslims falsely portray investigations into terrorist attacks such as the Boston bombings as religious man-hunts. Robert Spencer, of ‘Jihad Watch’, is said by NBC to have claimed that ‘it [is] appalling how Muslims frequently attempt to portray such tragedies as attacks against them, rather than against the true victims of the crime’. Rush Limbaugh has gone as far to suggest that - due to political correctness - some politicians and the media have been terrified of the suggestion that the bombers would be Muslim: ‘they’re [the media] frightening people against coming forward with information that might offend people’. 

Yet, despite the figures, Spencer’s testament, and Limbaugh’s criticism I would suggest that the persecution of ‘normal’ American Muslims is wholly unwarranted, their fear and outrage is appropriate, and that the media have not been as politically correct as Limbaugh implies. When the bombings occurred, Daisy Khan, director of the American Society of Muslim Advancement started to use the twitter hashtag ‘#ihopeitsnotamuslim.’ Sadly, her hopes have not been fulfilled. Attacks such as Boston continue to fuel hatred for religious groups, as Khan attests ‘it will feed into the perception than Muslims are terrorists. Children are more likely to be bullied [...] individuals at work will be treated with suspicion by their coworkers’. Evidence of growing anti-Muslim bigotry is on the rise; since September 11th the Justice Department has investigated more than 800 incidents of racial violence, and there has been a 150% increase in workplace discrimination. Fear of persecution by association is a real, everyday, widespread issue, and it will not stop being an issue until the day - not when terrorism is abolished - but when racial stereotyping is annihilated: that day seems to be but a distant dream.