Dear Hillary Clinton,
As a white American with the most powerful position in the world at your fingertips, you might think that actions matter more than words. When it comes to international affairs and national security, few would challenge the argument that you're the most seasoned presidential candidate (though to be real, you're first out of two, and the closest your opponent has come to addressing foreign policy this election season involved a taco bowl and a tweet.)
That said, I'm skeptical that you value the wellbeing of marginalized Americans as much as your political standing. Here’s why:
Earlier this week, in the wake of our country’s deadliest mass shooting in modern history, you said what many in your cohort—including U.S. President Barack Obama—have refused to say: You’re “happy” to use the term “radical Islamism” to describe the massacre of 49 people by an abusive, homophobic, self-described Muslim shooting a legally-owned assault rifle. In the same interview, you said, “From my perspective, it matters what we do, not what we say. It mattered we got bin Laden, not what name we called him.”
Hold up—what?
Since when do generalizations and perverted labels not matter? I mean, I get it. We got bin Laden (three cheers for 'merica), and just like then, we'll "get" ISIS. But while bin Laden is dead, there are millions of Muslims in the U.S. (and more than a billion worldwide) who still care very much about who is associated with their religion and culture.
Believe it or not, a vast majority of Muslims don’t consider Osama bin Laden, Omar Mateen, or anyone who commits murder (still a sin the last time I checked my Quran) under the guise of spiritual glory a true Muslim. And if they do, chances are that they themselves are so oppressed that they're looking for any excuse to exact revenge on those who build settlements on their land, send drones over their homes, or turned the word Islam—which translates directly to “submission” or “peace”—into a word always muttered in the same breath as terrorism, radicalism, and even evil.
Believe it or not, a vast majority of Muslims don’t consider Osama bin Laden, Omar Mateen, or anyone who commits murder (still a sin the last time I checked my Quran) under the guise of spiritual glory a true Muslim.
So what does this have to do with Orlando? First of all, Omar Mateen wasn’t directed by anyone but his own disturbed conscience, which was probably influenced by the fact that he was struggling to come to terms with his own homosexuality. ISIS may have claimed responsibility for the attack, but let’s be real: Terrorist organizations would benefit from claiming any attack that would make them more terrifying—especially if the only person who could corroborate the story is dead.
Furthermore, if we're going by traditional Islamic beliefs, Mateen didn't even meet the minimum standards. Right off the bat, we know he was a regular consumer of alcohol. Multiple witnesses have confirmed that he frequented Pulse nightclub and got belligerently drunk. Alcohol is forbidden by the Quran—strike one. Mateen also used a gay dating app to try and meet up with other men, which probably means he was interesting in having sex with them. While I personally don't believe homosexuality explicitly contradicts Islam, technically speaking, sex before marriage does. And so does adultery—strikes two and three.
So far, the only evidence we have that Mateen was a "radicalized Muslim" is that he supposedly called 911 to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State before his shooting spree. However, it's still unclear whether Mateen even knew much about ISIS at all considering he's also pledged allegiance to Hezbollah and al Qaeda, who are sworn enemies both with each other and with ISIS. Additionally, Mateen checked Facebook while he was holding hostages to see if his attack had gone viral. Sounds more like an unhinged, violent narcissist seeking international attention than a "radicalized Muslim." Yet the Islam angle has dominated mainstream discourse of this attack.
Take a second to remember the 2015 Charleston church massacre and the subsequent media coverage. Any inquiry into the shooter's motives (which was racism) was brushed aside by discussions of gun control, mental health, and American poverty. These are all concrete issues in the U.S. which can be linked to death and violence.
But the rise of ISIS and "radical Islam" is more of a threat to Muslims in the Middle East than it is to Americans. Thousands of innocent people are being killed in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and beyond by people who claim to be the rightful leaders of an Islamic Caliphate, and millions more have been displaced. In fact, more innocent people have been killed by American and American-supported airstrikes in response to ISIS than have been in America by ISIS or ISIS supporters.
the rise of ISIS and "radical Islam" is more of a threat to Muslims in the Middle East than it is to Americans.
And you, Mrs. Clinton, have steadfastly supported almost every attack by American armed forces in the Middle East since before your days as secretary of state. Furthermore, you continue to call for and support robust military action in the Middle East—so if we're talking about "what we do" and not "what we say," we've done a lot of murdering.
Conflating the terms “radical” and “Islam” to say what happened in Orlando was an ISIS plot isn't just plain wrong, it's pretty damn close to flat-out saying that Islam is America's enemy—which a quick Google search of “Trump + America + Islam” will tell you is really making life uncomfortable, if not dangerous, for a lot of Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans.
And if “radical Islam” is really America’s enemy, how will that play out in the long run? Fighting a war between two armies is one thing, but a war against an entire ideology is another. What you're happy to call "radical Islam" is almost completely reactionary. The Middle East has endured decades of oppression, destruction, poverty, and death at the hands of American and American-backed leaders. Many of these people are uneducated or undereducated, poor, and have little recourse but the comfort of their religion. What happens to poor people with little confidence in government and society? Obama said it best in a 2008 address to American working-class voters: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them.”
And so goes the cycle of hate...
For some time now, Obama has refused to use terms like "radical Islam" out of sensitivity to those communities, and demagogues like Donald Trump have openly criticized him for it. (You know what else the GOP candidate has said? That Muslim-American communities are harboring terrorists, even though nearly two out of every five Al-Qaeda plots threatening the U.S. since 9/11 were prevented with help from Muslim communities in the U.S.)
When you slander an already-marginalized people’s religion by associating it with innate violence and hate, a few things happen: You add to the collective anxiety of non-Muslim Americans fearing for their safety. You alienate Muslim-Americans, whose support has proven to help stop common enemies. And you give your actual enemies more credibility in the war against you.
I realize that you have an election to win, and I realize that your opponent is as worthy as a weasel at the Four Seasons. If anything, Trump's meteoric rise should wake you up to the importance of "what we say." As an Arab-American with deep ties to Islam, I urge you to consider the livelihoods of others like me when you speak about our culture in broad strokes when discussing the likes of Omar Mateen and Osama bin Laden. Consider the millions of Muslims whose religion is constantly dragged through the dirt. Consider how nervous and impressionable the American public can be in times like these. Mateen attacked a group of marginalized Americans for their identity—don't do the same to us.
Sincerely,
An Arab-American
