Two days after Black Tuesday, a Pakistani friend reported to me that an individual had accused him of being a "sleeper terrorist" and threatened him with physical harm.
Later that week, I chanced upon a truck at a gas station, the trailer bed decked with the words, "LYNCH THE RAG HEADS." Stars and Stripes flanked the message.
That same day, CNN reported that an immigrant from India, a bearded Sikh working at an Arizona gas station, was shot dead in an apparent hate crime.
Since Sept. 11, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and South Asian community organizations across America have fielded several thousand reports of hate-related incidents, ranging from physical harm to verbal abuse.
From the moment Americans were told that the perpetrators of the attacks were young Muslim men from a variety of countries, and that there may be thousands more inconspicuous "sleeper terrorists" in the country, waiting to rise in a "jihad" at any moment, the die was cast.
The only jihad confronting the "Middle Eastern-looking" population in America is the struggle for social acceptance and physical survival. The choices are tough — cling to the icons of their traditions, such as a beard, headgear, and the mosque, and risk harassment, possibly death; toss aside the traditions, and risk being labeled a "sleeper terrorist," and as my Pakistani friend learned, still court death. Some of my "Middle Eastern-looking friends" have been consciously avoiding social gatherings. These deliberations are out of place in a country that prides itself on its tolerance.
Indeed, the administration and the media should step forward and accept responsibility for flagging off acts of physical and verbal "terrorism" against ethnic minorities in this country. When Bush used the word "crusade" to describe his "War on terrorism," he stood the Arab and Muslim world on its head. Resurrecting visions of the medieval wars against the Muslims and Jews in the Holy Land was probably not Bush’s intention, and his spokesman said as much later. But it was a dangerous slip of the tongue and set the tone for some of the most extreme views ever aired in the American media.
Ann Coulter wrote in the National Review, "The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult." She concluded, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." In a follow-up piece, she called for singling out "swarthy males" for stricter airport checks. An avalanche of protests led to the National Review sacking her, but she continues to be syndicated nationwide. Appearing on Rivera, CNN, and Politically Incorrect she celebrated that the article gave her "great publicity."
Daniel Pipes, a former State Department aide, wrote in a column for the London Telegraph (Sept. 13) "...Islamists constitute a small, but significant, minority of all Muslims, perhaps 10 to 15 percent of the population. Many of them are peaceable in appearance, but they all must be considered potential killers."
"Islamism is fascism," Daniel Pipes reiterated in a Salon interview on Nov. 9, charging that leading American Muslim groups want Islamic law to rule the US and must be carefully watched.
Even casual one-line news bites reek of sloppiness. "4 Indian soldiers killed by Muslims," winked a CNN scrolling news line ( Nov. 11). The killers hung around after the deed for the reporters to get a census of their religious beliefs? Determined to find out, I logged on to an Indian news service and discovered that the soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber, perhaps a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the separatist group fighting for Kashmir’s independence from India.
So, was CNN’s getting the number of perpetrators wrong — "Muslims" implies more than one — a peccadillo or did someone get creative and decide to throw in a few extra "Muslims" for effect? Since CNN could not have gotten away with "4 Indian soldiers killed by a Muslim," there is more than meets the eye.
There is nothing subliminal or subtle about the media’s association of Islam with a violent, politically motivated crime, nor is it a universally applied journalistic truism. CNN will not report, "A crew of Southern Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, and Pentecostals have successfully dropped 15,000 lb. Daisy Cutters on Taleban forces."
Thomas Friedman, an unparalleled fact distorter, usually covers his bases glibly. But caught off guard by his own post-Sept. 11 Islamophobia, he screeched in the NY Times (Oct. 30): "Since September 11, the president of the United States has given several speeches about how Islam is a tolerant religion, with no core hostility to the West. But the leader of Saudi Arabia, the keeper of the Muslim Holy places, hasn’t given one." The miracle of an Internet search will reveal several speeches by King Fahd and other Saudi and Arab leaders, denouncing the Sept. 11 attacks and expressing support for the victims. Visit the Saudi Embassy website and a window instantly pops-up with this message, "whoever committed these criminal acts, which violate all divine religions and all religious, moral and human values, is not a Muslim. Islam specifically refutes terrorists and terrorism. If it turns out, beyond reasonable doubt, that those who carried out these acts were people who claim to belong to Islam, they are Muslim in name only." This was part of the speech the Saudi ambassador to the United States gave on Sept. 13.
Robert McNamara once noted that we lost Vietnam because the government had never made an effort to understand the Vietnamese culture. This war requires a sincere response on many fronts — military, cultural, diplomatic, humanitarian, public relations, but above all it requires us to seek our own answers, think independently, and act.
And let’s tell the likes of Coulter, CNN and Friedman that lazy name-calling, woolly characterizations, and xenophobic bombasts are easier to take from the terrorists.
— Nadeem Khan is a global affairs expert and a free-lance writer based in Dayton, Ohio. He heads a media bias tracking organization called Sloppy Journalism and also hosts a weekly global affairs television show.
