Not all Muslims are terrorists
When I read the news on April 15th about the Boston bombing, the first thought that came to my head was, “Who in their right mind would do such an awful, unnecessary and inhumane thing to innocent people?” and my second thought was, “Please, don’t let the suspect be a Muslim.”
Unfortunately, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the suspect of the bombing, is a “Muslim”. The reason I put quotations around the word Muslim is because Tsarnaev is not a true Muslim; he is not someone who has respect for humanity or someone who values innocent lives; he is not a person who believes in peace and love and humanity. Islam has absolutely nothing to do with the promotion of any form of violence whatsoever. The bomber of Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh, was a Christian, but yet his actions were not deemed represenative of his faith. His own evil acts were his own.
“We need to educate our family and friends about Islam so that these misconceptions and stereotypes no longer exist,” said Farah Alucozai ’13. “And remember ,if you ever want to learn about Islam, don’t base it off the followers but base it off the religion itself, because there are several kinds of Muslims, but only one kind of Islam.”
Because of terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and all people part of the terrorist groups who kill in the supposed name of “Islam”, the entire Muslim population has had to deal with blow after blow, the ensuing stereotypes and an excessive amount of racial profiling in general.
We are branded with the word “terrorist”, and I can tell you from personal experience that it hurts, is upsetting, and is unbelievably frustrating. There are nearly 1.6 billion Muslims in the world today, and if each and everyone of us were terrorists, the world would be up in flames right now.
Sara Abdelsalam’14 said, “Many people assume that to be a Muslim is the same thing as being in a cult. Every religion has their “bad people” or “nonbelievers”. A wise man once said ‘Islam is perfect. Muslims are not. All religions are perfect. However, the people are not’.”
I was born and raised in America. I am a patriotic citizen and I am proud to be an American, but I am also proud to be a Muslim. I want to be able to tell someone that I am a Muslim without being ashamed or fearful of what they will think of me. I ask that everyone make judgements based on character and actions, rather than on religion and cultural identity.
This article conveys a good message, but there are logical fallacies preventing it from reaching its full potential. The biggest fallacy here is the No True Scotsman fallacy. According to Wikipedia, it happens “When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule.” Let’s apply it to this article. “… I put quotations around the word Muslim is because Tsarnaev is not a true Muslim;…”. This statement is patently ridiculous. What you probably meant to say was this guy disagrees with my interpretation of Islam and/or makes Islam look bad, so I’m going to reject him as a member of my religion. Although you can claim that his interpretation of Islam is incorrect, you cannot go around telling people that they are not “true” Muslims. A better message for this article would be to “Not judge people on the action of others”. These people, no matter how badly they have acted, have as much claim to your religion as you do.
To wrap this up, I appreciate the message this article is trying to send, but it goes the wrong way about doing it.
Being a Muslim means followers of Islam, a person who goes against the teachings of Islam is not a True Muslim. This article is really meaningful and has a clear message that Not all Muslims are terrorists. I don’t agree that these evil people have any right to claim themselves as Muslims because they simply are not following the teachings of Islam; therefore, they can be any thing but that.