By SALLY MAUK for the Missoulian | Posted: Friday, January 14, 2011 8:30 pm
My radio network, NPR, sparked a firestorm in October when it unceremoniously fired news analyst Juan Williams for a remark he made on the air for his other employer, Fox News.
Williams said, "When I get on the plane ... if I see people who are in Muslim garb ... I get nervous." NPR felt Williams had made an insensitive comment that was out of bounds for a news analyst. Fox News - and a lot of its viewers - felt Williams was just making a truthful statement not only about himself but about many other non-Muslim Americans.
Mehrdad Kia is among those who thinks Williams was making an accurate observation. The Iranian-born Kia is associate provost of international programs at the University of Montana, and a historian, scholar and expert on the Middle East and Islam.
Kia knows that Muslims have made non-Muslims "nervous" for centuries.
"There has always been a general fear of Islam," said Kia, "and this is very much embedded in European history, which we have inherited."
In modern times, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as well as recent immigration patterns that have brought millions of Muslim immigrants to Western Europe and the U.S., have heightened that fear of Islam, or "Islamophobia." Kia says unlike in Europe, Muslim immigrants to the U.S. have generally been well-educated and well-to-do, and have integrated well into American society. But there are many examples of clashes, too, most recently the intense opposition to the building of an Islamic education center near ground zero in New York City.
Kia says Islam is, for some, a convenient scapegoat for political maneuvering and fear-mongering.
"And this is really a dangerous game that some have played, especially in this country," Kia said. "Because by dividing and by creating this imaginary enemy - you know, a mosque or Muslims coming to your neighborhood - we might get a vote and get elected, but we might also create tensions or polarizations in our own communities. Muslims are not ‘they' or ‘them', they are us; they are part and parcel of the society."
Kia is also aware of how quickly the entire religion of Islam has been demonized because of the actions of extremists. He points out we don't blame Christianity when extremists such as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh commit violence.
"When somebody shoots a congresswoman in Arizona, we don't first look at his religion, "said Kia. "Immediately the adjective that was given (was) a ‘deranged' individual, rather than looking for his race or religion. But as soon as the name sounds Islamic ... immediately it's attached to Islam, as if Islam is responsible for acts of terrorism."
Kia says we must make a distinction between Islam as a religion, and political Islam, which he says is a dangerous force.
"It is Islam which is being used as an ideology, as a political tool," Kia said, "for movements which want to overthrow a regime, in the Middle East for example, or in South Asia in the case of the Taliban, and those are the ones we need to be aware of. But to alienate millions of Muslims because we are fighting with a few terrorist groups, would be really counterproductive to our own national security."
As for Williams saying what a lot of non-Muslim Americans feel when they see a Muslim on an airplane, Kia wants us to think about where that fear comes from.
"Why does a garb, or a beard, or a veil create such a fear," said Kia, "when deep-down we know that these are the same human beings? ... What is it about ‘them' that makes us (afraid)? I think a lot of it has to do with a lack of understanding and ignorance about what Islam is all about."
Kia hopes we don't shy away from talking about our fears, since giving them the light of day is part of overcoming them.
"And I think it's appropriate to speak our fears of ‘the other' - in a sense, an imagined other that we don't know about (and) tend to fear. We hesitate to learn about him or her, because of how she or he appears, or the color of their skin, or their gender, or sexual preference, or their age. These are the things we need to tackle openly and in a very civil discussion."
Sally Mauk is news director at KUFM, Montana Public Radio, in Missoula. She writes a twice-monthly Saturday column for the Missoulian.
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