{"id":2124,"date":"2013-09-28T09:37:07","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T13:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/?p=2124"},"modified":"2013-09-26T09:39:05","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T13:39:05","slug":"2124","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2013\/09\/2124.html","title":{"rendered":"the silence libel: Muslims do not need to condemn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patheos blogger Dan Peterson has a moving and well-intentioned post<\/a> in which he exhorts the Muslim American community to speak more loudly and denounce terrorism:<\/p>\n

But you have to speak up more loudly. Others \u2014 I promise you this, from innumerable conversations and questions after lectures, over years \u2014 are not hearing your denunciations of the extremists. They aren\u2019t aware of your efforts to distance yourselves from these terrible acts of bloodshed and oppression. Your message isn\u2019t getting out. You need to speak louder and more clearly, until it\u2019s heard.
\n…
\nI implore you, as a community, to rise up and denounce these acts. If you\u2019ve already done it, do it again. Louder. Make your disgust at these abuses of your faith unmistakably clear, unavoidably heard. Not only by non-Muslims but by that minority of extremists within the Muslim community who have made Islam a term of horror and revulsion to far too many people worldwide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reading his post in full it is clear that his heart is in the right place, but he has unwittingly recycled what I call “the silence libel”<\/a>, which has 3 parts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. the assertion that Muslims do not sufficiently condemn the abuses of terrorism in the name of Islam,<\/li>\n
  2. the implication that Muslims have a greater responsibility for the acts of their co-religionists than do members of other religions, <\/li>\n
  3. the idea that Islam is particularly unique in history as a faith which drives people to commit acts of evil.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    All three of these are false. <\/p>\n

    I am not inclined to begin a debate on points 2 and 3 as I think that they are outside the scope of the conversation that Dan is trying to begin, though I do think that anyone invoking the silence libel needs to be aware of the context they are (willingly or unwittingly) imposing by their assertion of point 1. <\/p>\n

    As for point 1, I have addressed this before<\/a> as have many other muslim bloggers, but it seems we must address it once again. The evidence is tremendous and exhaustive that muslims have indeed condemned. For example, this exhaustive list of condemnations by individuals and muslim organizations<\/a> compiled by Al-Muhajabah, one of the earliest muslim female bloggers. A similarly thorough list of condemnations<\/a> has been compiled by The American Muslim magazine. Numerous muslim organizations have also sprung up, including the Free Muslim Coalition<\/a> and Muslims Against Terrorism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    To be blunt, these repeated calls for Muslims to make a grand showing against terror amounts to a loyalty test<\/a>, with all the disquieting implications that they represent. <\/p>\n

    The truth is that Muslims do much better than condemn – we are model citizens who live our lives and contribute to our communities like everyone else. That’s not “doing nothing”<\/a> as the silence libel implies:<\/p>\n

    What looks on the face of things to be doing nothing \u2013 living our lives as loyal citizens, teaching our kids the true universal values of peace and tolerance of Islam, striving to contribute in a civic sense to our communities, muslim and non-muslim alike \u2013 is actually doing Something, a great deal of something.
    \n…
    \nWhen a muslim American calls themselves a moderate muslim, that is doing something \u2013 its emphasizing the extremism of the jihadists\u2019 claim to faith. When we argue against the term Islamofascism, it\u2019s doing something \u2013 it\u2019s objecting to giving the fascists the use f the term Islamic to cloak their actions. When we object to racial profiling and the increased curtailing of our rights and civil liberties, that is doing something \u2013 it is fighting for the very ideals of freedom that the terrorists would deny all of us.<\/p>\n

    Read more: http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2008\/09\/lets-do-something.html<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Even more important, the Muslim American community has been an integral part of the domestic law enforcement and vigilance effort against home-grown terror. Again, there is tremendous data to support the fact that Muslims have repeatedly acted to prevent terror<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    Muslim communities helped U.S. security officials to prevent nearly 2 out of every 5 Al-Qaeda plots threatening the United States since 9\/11. Muslim communities helped law enforcement prevent 1 out of every 2 of all Al-Qaeda related plots threatening the U.S. since the December 2009 \u201cunderwear bomber\u201d plot. This is an important parallel trend to the recent spike of arrests. It also highlights the importance of partnering with society through good relations and community oriented policing.<\/p>\n

    Read more: http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2012\/02\/muslim-informants-prevent-domestic-terror-the-data.html<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    (See my original post for a detailed list of all the terror plots<\/a> in which muslim communities acted to disrupt and defeat). <\/p>\n

    The bottom line is that instead of recycling the silence libel and putting the onus on Muslims to condemn, non-Muslims would be better served by helping to publicize the many ways in which Muslim Americans combat terror, by condemnation as well as by cooperation with authorities and just living their lives as law-abiding citizens and members of our civic communities. <\/p>\n

    Related: my post Muslims condemn terror, again and again<\/a>, Let’s Do Something<\/a>, lanat upon the hirabists<\/a>, and Muslim informants prevent terror: the data<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2124"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2126,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2124\/revisions\/2126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}