 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Detroit Free Press- May 9, 2004 In terror fight, don't condemn all Muslims By Arsalan T. Iftikhar In an 1829 address to the Virginia Convention, President James Madison perceptively noted that, in a republic, the great danger is that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority. Keeping that in mind, most of us were not alive when German-Americans were portrayed as bloodthirsty Huns during the first World War. Only some of our elders remember President Franklin Roosevelt signing the order that confined 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps for the duration of World War II. Now it is American Muslims sharing the legacy of minority groups who have been needlessly vilified because they share the ethnic, racial or religious parameters of people with whom we are at war. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 states that: "No person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed." The basic principle behind this hallmark of international law is that no person or group can or should be held responsible for the criminal offenses of a small portion of that population. It would logically follow that no loyal Japanese Americans should have been stuck in camps for close to 4 years for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Similarly, American Muslims and Arabs have been the bull's-eye on the political and legal target of the United States since the 9/11 attacks. The Washington Post recently reported that Muslims in the United States experienced more than 1,000 incidents of alleged harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment in 2003, a jump of 70 percent over the previous year. These acts of searing hatred are not based on any criminal guilt on the part of these lawful and loyal Americans; rather, the only common denominator was the fact that each one of these reported victims was solely guilty of being a Muslim or Arab. This guilt by association can most easily be paralleled to the recent discovery of photographs of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American armed forces. President George W. Bush expressed his disgust and sought to portray these perverted embarrassments as isolated, not indicative of American sentiment toward Iraqis or the Muslim world. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "a handful of people" were to blame and they should not be used to tar the image of all American armed forces in Iraq. To people of reason across the globe, the revolting pictures should not reflect negatively on every individual serving in the U.S. armed forces. Likewise, we must be consistent in not holding peaceful American Muslims as somehow responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. This is especially true since American Muslim organizations have spent the last three years condemning acts of terror, including 9/11, and trying to promote a better understanding of Islam and promote interfaith dialogues. As a specialist in international human rights law, I think it is essential that we capture individuals who commit criminal acts in order to help make the world a more peaceful place. In order to maintain a moral high ground, we must stop the practice of effectively placing the blame on entire demographic populations for the unjustifiable acts of a few. Arsalan T. Iftikhar is Director of legal affairs, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Washington, D.C. |