“The Inter-Religious Council is working with Coe College, the Catherine McAuley Center, Temple Judah, Mount Mercy University, Cornell College, the Mother Mosque and others to sponsor an evening with Todd Green, associate professor of religion at Luther College and author. Green, a former Franklin Fellow at the U.S. State Department, is a nationally recognized expert on Islamophobia, having provided lectures on the topic to federal agencies including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Journalists and politicians have frequently called upon Muslims to condemn terrorism carried out in the name of Islam,” Crawley said. “Dr. Green will discuss why this question is so problematic.”
Despite the tens of thousands of terrorist attacks by Muslims since 9/11, we are apparently not allowed to conclude, or even to bring up as a subject worth discussing, that Islam itself might explain Islamic terrorism. When we call on Muslims to condemn Islamic terrorism, we are — Dr. Green believes — only making all the innocent Muslims angry. But why should they be? If they are so horrified at terrorism committed “in their names,” one would have thought that far from resenting such a request, they would welcome it as a way to make perfectly clear where they stand.
There is a different argument to be made against these calls for Muslims to condemn terror attacks: such condemnations have become ritualistic, formulaic, and of doubtful effect. How many imams have condemned terrorist acts who were then found to have made blood-curdling threats, in their own khutbas, against the Infidels? These condemnations may merely lull us into the belief that we have nothing to fear from mainstream Islam. They are never accompanied by open discussion of the relevant Qur’anic passages commanding Muslims to wage Jihad and to “strike terror in the hearts” of the Infidels. And that missing discussion is exactly what is needed.
Green’s two books on Islamophobia — “The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West” and “Presumed Guilty: Why We Shouldn’t Ask Muslims to Condemn Terrorism” — have been cited in amicus briefs before the Supreme Court and propose alternative ways to engage each other in pursuit of counterterrorism.”
In advance of the event, I [reporter Lynda Waddington] asked Green if he thought his speech was necessary in Cedar Rapids, given the city’s rich Muslim history.
“Islamophobia is a problem that exists from coast to coast, in small towns and large cities, in communities with a long-standing Muslim presence and in communities in which Muslims are fairly new,” Green said.
This moment in our nation’s political and cultural history, he added, has seen the growth of Islamophobia to epidemic proportions — the issue is getting worse, not better.
Our justifiable anxiety (not “irrational hate and fear”) is based not only on the behavior of many Muslim terrorists, but also on the support given to them by untold millions of Muslims who do not personally take part in such attacks, but believe them to be justified. And what causes even greater alarm among non-Muslims is the knowledge of what is contained in the Qur’an and Hadith. Any non-Muslim who reads the Qur’an will find more than 100 verses commanding Muslims to wage violent Jihad against the Infidels, including several verses (3:151, 8;12, 8:60, 47:4) that call specifically for “striking terror” in the hearts of Infidels. Are we not entitled to see a link between Muslim attitudes and behavior toward Infidels, and what they read in the Qur’an at 2:191-194, 3:110, 3:151, 4:89, 5:33, 5:51,8:12, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4, 98:6? Is it “islamophobic” to note that Muhammad declared in one hadith that “war is deceit” and, in another, that “I have been made victorious through terror”? Does one become an “Islamophobe” by daring to mention Muhammad’s consummation of his marriage to Aisha when she was nine, or is it, rather, perfectly reasonable for someone — let’s call him by his right name, an “islamocritic” — to find such behavior deeply disturbing?
