In the last ten or more years of her life my mother was quite deaf. The results of her deafness were fascinating once I learned to step back and think about them. First, she tended to fill her silence by talking a lot, a thing she had never done before. Second, she interrupted other people who were speaking, even though she could easily see them and their moving mouths. And finally, she forgot that other people could hear and would speak of them as though they were objects standing by.
This caused me to remember that I had observed the same kind of behavior from people who were in multilingual situations but equipped with only one language. For instance, I have seen an American tourist speak to another American, criticizing an Arab who heard and understood the insult perfectly.
These analogies seem to apply right now to international relations. It is the American people who, with odd symptoms of deafness, appear to assume that the rest of the world does not know what we are saying.
And I am grateful to David Petreous for clarifying a troubling truth—that expressions of anger and bigotry toward Muslims are damaging to America’s position in the world.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post on May 13, Petreous said:
“The terrorists’ explicit hope has been to try to provoke a clash of civilizations — telling Muslims that the United States is at war with them and their religion. When Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster the terrorists’ propaganda.”
He warns us, “As policy, these concepts are totally counterproductive. Rather than making our country safer, they will compound the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens. As ideas, they are toxic and, indeed, non-biodegradable — a kind of poison that, once released into our body politic, is not easily expunged.”
While Petraeous is thinking of politicians, I would like to wave this caution flag at all of us. We need to be accountable for our attitudes and judgments. Fear is contagious and anger is destructive. Before we spread them, we need to verify that they are not based on falsehood. The first victim of a careless opinion is our own country, its values and ideals, its very success as a pluralist democracy.
And the world hears us. We forget that. I am astonished myself when I check Google Analytics and find that somebody in India is on my website, reading the blog I have just posted. In Lebanon and Jordan I have friends, but who in Pakistan, who in Russia or Oman cares what I have written? Apparently a stranger I was not thinking of when I wrote.
We all speak—in conversations, book club meetings, history classes, political gatherings, sermons, emails, facebook, twitter. The people who hear us are influenced, and our words go everywhere, carrying the freight we have piled onto them: anger, prejudice, fear, distrust, hostility. The frightening thing is that this is true whether or not what we say is reasonable or true. And in Gallup polls 57% of Americans admit that they know little or nothing about the opinions and beliefs of Muslims in other countries.
A politician need only speak once, and we help to spread that comment to the ends of the world, which has big ears and knows that somehow its fate is hinged to what Americans think.
ISIS hears and uses our words against us, turning them into a recruiting tool. (“See, we told you they hate us.”) In cities under attack by ISIS, vulnerable Muslim families hear and wonder what they have done to deserve attacks from all directions. Fleeing refugees hear and despair. Even American citizens who are Muslims may feel like outcasts.
And, as Petraeous points out, all of us become less safe. It’s a crazy situation. Fearing for our safety, we trust nobody and throw away the very friends we need. Misunderstandings, feuds and wars are born out of such nonsense.
What can we do? I am trying to figure that out. Asking the question opens up the complexity of the issue.
I guess that first we must try to relate our own opinions and fears to genuine information or experience. If we have none, we must turn to the work of those who do and read books such as Who Speaks for Islam? by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, which deals with simple facts and figures. The Fear of Islam by Todd H. Green is also an important work that can help us understand our fears and what to do with them.
We can even venture out of our small lives and get to know some Muslims!
And we can use whatever we know, by speaking up to oppose emotional messages that are not based on the truth.
Fifteen years ago, not long after the attack on the World Trade Center, what we now call Islamophobia came to this little town in which I live. I never expected it, not here in the quiet foothills, where we rarely see a Muslim. I went to Curves to exercise one afternoon and found everything in the parking lot—store fronts, cars, benches—plastered with garish orange leaflets. The leaflets carried a hate message, making various statements about Islam that were either grossly false or distortions of the truth. The source of this inflammatory message was not identified.
I will be honest with you. I felt the way we felt in Lebanon when a blast of artillery interrupted a quiet Sunday lunch. I wanted to hide in the basement until it was all over. I do not like confrontation. Also, I am a Christian, a follower of Jesus, and I don’t want to be mistaken for anything else.
It took me a few days to recover my equilibrium and understand that the issue was one of truth. I was not willing to be silent while wicked lies were spread through this lovely town. But it was also about loyalty to Muslim friends in the Middle East who had been honest enough and brave enough to shield our family when we were in danger.
There was one group of people here whom I totally trusted and that was my church, so I wrote an article for publication in the church newsletter. From there it went to the local newspaper. A few people thanked me, and the group responsible for the leaflet then came out into the open by picketing my church on a Sunday morning. I was sorry, because my church had been a compassionate servant in this community and deserved nothing but thanks.
There is much more to this story. The people who created the conflict apparently thought they were doing the right thing; they had not lived where I had lived; they simply did not know what they were talking about. I think now that I did the best I could for them and my community.
The experience encourages me to say, that when you encounter unreasonable positions based on negative emotions rather than fact, think of the offenders as deaf persons. Don’t shout, but do intervene. Put a hand on their shoulders. Communicate the truth however you can. Good citizenship requires defending one another from fear and falsehood. It is important to challenge assumptions and to pass on what we actually know.
Apparently it has become essential also to remind one another that the world has ears and knows our language and is listening.