November 19, 2015
Private: Dividing People Along Religious Lines Makes Americans Less Safe
immigration, Paris, refugees, Syria, terrorism
by Chris Edelson, assistant professor of government, American University’s School of Public Affairs. He is author of Emergency Presidential Power: From the Drafting of the Constitution to the War on Terror (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). His second book, Power Without Constraint: The Post 9/11 Presidency and National Security will be published in spring 2016 by the University of Wisconsin Press.
The terrorist attacks in Paris leave us all horrified – as do the attacks in Lebanon last week that have received less public attention worldwide. Terrorism is meant to make people afraid, and it does its job. Part of what we must do in responding to these attacks is to manage our fear and prevent it from ruling us or pushing us (or our elected officials) to make bad decisions.
No one (except the terrorists themselves) wants to see another attack against civilians. Some elected officials and candidates for office, however, have made counterproductive statements following the Paris attacks. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declares the U.S. should only accept Syrian refugees who are Christian, arguing that “[t]here is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror.” Jeb Bush similarly suggested that the U.S. should focus “on the Christians who have no place in Syria any more.” Bush also described the Paris attacks as “an organized attempt to destroy Western civilization.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) similarly described what is happening as “a clash of civilizations.” Republican presidential candidates criticized Hillary Clinton and other Democratic presidential candidates for declining to use the words “radical Islam” when discussing the fight against ISIS. Donald Trump suggested (not for the first time) that it may be necessary to consider closing some mosques in the United States (though he said he is not personally considering this – yet).
These candidates surely want to find a way to take meaningful action to keep Americans and others safe from ISIS. (Though Sen. Cruz leveled the very troubling and baseless charge that President Obama “does not wish to defend this country.”) But many are making a serious mistake by speaking about ISIS and terrorism in ways that draw religious lines between Christians and Muslims. This is not a matter of “political correctness,” it is a matter of logic, fact and reason. Of course ISIS is Islamic. But ISIS practices a form of Islam that the vast majority of Muslims reject. In fact, ISIS has terrorized and killed many Muslims it sees as apostates. It may well serve ISIS’s purposes to describe its terrorist acts as part of a religious war: After the Paris attacks, ISIS referred to France as “the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe” and a leader of “the convoy of the Crusader campaign [i.e. the military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria].”
But it harms American interests to divide the world along Christian and Muslim lines as we react to the attacks in Paris, Beirut and elsewhere. The line we ought to be drawing is between ISIS and the civilized world that opposes it. This civilized world includes Americans, Lebanese, Turks, French, Iraqis – all those who oppose ISIS and are threatened by it. It is a not a battle against Western civilization – ISIS’s actions threaten and kill many non-westerners. As David Shariatmadari observes, ISIS hates Middle Eastern civilization too.
It is a significant mistake to suggest that one way to respond to the threat posed by ISIS might be to close down mosques in the United States. Students of American history may well be reminded of the post-Pearl Harbor decision to remove more than 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the west coast and relocate them to prison camps for the duration of the war (or even longer in some cases). Of course, no one is talking about doing the same with Muslim Americans today – and hopefully no one ever will. But even the more “modest” suggestion that we consider closing down some mosques in the U.S. ought to give us pause. The mistake made during World War II was to assume that group identity trumps the typical requirement of individual guilt. We should not repeat that mistake today.
When presidential candidates divide people along religious lines, suggesting that Muslims are dangerous as a group or that war against ISIS involves the Christian west against Islam, they are dividing us at precisely the time when unity should be our strength. America offers a special promise – that anyone, regardless of his or her ancestry or birth, can qualify as American. That is itself a weapon against a terrorist group that seeks to describe its actions in religious terms or as a clash of civilizations.