Sorry Slate, Islam is NOT Sole Religious Threat in the U.S.
In an article for Slate, Jacob Weisberg asks if United States President Barack Hussein Obama has been too conciliatory towards Islam and not taken a hard enough stance against terrorism purportedly carried out under the guise of Islamic duty.
Though Weisberg does do a good job in separating Moderate Muslims from Muslim terrorists, his diction fails in separating Islam from terrorism. In fact, Weisberg goes so far as to allude that Islam is the only religion whose tenants are being perverted to cause great harm to American society.
However, one need only look at the murder of Dr. George Tiller and videos of anti-abortion groups calling on American to burn effigies of high ranking United States politicians, or those standing out at the funeral of Matthew Shepard with signs emblazoned with “Fags Burn In Hell” to know that Islam is not the only religion being perverted to dangerous levels in the United States of America.
In fact, saying Obama must take a harder stance on Islam (without a proper explanation of how to separate Islam from terrorism), is only furthering the racial, ethnic, and religious divides in the United States post 9/11. To further criticize or alienate Muslims (without well stated, clear separations between Islam and terrorism) publicly will only lead even moderate Muslims to feeling more outcast and less American:
Fort Hood does much more serious damage to Obama‘s premise that greater friendliness toward Islam is a viable strategy for countering the Islamist threat. If the warning signs flashing from Nidal Hasan were ignored, the desire to avoid appearing prejudiced or unfair to Muslims may have been partly to blame. And this points to Obama’s Muslim disadvantage. Almost immediately after the shooting, he began facing renewed accusations that he didn’t take the radical Islamist threat to American security—at home or in Afghanistan—seriously enough.
But his words at Fort Hood, while comforting, do not really come to grips with the problem. America does not face a threat from the perversion of faith in general. We face a threat from the perversion of one faith in particular. The president needs to dip into his reservoir of good will to remind mainstream Muslims of their special responsibility. If militant Islamism is a distortion of their moderate beliefs, only their beliefs can defeat it.
Obama‘s Muslim Problem [Slate]