Not all Muslims are Terrorists

Although there were a couple of articles assigned for this week, I was particularly interested in the article by Mahmood Mamdani titled, “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: A political Perspective on Culture and terrorism. What is interesting about Mamdani’s article is that he mentioned how people often think of terrorism from only the historical perspective and ignoring the political. People often blame Osama bin Laden’s Religion, instead of the political message he was trying to convey when he attacked the world trade center. In consequence, people blame Islam and thinks of all Muslims as terrorists. However, this is not true, not all Muslims are terrorists.

Globalization has made international trade and foreign relations a big deal. In fact, when the world trade center fell to the ground, the world seems incontrollable. With the dependency of society on modern technology, even a tiny incident may harshly disturb a system. The 9/11 incident is unforgettable for many, and is still causing them to hate the Muslims. However, why is it that the Muslims are blamed? Many of the Muslims in South East Asia did not have anything to do with the incident. Contemporary Islam is a global civilization: fewer Muslims live in the Middle East than in Africa or in South and Southeast Asia.

Mamdani discusses how the Islamic culture seems to have no history, politics, and no debates. The papers these days often show how all the Muslims just conform to the culture, where in reality Muslims conform not to the culture but to the religion. The mistake that people often make is separating the moderate and genuine Islam. They understood that the liberal Muslims follows moderate Islam, which does not encourage fundamentalism, and that the genuine Islam, who follows traditional teachings have potential to be terrorists. The truth is terrorism does not really derive from any aspect of Islam. Terrorists just use religion for a reason to make a political move. The impacts of their move were global. Now almost every man with a Muslim name had difficulty entering the United States, and in the era of Globalization and Migration, this emerges to be even a bigger problem. Abu El-Haj also talked in his article titled Reimagining Citizenship as Critical Practice about the harsh treatments that Muslims encounter across the United States. El-Haj shared the stories of Muslim youths in the US, where they were threatened, bullied, and hated. In an era of Globalizations, where many Arabs are moving in the US, this false image of American youngsters about Muslims has negatively affected the lives of others.

From this example about terrorism, we should learn that globalization does not only increase interconnectivity of states and international trade, but it also makes every cross-cultural incident or any incidents that involve different cultures important to be examined and dealt with. People can no longer hide small problems, as global interconnectivity will find any kind of secrets. Internet access to websites such as wikileaks will make information easier to access, but more difficult to determine its validity. Therefore, because globalization could not and should not be stopped, society should also prepare for it, in order to minimize the negative impacts it can bring to our world.

Rossa D.