So draw a line through the following events:
First. the President puts up three videos on Twitter, all
produced by an extremist group in England. All purport to demonstrate Muslim violence
against others. One has been debunked as non-Muslim violence and the other two are of questionable provenance (we don’t know where
they came from).
Then, the President gets it from all sides, including from
the British PM, who is owning the extremist group.
Third, it is declared from the White House that the evidence
does not matter. Because these videos
are meant to be evidence, are they not?
They are meant to prove the hypothesis of Muslim violence, are they
not? Isn’t that why they were posted by
the President of the United States in the first place? Sorry, getting off track… The Evidence does not matter because it is
axiomatic that Muslims are violent. It
is a ‘truth’ that Muslims are violent.
It is a presupposition, a stereotype, a cultural cliché, a biased
assumption, a racist conclusion…
Fourth, the plain meaning of this statement generates even more controversy and reaction. It is not going away just because the White House has essentially said
it should. It's in danger of becoming a legitimate 'thing'.
Fifth, the President declares an American recognition of
Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and that the US will move the embassy there,
pending a feasibility study.
Now, the President could have potentially jammed the biggest
lever under the unmovable stone of Middle Eastern Peace with this declaration. President Trump could have offered this as the
tremendous carrot that it is for Israel contingent to moving the Peace Talks
forward. It could have been a carrot for
the Palestinians if a legitimacy of their claim to Jerusalem as Capital was on
the table. This could have been a catalyst
for the greatest breakthrough in the Middle East since President Carter got
the Israelis and Egyptians to sign a peace deal.
But it seems, to these eyes, that this declaration was made at
this moment because our President is hellbent and determined to prove that
Muslims are violent-by this very provocative action. If feels like there is a presupposition, a
stereotype, an axiom that our President cannot be wrong. Even if we have to walk the edge of a sharp
sword to prove it.
So when something happens, and I am not alone in assuming
that SOMETHING is going to happen, the narrative will not be that the President
is paying for a provocative action, but that Muslims are, in fact, violent.
My prayer is that this is the moment when an Islamic leader
of the stature of Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. will rise up in the midst of
the maelstrom that is Middle Eastern politics to lead a movement of nonviolence
in response to our President. Then
perhaps we can get to the real presupposition to be made about people of the
Muslim faith. Muslims, like us, are
HUMANS.
