COMMENTARY: Our Actions Speak Louder Than Words to Muslims

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) If Newsweek dedicated an entire year of issues to touting how wonderful America is to the Muslim world, it would not be effective, and not because _ as has been touted by some _ Muslims “hate us for our freedom.” It is because many times _ especially in dealing […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) If Newsweek dedicated an entire year of issues to touting how wonderful America is to the Muslim world, it would not be effective, and not because _ as has been touted by some _ Muslims “hate us for our freedom.”

It is because many times _ especially in dealing with the Muslim world _ our actions have not always been consistent with our words, and Muslims pay attention to our actions.


This goes far beyond a recently retracted Newsweek report, based on a single anonymous source, that U.S. interrogators at a prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet. The alleged American disrespect of the Islamic holy book is just the latest flash point to trigger protests, some of them deadly, of a country that prides itself on being a champion of human rights.

Although our initial justification for invading Iraq was weapons of mass destruction _ a claim found not to be true _ the U.S. has claimed that the invasion was a good thing because Saddam Hussein was a terrible dictator with a horrible human rights record.

Then came the pictures of U.S. soldiers abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, actions wholly inconsistent with our values as a nation. More important, however, the actions directly contradicted our reasons for violently deposing Saddam _ for the sake of human dignity and human rights _ and the Muslim world paid close attention to this contradiction.

Time and again, the Bush administration has insisted that the U.S. is not at war with Islam, that the U.S. has a profound respect for the faith of one-fifth of the world’s population. We in America know this to be true.

Yet U.S. officials have confirmed that female interrogators at Guantanamo Bay have sexually humiliated detainees, including wearing thong underwear and wiping fake menstrual blood on detainees’ faces. In addition, several current and former detainees have made similar allegations of Quran desecration in media other than Newsweek. These actions send a clear message to Muslims the world over that America hates Islam, that the “war on terror” is really a war on Islam.

No doubt, these incidents are being used by the tiny minority of Muslims who do truly hate us to fan the flames of anti-Americanism. Yet actions speak much louder than words, and many times our actions are not consistent with our words.

So what is America to do? Stop fighting the terrorists who will stop at nothing to try to harm innocent Americans? Absolutely not. What America must do is bring its actions in the “war on terror” in line with its principles.


For example, the United States needs to seriously re-examine its mission at Guantanamo Bay. About the current detainees, Army Sgt. Erik Saar, a former Guantanamo Bay Arabic translator, told The Christian Science Monitor: “I thought these were `the worst of the worst’ hardened terrorists, but I soon realized many didn’t fit that category, not only by talking to detainees, but by having access to intelligence which said that.”

Saar estimates that only “dozens among the 600 or so (detainees)” fit the category of hardened terrorists. Any detainee who has nothing to do with terrorism against the United States should be released. Their continued detention _ with no end in sight _ will only do further damage to America’s already battered reputation in the Muslim world and is wholly inconsistent with the principles of our Constitution.

For the “worst of the worst” that are left, we have to radically change our approach.

Col. Patrick Lang, former head of military intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Christian Science Monitor: “Instead of using Islamic culture to demean them, take Islam as a faith to defang the principles that condone terrorism. Islamic theology must be a component in building the relationship (between detainee and interrogator).”

This means that American interrogators must have a genuine respect for and understanding of the religion of Islam. Admittedly, this requires a tedious process of re-education and retraining, but it is desperately needed. Moreover, it is something in which American Muslims can _ and would be very happy to _ play an active role.

MO/PH END RNS

(Hesham A. Hassaballa is a Chicago physician and columnist for Beliefnet. His book the “Beliefnet Guide to Islam” will be published by Doubleday in 2006.)


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