By Jarvis DeBerry
In this Sept. 11, 2001 file photo, people run from a collapsing World Trade Center tower in New York. For over a decade after the autumn of 2001, America, with its allies, has been at war against factions of Islamist militants and terrorists, including the Taliban and al-Qaida, as well as offshoots in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett)
The 2013 documentary “The Trials of Muhammad Ali” opens in 1968 with Ali being excoriated by talk-show host David Susskind. Outraged that Ali has refused induction into the armed services, Susskind calls the heavyweight boxer “a disgrace” to his country and his race, “a convicted felon” and “a simplistic fool and a pawn.” We then cut to 2005 and watch President George W. Bush award Ali the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Bush says, “The American people are proud to call Muhammad Ali one of our own.”
Just as the film begins with a nod to the establishment’s changing perception of Muhammad Ali, it ends with a discussion of how the perception of Ali’s religion has changed. Those who were angry that the boxer formerly known as Cassius Clay joined the Nation of Islam, a religion that called white people devils, may have breathed a sigh of relief when he later became affiliated with traditional Islam. But those folks wouldn’t necessarily be put at ease if such a decision were made today.
“Since 9/11 Islam has acquired so many layers and dimensions and textures,” says Salim Muwakill, who was an editor for Muhammad Speaks, the official Nation of Islam newspaper during the Elijah Muhammad era. “When the Nation of Islam was considered as a threatening religion, traditional Islam was seen as a gentle alternative. And now quite the contrary. The Nation of Islam is seen as a tame domestic version, and traditional Islam is seen as the threatening thing.”
The film shows remarks Ali made on Sept. 21, 2001, 10 days after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ali, who is struggling to be heard through his Parkinson’s disease, says, “I’m a Muslim, and I’m against killing, violence, and all Muslims are against it. I think the people should know the real truth about Islam. And I wouldn’t be here to represent Islam if it was really like the terrorists made it look. I think that all the people should know the truth and come to recognize the truth because Islam is peace.”
Though the film doesn’t show it, President Bush had made similar remarks at the Islamic Center of Washington on Sept. 17, four days before Ali spoke. “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam,” Bush said. “That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”
It was important that Bush make a distinction between Islam and terrorism. It was also important that he say that there is no inherent tension, no inherent conflict, in being Muslim and American. But despite Bush’s effort, anti-Muslim sentiment persists here. The religion continues to be associated with its violent extremists and not its overwhelmingly peaceful majority.
A 2011 Gallup report said that Muslim Americans “are among the most integrated religious groups in the U.S,” on par with Mormons and ahead of Jews, Protestants and Catholics. People who are integrated, the report says, “go beyond a ‘live-and-let-live’ attitude and actively seek to know more about and learn from others of different religious traditions. They believe that most faiths make a positive contribution to society … and not only feel they respect people from other faith traditions, but they also feel respected by them.”
According to that same report, “Regardless of personal prejudice against Muslims, at least one in five Americans say that most Muslims around the world are not accepting of other religions and of people of different races other than their own.” Admittedly, that’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. The Americans polled could have been making a distinction between American Muslims and Muslims abroad. But I don’t know that such a distinction is warranted.
My personal experience is that a Muslim family in Mombasa embraced me as if I were kin when I was traveling through Kenya alone. They gave me a bed and a seat at their table. I got some quizzical looks when I sat inside their mosque and didn’t prostrate myself in prayer, but the fact that I was Christian didn’t trouble my hosts.
In a year that we’ve seen Boko Haram slaughter dozens of young Nigerian boys and kidnap more than 200 Nigerian girls, in a year that we’ve seen ISIS behead American journalists, it may feel right to describe the whole of Islam as violently intolerant.
But in September 2001, the week after Islamic extremists had hit us the hardest they ever have, our president said, “Islam is peace.” If he could say that then, and under those circumstances, we ought to be able to say the same now.
Jarvis DeBerry can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him attwitter.com/jarvisdeberry.
Source: NOLA.COM
