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Deah Shaddy Barakat, his 21-year-old wife Yusor Mohammad, and her 19-year-old sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, were shot to death Tuesday near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus. Craig Stephen Hicks, their 46-year-old neighbor, has been arrested and charged with murder. His wife and defense attorney claim it was over a parking dispute. |
Last September Sen. Bennett (R–OK) referred to American Muslims as "a cancer that needs cutting out." Aside from the staggering ignorance of his comments, I wanted to get at the original meaning behind words that become stigmatized over time with popular use.
• Followed by one-fifth of humanity, ISLAM is the second largest religion in the world, mostly in the Middle East but scattered over the globe. It means "submission to God," so a Muslim is one who strives for submission to God. The Quran instructs Muslims to read three other holy books, one being the Injeel (the gospel of Christ). Among Islamic tenets is the importance of valuing life—thus, burning a man alive is not acceptable (although both Muslims and Christians have done so throughout their long histories).
• I'm sorry to have ever used the word "jihadist," because the truth is that JIHAD means "struggle," not merely "Let's wage Holy War against Christians," so in the original sense, it could be a personal spiritual struggle within one's own religion. It's only in recent years that jihad has come to signify the violence we've known. Muslims refer to violent groups like ISIS and al Qaeda with delegitimizing terms such as "deviant." No argument with that, and I'm going to start using that word because it aligns with the behavior.
• A BIAS is an inflexible positive or negative prejudgment about the nature, character, and abilities of an individual; and is based on a generalized idea about the group to which the person belongs. It's not just about race: a white judge may be biased against a white defendant bc he's gay, or has tattoos, or comes from a certain socioeconomic class.
• RACISM is bias based on race, the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others. Scientists have found that only 2% of genetic code account for actual differences between races.
• PREJUDICE is pre-judgment—e.g. deciding on a person’s qualities, characteristics and value on the basis of an arbitrary descriptor such as race or socio-economic class (or both), before knowing the facts.
• DISCRIMINATION refers to the recognition of differences among people and making choices based upon those qualities, real or perceived. In that sense, even a positive stereotype is discriminatory.
In general, these last four terms are characterized by common denominators: they are subjective, and they are unusually resistant to change, or the influence of rational explanation (new info). And, as "leaders" like Sen. Bennett demonstrate, they can become talking points for cultivating fear and intolerance.