By: Hanna Humphreys
The recent ignorance and bigotry of US citizens regarding our fellow Muslim-American citizens is both embarrassing and hypocritical, and it is challenging the First Amendment like never before.
On Friday, a former US Marine held a “Freedom of Speech” rally outside of the same Phoenix mosque that one of the Garland, Texas attempted gunmen attended. The event’s Facebook page advertised the evils of Islam as did the organizer’s shirt, reading ‘F— Islam.’ When applied to all Muslim-Americans, rather than extremists, this kind of behavior is spiteful, unnecessary, and incendiary, especially when coupled with a draw Mohammed contest.
According to the US Constitution, it is also completely legal.
The protest was met with an equal number of counterprotesters, calling the rally ‘hate speech’ and promoting inclusion and acceptance. ‘Muslim’ should not be equal to ‘terrorist.’
On that same day, a Muslim-American woman from Chicago was denied an unopened can of soda on a United Airlines flight due its possible use as a weapon. 31 year old Tahera Ahmad is a chaplain at Northwestern University, and she was flying to Washington to speak at a conference promoting peace between Israeli and Palestinian youths when the flight attendant denied her request to hand her an unopened can, due to hygienic reasons. The flight attendant proceeded to hand another man an unopened can of beer, and, when confronted, told Ahmad that she could not give her the can because it could be used as a weapon. United dismissed the claims as a ‘misunderstanding,’ and the case retrieved national attention, as it should.
Although the US should be making fighting terrorist organizations such as ISIS a top priority, the insensitivity and bias of many Americans towards all followers of the religion is actually hindering its efforts. The US should be standing as one to fight radical Islam, a very minute percentage of which makes up the Muslim-American community. Instead, this bias is splintering our unity and challenging the freedom of religion which our nation has honored for over two centuries.