OPINION:
In recent months, reporters, scholars, politicians and even President Obama have spoken about the evils of Islamophobia. Media outlets routinely quote statistics about incidents of discrimination and even violence against Muslims and Arabs in America. Certainly, such actions are deplorable. Our nation is founded on the principles of religious freedom and racial equality, and no one should be forced to suffer for their religion or national origin.
Yet everyone seems to be forgetting about the second half of the word: phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear. But the fear many Americans feel about the Islamic terror threat is very rational. Americans are also angry, and they have every right to be, perhaps because they feel powerless in the face of a vast, determined enemy. While the expression of those feelings may occasionally be considered offensive, that fact does not delegitimize the fear.
The roots of American anti-Islamic sentiment are obvious given the continuous terror attacks against us and the West, but what is the source of the Islamic vendetta against the United States? Some have suggested that decades of U.S. foreign policy in the Islamic world are responsible for the surge in Islamic terrorism. American history is not without blemishes — no country’s history is — but in reality, America’s record of support for the people of Islamic nations has been outstanding.
American political pressure forced the Soviets out of Iran after World War II, thereby freeing its people from Joseph Stalin’s vicious regime. The United States stepped in again decades later to similarly help expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.
Even when Islamic countries have turned on each other, the United States has rushed to their rescue. In the 1990s, the United States forced Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait. Today, we are taking in Syrian refugees who are fleeing their own oppressive government. We also send billions of dollars in support to the Middle East despite our nearly $20 trillion national debt.
When former Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi ordered us out of the country, we left. When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini told U.S. troops to abandon listening posts established in Iran to monitor the USSR, we left. Khomeini thanked us by taking American hostages.
Speaking recently from the Oval Office, even Mr. Obama acknowledged, “We are on the right side of history.” If we are on the right side of history, then our enemies must be on the wrong side. They have repaid our magnanimity with violence, death and unceasing terror. The type of hatred that many Islamic nations and organizations have been preaching for decades is truly disgusting.
Mr. Obama also warned us not to allow “this fight [to] be defined as a war between America and Islam.” How can it not be? Our enemy is not one country or a government with any specific grievance or political objective. Nor is it any one terrorist organization. The Boston Marathon bombers did not claim affiliation with any terrorist cell or larger entity other than Islam, and the FBI is currently questioning whether or not the San Bernardino shooters had ties to the Islamic State.
The Islamists’ only goal is the full-scale destruction of the non-Islamic West in the name of an Islamic god. We are not at war with any specific Muslim — the vast majority of Muslims in America are peaceful, innocent people — but we are certainly at war with radical Islam.
Mr. Obama spoke out against discriminatory acts by saying, “Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes — and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform.” One of those men in uniform, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. His reasons were explicitly rooted in his Islamic beliefs. The Marathon bombers had friends. The San Bernardino killers were liked by their neighbors. In a world where terrorism is increasingly homegrown, and where these murderers seem to share little motivation other than fanatical devotion to a specific religion, the reasoning behind the distrust is understandable.
Of course, I am not supporting paranoia or condoning the persecution of Muslim Americans. But the media’s treatment of “Islamophobia” as some nationwide epidemic clouds the truth about this conflict. Just as we are told not to take “small” groups of terrorists as representative of all Islamic peoples, we cannot take a few dozen reported incidents of alleged discrimination in a nation of more than 300 million people as indicative of a national trend toward racism.
Most Americans are just as peaceful and innocent as any Muslim American. We are all afraid that our offices may explode, that our neighbors will one day turn on us, and that our houses of worship will be destroyed. We are all being persecuted for our religious beliefs.
For some Americans, it is because they are Muslim, but for most of us, for the nation and the Western world as a whole, it is because we are not Muslim. We all have the right to be afraid. Some of us may make bad choices based on that fear, but the only way that fear will subside is if the spreaders of fear are defeated. It’s time to stop obsessing about “Islamophobia” and remember who the real bad guys are.
• Bo Dietl is a former New York City police detective and the chairman and CEO of Beau Dietl and Associates.
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