Former hostage Terry Anderson grins with the author as they leave the US Ambassador's residence in Damascus, Syria, early Thursday, December 4, 1991 to board a plane to Germany. (AP Photo/Santiago Lyon)
Three months before I was born, my father was on his way home from a tennis game in Beirut when Muslim militants abducted him at gunpoint. As he was thrown in the back of a car and ripped from his life, one of the terrorists leaned down to comfort him.
"Don't worry," he said. "It's political."
After seven years of torture and humiliation in captivity, my dad was released in 1991, which is when I
met him for the first time. What followed was a different kind of suffering for
my family, as we
struggled to recover from the
trauma of our experience.
Like my parents, I will wear those
emotional scars for the rest of my life.
These facts, taken out of context, fit neatly
into America's most popular understanding of Islam. It's almost indisputable
that global terrorism is
on the rise, even if terrorists kill more Muslims than anyone else. And media coverage of the world's second-largest
religion very often focuses on terrorism, drawing
attention to the
apparently violent nature of the ideology
and its enmity toward Western culture. Which begs the question: Is
the media portrayal of Islam as a backward, violent religion accurate?
And for that matter, why do Muslim
terrorists despise America so much? Did
fanatics like ISIS materialize out of nowhere, snarling with hatred at the
West, as much of American commentary and news coverage seems to indicate? Did
the people who kidnapped my father one day just wake up and decide to take away
a man's freedom and dignity for seven years?
Does terrorism exist in a vacuum?
"All of a sudden, this guy came and started shouting at us, 'Are you Muslim? Are you Muslim?'"— Rabie Ayoub
I don't think it does, and believe it's important to provide some
historical context for this kind of violence. Indeed, it's increasingly crucial that we find answers to these
questions, not only so we can try to politically address the problem of
"radical Islam" in a way that makes sense, but because American
Muslims are paying a very tangible price. Donald Trump, the
presumptive Republican presidential nominee who will soon begin receiving
national security briefings, has outrageously
suggested Muslim Americans
be put in a database and forced to carry special IDs. More famously, he
has
promised a complete ban on
Muslim immigration to the US. (Not to be outdone, erstwhile rival Ted
Cruz recently
maintained that Muslim
neighborhoods should be regularly patrolled.)
Meanwhile, a college
student was removed from a Southwest
Airlines flight last month because a woman was terrified after hearing him
speak Arabic. From
mosque attacks to harassment of women in hijab, it's safe to say the laundry list of Islamophobic incidents
reported since last year's terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino keeps
growing.
Corey Saylor, director of the Department to
Monitor and Combat Islamophobia at the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR),
says there is a direct correlation between Islamophobic political rhetoric,
increased media coverage of Islamic terrorism, and violence against Muslims
across America.
"In the latter part of last year, you had
the second Paris attacks, then you had the San Bernardino attacks," Saylor
tells me. "All of that gets endless media coverage... then when you add
into that particular endless media cycle statements by very
high-profile candidates, you get this poisonous mix... For instance, in November
and December of last year, we tracked more mosque incidents [of attacks and
vandalism] in a two-month period than we usually do in an entire year.
"To what degree I can't statistically say,
but that sort of steady diet of negative information does contribute to the
increased violence toward the Muslim community," Saylor continues. "I
think that one of the great losses we've had in recent years is that there is
not as much depth to media coverage as there used to be. You just sort of get
the quick hit on the surface of any story without a lot of understanding of the
context and the background to it. That's the information that's really needed
to solve problems."
I just spent two and a half years investigating
my father's kidnapping for a book due out this fall. While reporting on the act
of violence that shaped my life, I learned some valuable things about how
terrorists evolve.
A women walks past a convoy of Israeli troops as they pass through a village in the Bekaa Valley following their invasion of Lebanon, in June, 1982. (Photo by Bryn Colton/Getty Images)
For example, I've come to understand that the
men who kidnapped my father developed their hatred for America in a very
specific environment. In June 1982, Israel began the second and most destructive of its various invasions of Lebanon in an attempt to eradicate the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which had been using the country as a
base from which to launch attacks against the Jewish state. It wasn't long
before the Israelis wore out their welcome in the country. Besides running roughshod over the Shiite south—for the most part, invading armies
aren't generally known for their consideration of the land they're
occupying—Israeli troops angered the Lebanese by committing acts of destruction
and violence, including
indirectly participating in the massacre of hundreds of civilians at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps that September.
Negative attention soon turned to the United
States, which was (and still is) perceived as Israel's sponsor and patron. In addition to
providing billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, America also dedicated
itself to supporting a Christian-led minority government in Lebanon by leading
a multinational coalition of armed forces into Beirut. Terrorism against US
assets in Lebanon soon commenced. Following a 1984 incident in which an
American battleship
fired upon some militias in a heavily populated area of south Beirut, Lebanese Shiites became thoroughly convinced that the United States
was their implacable enemy.
That's when the kidnappings began in earnest.
"There is a very high correlation between
being occupied and terrorism," an ex-State Department official who was
high up in the counterterrorism apparatus at the time of my father's captivity
told me while I was writing the book. "Probably that's the highest
correlation. It's higher than a poverty correlation, certainly higher than a
religious correlation. In the case of Lebanon, there was Israeli occupation.
That tends to make people far more militant and desperate... the occupation
aspect is very interesting and says a lot about Lebanon, which has been occupied
by someone almost continuously... and what you will sometimes do if you can't
actually get at your immediate occupier is to go for their outside
supporter."
All of this is not to excuse the men who treated
my father like an animal for the better part of a decade. No amount of
political oppression justifies terrorism. Kidnapping and brutalizing someone
for years is just evil, as is beheading innocent people to make a political
statement, the way ISIS does. But it is valuable to understand how American policies
helped shape an environment in which evil men found opportunities to exploit
anti-American sentiment, so that we can try to make it harder for them to do so
in the future.
In other words, unpacking the sociopolitical
context for terrorism helps political actors make better decisions by learning
from the mistakes of the past. Here's another important, and timely, example: There is a
significant likelihood that
key ISIS leaders met in a US prison camp during the
disastrous, ill-fated war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein—a man who once
enjoyed a favored position as an American ally. The Islamic Revolution in Iran
was sparked by outrage at the Shah's ruthless repression of his people—which
the US indirectly participated in by politically supporting his regime,
even
engineering a coup against the
country's only democratically elected leader when he wanted to nationalize the
Iranian oil industry. American support of the Shah's brutal dictatorship led
many Iranians to turn against the West and toward the repressive Islamic
government its leaders spend so much
rhetoric condemning. A faction of that regime
created the terrorist group in Lebanon that kidnapped my father and sent him
home to me seven years later, psychologically devastated in ways my
little mind couldn't possibly make sense of.
Context is essential when it comes to making sense of anti-American sentiment in the
region, and clarifying representations of Islam in the media. There are plenty more examples, but we draw none of the attendant complexity from media outlets showing us little more than frightening scenes of
beheadings, black flags, and burning buildings.
This leads many people to believe
Islam is the problem.
71-year-old Leonard Debello, who allegedly threatened to kill Rabie Ayoub and his family earlier this year
One of those people is Leonard
Debello of St. Louis County, Missouri. In February, the 71-year-old
allegedly brandished a gun and threatened to shoot Rabie Ayoub, a
Palestinian-American who immigrated to the United States from Lebanon when he
was 16. (Coincidentally, Ayoub happens to have been raised in the desperately
impoverished and dangerous
Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, where
I have spent considerable time. It's a heartbreaking place, full of wide-eyed
children in rags and thuggish youths brandishing machine guns—needless to say,
not an easy environment in which to grow up.)
According to Ayoub, he, his wife, and their
four children were not far from their home when Debello approached the car.
"All of a sudden, this guy came and started
shouting at us, 'Are you Muslim? Are you Muslim?'" Ayoub recalls over the phone. "My wife had her hair covered. I told him, 'Yes,
what's going on?" I didn't think twice about it. He came toward the car
and said, 'You know, all of you Muslims should die.' I said, 'Why would you say
that? I haven't done anything to you. I don't even know you.' He said, 'I'm
going right now to get my gun, and I'm going to shoot you, your wife, and your
kids.' He went back inside his house—and I just froze, you know, in some
situations you don't know what to do, you don't know what to say, because it
was just insane. He came back with a gun. I asked him, 'What are you doing?' He
said, 'The state issues guns to people like me so that we can kill people like
you. We have to clear this country from people like you.'"
... it's not always easy to publicly point out the inaccuracy of media depictions of Islam, especially in the modern American environment.
Ayoub adds that he pulled out his phone and
took a photo of Debello holding a gun. He then drove a short distance away,
called 911, and waited for the police to arrive.
"When the police came, this guy was sitting
outside on his porch like nothing had happened. They didn't even force him to
stand up. He stayed sitting in his rocking chair, and they were talking. So I
called the police over and told them I had a picture of him holding a gun. They
went inside, and he had three guns—a machine gun and two handguns by the door.
They talked to him and took the guns and handcuffed him, but they sat him in
the front seat of the police car. I asked them, 'What is this, a five-star
police car?'
"They released him the next day,"
Ayoub continues. "No bail, no nothing. He lives down the street from me. I
saw him the next day. When my kids were getting on the bus, he passed by on the
street. When I saw that, I told myself, 'No, I'm not going to let this go.' He
scarred my kids for life... So I went to the news and called the FBI."
Following media coverage and, according to Ayoub, FBI involvement,
Debello was
eventually charged with unlawful use of a weapon motivated by discrimination. The case is still pending, and a spokesman for the St. Louis County
Police Department wrote in response to an email asking for comment on the
incident, "The officers responded to the scene, conducted an investigation
of the incident, and placed the suspect under arrest. The case was then
taken to the prosecuting attorney's office for review for charges."
Check out our documentary about an indigenous Muslim community in Mexico.
In addition to helping Americans avoid making the same political mistakes, a grasp of the bigger picture behind global terrorism can also serve as a vaccine against ignorance and bigotry.
Religious scholar and author Reza Aslan has spent much of his career trying to dispel commonly held
misconceptions about Islam. He explains that the question of context seems to
be completely ignored in media coverage of terrorism committed by Muslims, as
opposed to acts of violence carried out by people from other backgrounds.
"When the faith at hand is not Islam,
people are much more willing to actually think about all the other factors that
go into a person's actions," says Aslan. "For instance, when
Robert Dear shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic because
he saw himself as a devoted, faithful follower of Christ who was saving, in his
words, 'unborn babies,' people talked at length about his background, his
childhood, his mental condition, his relationship with his parents. They talked
about all those factors, which are important, but they rarely or if at all
talked about his faith. On the flip side, when you have a Muslim acting
violently in the name of Islam, every other factor that could possibly be
involved in those actions is just completely subsumed by a single factor: their
religion.
"Sventy-four percent of law enforcement agencies in
the United States as well as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security
say that the
number one threat to Americans is right-wing terrorism," Aslan continues. "The San
Bernardino shooting, as horrific as it was, was the three hundred fifty-fifth mass shooting in 2015. The
threat is absolutely dwarfed by the reality of the
terror that is being rained upon us by white right-wing extremists. Yet I'd say
ninety-eight percent of the media focus is about Muslim terrorism. This is an absurdly
exaggerated threat. It's not that there is no threat from Islamic extremism. It's just that right-wing terrorism has killed far, far more Americans."
But it's not always easy to publicly point out
the inaccuracy of media depictions of Islam, especially in the modern American environment. Aslan has been attacked for his efforts by everyone from
Pamela Geller to
YouTuber David Pakman, who has dedicated
several episodes of his show to questioning Aslan's
credentials and trying to poke holes in his arguments. For instance,
Aslan
maintained on CNN that female
genital mutilation (FGM) is a central African problem, not a Muslim problem as is
commonly believed—an explanation that has been rated "mostly
true" by Politifact. Pakman, who didn't respond to my requests for
comment,
presents his own stats on
his show, which would seem to contradict Aslan's. But how would a viewer
distinguish between the two perspectives? And since
80 percent of Muslims do not
practice FGM, isn't it important to clarify that the brutal mutilation of a
woman's genitals is not a mainstream Muslim custom, so as not to add to the general
environment of ignorance and bigotry?
"Anyone can just get on YouTube and say
whatever the hell they want to, ignoring the fact that there is documented
evidence, statistics, facts, and independent analyses supporting these
statements," Aslan says. "That's the magic of the internet. It turns
everybody into an authority... and the echo chamber of this fear of Muslims
provides an enormous amount of revenue to cable news channels, which feeds into
the rhetoric of politicians who then use this kind of fear mongering to get
votes. It's incredibly profitable, both politically and economically."
Donald Trump waves to the crowd during a campaign rally at the Northwest Washington Fair and Event Center in Lynden, Washington, on May 7, 2016. (JASON REDMOND/AFP/Getty Images)
Islamophobia may be profitable, but it's having
increasingly dangerous consequences for American Muslims. Ayoub, for one, says the
incident traumatized his family and that although they are American citizens,
they now feel unsafe in their own country.
"What I saw in Lebanon, I don't want my
kids to see that," he says. "I saw two people killed in Ain
el-Hilweh. One of them was sixteen; the other one was twenty-one. They had nothing to do
with anything. They were just students, and they were killed... The news went to
interview , and he said he was a veteran and had PTSD and all this
stuff. I told them, 'Let him go to my country and be there for two days. Lets
see how much PTSD he has.' We're born with those conditions. They come with us
when we leave."
So imagine it's the year 2050. A schoolchild in
another country picks up a history book and reads about the United States circa
2016—during the era when presidential candidates said Muslims should be forced
to carry special IDs and their neighborhoods singled out for surveillance. This
child learns that in America, Muslims were once removed from airplanes simply
for speaking their native language and threatened with death at gunpoint for no
reason other than their faith.
How do you think he or she will view America?
"They're giving the wrong picture of
Muslims in the news," Ayoub tells me with bitterness in his voice.
"They're not showing what real Muslims are like, and they're not showing
how many of us are being killed.
"If it was me pulling a gun on someone, or if
I even just threatened someone, maybe they would shoot me first and ask
questions later," he says. "If a white family called 911 and said, 'There's an Arab with
a gun threatening us,' it would be completely different."
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