Last month’s furor over the sale of U.S. ports to United Arab Emirates-based Dubai Ports World was a wake-up call. Anti-Arab and anti-Islam sentiment is quietly taking hold in the North American collective subconscious. But why? Turn on CNN, or MSNBC or the nightly news and you will understand—image after image of suicide bombers, insurgents and dark proclamations of civil war in Iraq. The Left, so desperate to censor the good news from Iraq, leaves us only with bleak and inhuman images of beheaders and kidnappers. The very liberals who proudly proclaim that Islam is a religion of peace refuse to show us the peaceful side of Islam in hopes of reducing support for the war and demoralizing our citizens.
I offer this strategic advice to liberals, lefties and even those conservatives who are against the war: show the human face of Islam. The relentless reporting of homicide after homicide in Iraq has only hardened American hearts. Of course these attacks need to be reported, but please offer some glimpse of Islam at peace.
In the short term, it may impede your efforts to stop the war—support for the war may even improve—but in the long term it will make Americans more hesitant to go to war, as it is harder to fight someone with a human face. Regardless of which side you were on in the debate over the Dubai ports deal, the quick intensity and furor of the public, before even the barest facts were known, are signs of warning. By showing only the worst side of Islam for short-term political gain, the press is doing irreparable damage to Americans’ feelings toward Muslims and Arabs.
This ill treatment of Islam is not new to the left. Three years ago, when conservatives were making the case for freedom in Iraq, many on the left suggested that perhaps the Iraqis were not ready for freedom. Who is looking down on Arabs? The conservatives, who believe that the Iraqis can build a free society? Or the liberals, who believe that the Iraqis cannot build better lives for themselves? The concept of freedom is deeply rooted in the idea of equality, that every man should share the profound responsibility of self-determination for good or ill. Conservatives do not condemn Islam, conservatives do not condemn Arabs. We cheer them, have faith in them and believe they can share with us as equals the joy and pain of liberty, under the rule of law, not the iron fist of dictatorship.
