Not in our name
At an adjacent table, a middle-aged woman grew visibly nervous when their native land was mentioned. One of the doctors, a 47-year-old cardiologist, was despondent.
“We were all praying this wouldn’t happen,” he told me. “No matter what you do in your community, that’s the label that is attached.”
Another doctor worried that years of outreach efforts by the city’s 10,000-strong Muslim community, a mix of Bosnians, Somalis, and Iraqis, would be lost.
On Thursday, he sent a letter to the local newspaper condemning the Boston attack “no matter who committed it”. When news broke that the two suspects were Chechen Muslims, his family grew nervous.
“Five minutes ago my mom called from Copenhagen to see if I was OK,” said the 41-year-old geriatrician. “It rattles all of us.”
Clearly, Bostonians have and will suffer the most from the marathon bombings. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people “sheltered in place” in and around Boston on Friday. The injured now face months, if not years, of arduous recuperation. And the families of the dead will never recover.
It is by no means equivalent but the attack also impacts the US’s roughly 2.5m Muslims. As television screens displayed the words “the terrorist next door” on Friday, a sense of dread spread among Muslim community leaders here.
“When this happens,” the cardiologist said, “it just gets tough”.
Twelve years after the Sept 11 attacks, some see it almost as a cliche to say all Muslims should not be blamed for the actions of a radical few. But it is vital that understandably anxious Americans adhere to that principle. Whatever their motivations, the Tsarnaev brothers are not representative of Muslims in the US — or the world.
In the days and weeks ahead, Americans may learn chilling details about the Tsarnaev brothers. Links to groups outside the US may be revealed. Their years in the America will be dissected. The immigration policies that allowed their families to emigrate will likely be criticised.
But it is important not to exaggerate their impact. Four deaths and 176 injuries are heart rendering but they are a tiny fraction of the 3,000 who perished on Sept 11. The attack’s primary legacy is fear. The actions of two young men will focus an enormous amount of suspicion on Chechens and Muslims across the nation.
Based on initial reports, the Tsarnaevs’ story is chilling. Two brothers, one an aspiring boxer and the other a high school wrestling captain, were seemingly transformed overnight into soulless killing machines. I suspect, though, that the process took years.
In 2008, the Taliban kidnapped two Afghan colleagues and me after inviting us to an interview. Held captive in the tribal areas of Pakistan for seven months, we found that Arab, Afghan, and Pakistani militants had created a sophisticated system of schools, training camps and indoctrination videos that slowly severed young men’s bonds with their families.
The only relationship that mattered, recruits were told, was their relationship to God. The only cause that mattered, clerics preached, was stopping a vast — and nonexistent — Christian-Jewish-Hindu conspiracy to obliterate Islam from the face of the earth.
For six weeks, I lived with a suicide bomber who was convinced American forces were forcibly converting Afghan Muslims to Christianity. No matter how long I spent talking with him, I could not alter his attitudes. Radicalism gave him a cause, a community and an identity.
Louisville’s Muslim leaders embrace an entirely different interpretation of Islam. Tolerant, worldly and passionately committed to education, they accuse Saudi Arabia of spreading an intolerant Wahhabist interpretation of Islam that distorts their faith and endangers their lives. The cardiologist, who asked not to be named, said he does not fear attacks in America. Rather, he fears for the safety of his family in Pakistan.
Last year, Sunni Wahhabist militants in Pakistan killed 400 Shias, who they consider heretics, particularly doctors. One victim was a friend of the cardiologist and a fellow physician. Jihadists sprayed the man’s car with bullets, killing him and his 11 year-old son.
“My brother is a doctor over there,” said the cardiologist. “They target all the high-end professionals.”
Mohammad Babar, the Pakistani-American geriatrician, was happy to be quoted by name. Only his grandmother remains in Pakistan. He said the US was a “safe haven” where he can practice and spread a moderate form of Islam without fearing assassination. In the wake of the Boston attack, he vowed to redouble his efforts.
“We are doing a bad job of reaching out to young people. Extremists are doing a great job.”
Tensions exist in Louisville. Residents rejected an effort to create the city’s first Muslim cemetery. And clearly not every member of the Muslim community here is as broadminded as Babar.
“We need to let people know,” said Babar. “We need to let our communities know what we think.”
The problem, he argued, was radicalism.
“In the whole world, the far right is getting stronger.”
He is right. The enemy is not Islam. It is extremism.
* David Rohde is a columnist for Reuters, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a former reporter for The New York Times.
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