If the Muslim approach to prayer is one that we in the West must learn to accommodate, which seems fair enough, then it is equally fair that Muslims must be mindful of the reality that in modern times Islam has forged quite an alliance between acts of prayer and acts of martyrdom with the intent of killing others. Indeed, this form of martyrdom is called Jihad. Non-Muslims cannot be blamed for thinking of Jihad when they see Muslims perform prayer under certain circumstances. Why? Precisely because Jihad is about being willing to kill oneself in order to kill others, where this is seen as an act of faithfulness to the will of Allah. If there is anyone who should be mindful of this, surely the 6 Muslims removed from a plane in Minneapolis should be. After all, Jihad is their tradition. It is rather duplicitous of them not to be mindful of this. We “infidels” in the West did not make it up.
It is not as if passengers were merely upset over the idea of flying with Muslims aboard. Quite the contrary, the passengers were upset over behavior that called to mind the reality of an act of Jihad.
At airports, Orthodox Jews can often be seen in corners doing their prayers. However, it is no accident that their doing so is no cause for alarm. There is nothing comparable among Orthodox Jews to a Jihad. Do Jews commit murder and rape and so on? Well, like everyone else, Jews have no claim to perfection. All the same, there is no custom in Judaism as it is presently practiced that comes even close to being the moral equivalent to Islam’s Jihad. Likewise for Christianity. The 6 Muslims removed from the plane in Minneapolis should be mindful of this.
In 2002, Farhad Khosrokhavar published Les Nouveaux Martyrs d’Allah (a best seller in Europe) in which he spoke of the significant role that martyrdom plays in fundamental Islam. An analogous claim about Christians or Jew would not fill a void.
Praying Muslims in public, like praying Jews in public, should be none other than an object of admiration, at best, or an object of curiosity or scorn, at worse. But this sort of thing cannot happen in a vacuum; and it is utterly disingenuous for Muslims to suppose otherwise. Non-Muslims are not being racist if they are alarmed by Muslims praying in public. Quite the contrary, non-Muslims would have to be fools for the thought of Jihad not to occur to them. And Muslims have no one to blame for that but their own tradition.
If numerous Orthodox Jew who prayed in public went on to vomit, surely it would be reasonable for people to want to distance themselves from a praying Jew, lest they be exposed to his vomit. The fact a given Jew has no intentions of vomiting is rather irrelevant. Or so it would be if there were not clear markers as to when a praying Jew in public was going to vomit as opposed to when he was not going to do so. I don’t imagine that any Muslim would want to be vomited upon. Accordingly, I would (in our imaginary scenario) expect a Muslim to distance her or himself from a praying Jew out of concern not to be vomited upon. This would be sheer commonsense.
Well, it is none other than sheer commonsense to consider the issue of Jihad when Muslims begin praying on an airplane. Or so it is at the moment. May the Righteous One hasten the day when this is not so. But until that day comes to pass, and so long as Jihad continues to be one of the markers of Islamic practice, as Islam itself claims, then it is simply unreasonable to expect ordinary citizens to presume innocence on the part of Muslims praying on a plane when Islam itself gives the ordinary good reason to suppose otherwise.
I deplore the hypocrisy of the 6 Muslims imams. I deplore the hypocrisy of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. I presume that they know the Islamic tradition better than most non-Muslims. Accordingly, what they know, if they know anything at all, is that Jihad is alive in well in Islam. Indeed, the truth is that some Muslims who, themselves would never commit Jihad, count upon the fact that there are many Muslims who will. Significantly, the call for Muslims who would commit Jihad is sufficiently common in the Muslim world that non-Muslims can take it as a part of the reality of Islam.
If this is right, then the concerned passengers were hardly being racist. Quite the contrary, they were responding to the reality of Islam itself. Racism is, among other things, about attributing untoward expectations that are simply have no basis in the facts as they present themselves. Well, the possibility of Jihad on the part of praying Muslims has tremendous warrant given the facts available to us—both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
The world that has been presented to us by Muslims themselves is not one where the only reasonable expectations to have from praying Muslims is that lollypops will be handed out to children or delicious food will be served. And it will not do argue that not all Muslims commit Jihad. That is true enough.
However, this truth does little to console. For one thing, Jihad has become sufficiently associated with Jihad that reasonable people have no way of knowing when prayers in public places will be followed by Jihad or not. For another, as I have already noted, many who would never commit Jihad themselves are proud of those who do. Given this backdrop, the passengers would have been fools not to have wondered “What the heck is going on”. They would have had to have been idiots not to have been more than a little concerned.
After the fact, we seem to know that “It was all good”. If I pull out a sword in a crowd and start swinging it, folks would have reason to be alarmed. This is not changed by the truth that it turns out that I am merely engaging in a new form of exercise. What is reasonable is tied to the relevant norms; and Islam wants to play fast and loose with practice of Jihad. It would be another thing entirely if one Muslim after another in the United States could be counted upon to reject and denounce the practice of Jihad. But that, alas, is not the reality of things.
Of course, untoward hostility towards Arabs, wherever it appears, must be denounced at all costs. But insofar as Muslim Arabs are duplicitous and ambiguous with regard to their opposition to Jihad and this is evident enough, then it is not unreasonable for non-Muslims to be suspicious of Muslims praying in public space.
It is true enough that we should be accepting of all cultures. But acceptance, alas, is not gratuitous. Quite the contrary, it presupposes a steadfast commitment to the same basic principles. For that very reason, there is no room at all to be ambiguous about the immorality of Jihad. And if Muslims are unwilling to take a hard stand in this regard against Jihad, then they are getting precisely what they deserve in terms of non-Muslims being suspicious of Muslims praying in public spaces. Trust of Muslims and the acceptance of Jihad on their part in any form do not mix. It is as simple as that. Really it is.