ColumnistBy Jamala Rogers
“To be involved with killing large [numbers] of other human beings, you have to dehumanize the enemy, and the easiest way to dehumanize them is to racialize them.”
Those were the words of former Marine Corps Cpl. Dave Hassan, who served in Iraq and is of Egyptian heritage, admitted that he got caught up in the anti-Arab, anti-Islam rhetoric.
In an interview with New American Media, Hassan found himself using the term “hajji” to describe the Iraqi and Afghan people. The Arab term of esteem refers to someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca but has now been denigrated by U.S. military forces to be comparable to the N-word.
I received much response to last week’s column “Mass murder at Fort Hood.” Couched in some of the feedback is the Islamophobia that has been systemically fueled in this country even before the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers.
In the case of Dr. Hasan, the political right has stretched to prove that the psychiatrist was a terrorist in our midst carrying out his part of a worldwide jihad. There have been a lot of speculative conclusions and unconfirmed reporting on the Fort Hood massacre, including what Hasan said before opening fire on fellow soldiers. Even the FBI has debunked that theory, asserting that Hasan was a lone, troubled killer.
The tendency to blame all Muslims for the act of one is not isolated. After the Virginia Tech shootings by a Korean student, Asian Americans felt the tremors (since most Americans don’t know a Korean from a Chinese). Similarly, African Americans experienced repercussions once it was discovered the D.C. Sniper was a black man named John Muhammad.
Muhammad’s execution last week was but a blip on the media screen since it came when the focus was on Fort Hood. Most black folks remember feeling both surprised and ashamed the day Muhammad’s identity was disclosed. Criminal profilers assumed his acts of random violence were those of a mad white man. The color of the assassin made no difference to my friends in the Washington, D.C. area who were forced to learn how to pump gas crouched behind their cars during the killing spree of Muhammad and his young accomplice, John Lee Malvo.
Most white people don’t carry the burden of Timothy McVeigh, who was responsible for the deaths of 168 men, women and children from all racial backgrounds. The Army veteran was an unabashed opponent of the U.S. government, but the rationale for his deadly deeds was never attributed to his religion. Christianity suffered no stain because of McVeigh.