Narratives are essential to the way we view the world around us. Narratives inform our actions; they have the capacity to bind, to divide, to obscure.
Last week, President Joe Biden tweeted about a new initiative to counter Islamophobia, stating: “We can’t stand by while hate against Muslims, and those wrongfully perceived to be Muslim, including Arabs and Sikhs, is given oxygen. That’s why we’re developing a National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Related Forms of Hate. Silence is complicity. We won’t be silent.” Vice President Kamala Harris also tweeted that, “Taking on hate is a national priority.”
Why the sudden concern for an uptick in Islamophobia? Obviously, this is a response to the hate crimes against Muslims around the country, beginning with the murder of 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume in the Plainfield area. As a Muslim American who came of age during 9/11 and its aftermath, Islamophobia is something I have experienced firsthand — on my college campus as a teen, in my adulthood simply walking down the street.
However, in this moment, it is most deceptive to discuss the uptick in Islamophobia divorced from the circumstances that have reignited, fomented and fueled this most recent wave. The demonization of Palestinians, and by association, Muslims, has flooded airwaves and screens, although such dehumanization certainly did not begin then.
Palestinians as a whole have been portrayed as animals, barbarians, savages and bloodthirsty militants, rather than what they actually are — victims of a cruel, crippling and unrelenting occupation for the past 75 years, suffering what is increasingly being referred to as genocide unfolding in real time before the world’s very eyes.
Palestinians plead with the world to simply be seen as victims, to deserve the sympathy of governments who view them as disposable collateral damage in an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. In a since-deleted social media post, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu characterized the war on Gaza as, “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” The public is told that Israel is battling an elusive foe, and that they will destroy anything and everything in an attempt to eviscerate this threat.
America’s war on terror killed innocent Muslims
This is not a narrative the American public has not heard before. We have been sold justifications for the alleged war on terror, a war that decimated Iraq and Afghanistan, accomplishing little other than costing the U.S. more than $8 trillion and the murder of nearly a million Muslim civilians who were also dehumanized and portrayed as acceptable losses.
U.S. aid should not support the Israeli regime as it carries out attacks in Gaza that kill thousands of innocent men, women and children, captured on TikTok and shared on Instagram.
The mainstream narrative too often contributes to inflammatory rhetoric that reduces every Palestinian to the stereotypical “Muslim terrorist.” It is the same narrative that conflates legitimate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, which is a dangerous equivalent since Israel’s actions do not represent the sentiments of all Jewish Americans. It is the same narrative that misconstrues activism for Palestinian rights with support for terrorism. The narrative has become warped, distorted and contrary to all human logic.
It is especially cunning for the Biden administration to take the most vulnerable moment for our community, a moment when we are collectively mourning, without any support from our government, to exploit our feelings of helplessness with talk of Islamophobia.
We are under no impression that this initiative is an altruistic attempt to aid our community; rather, this narrative is an attempt to detract from the administration’s failure to protect Muslim Americans. It has contributed to Islamophobic sentiment by perpetuating false narratives about Palestinians and calling their integrity in question.
We must prove our dead are indeed dead. We must prove our living are indeed human.
The primary narrative is and should be the war on Palestinians. Islamophobia is a real problem we are dealing with, but we will not allow our government’s rhetoric to deceive us into believing they are showing us any modicum of support.
Deanna Othman is a writer and educator from Oak Lawn.
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