Misguided acts that tarnish a faith

Four years before the tragic attack on the Twin Towers in New York, which led to the death of nearly 3,000 Americans and, later, of the “collateral” death of 1.5 million in Iraq or hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan, the Arab League had finished a study about ways and means of changing the negative stereotype of Arabs in the American public opinion, which impacted, partially, the general support to the Palestinians and their rights in Jerusalem.

Many university professors, academicians, journalists, public opinion pollsters, public relations consultants and religious authorities contributed to the study on how to improve the Arab and Muslim image in the US. 

The third generation of Arabs presented many studies about their school curricula at early stages, showing how they influenced the negative image of Arabs in school texts and in children’s magazines or cartoons.

Some Arab clergymen in Tampa, Florida, scanned the negative references to the Arabs in many Sunday sermons at the new churches, with many suggestions about how to rectify the situations.

Several US ambassadors who had served in this region came out with many sound proposals about means to project the true image of Arabs, as they had come to know them during long years of direct contact in this region, along with a practical strategy of how to bridge the divide.

Some Arab countries spent millions of dollars to found research centres at some Ivy League universities where Arab civilisation and culture were highlighted to the average Americans.

All these specialists’ and professionals’ great efforts to win the world public opinion and induce it to support Arab causes, or to understand Islam as a message of compassion to all human beings, irrespective of colour, language, ethnicity or religion, were destroyed, along with the Twin Towers, and the Muslims’ image turned to black ashes, just as the debris of the two
skyscrapers in New York.

Italian classical writer Dante Alighieri describes in his epic “The Divine Comedy” the sixth layer in hell where the sinners are daily punished since they had nourished themselves during their lifetime from the tree of poison which creates a state of potent delirium that made them believe to be a master race, or privileged with a master faith, or belonging to a master tribe.

It is the impact of that tree that fed Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, which made him applaud “our brothers, the heroes in Manhattan”.

It is the fruit of the same tree that made the Islamic State’s Baghdadi order the lopping off of the heads of non-Muslims in Mosul and taking their daughters as slaves.

Such acts project the worst image of Islam, and years of hard work will be unable to uproot that perverted misconception of our religion from the subliminal consciousness of seven billion human beings living on this earth.