If you have not yet watched the video of the crowd singing the National Anthem before the Boston Bruins game this past week, be sure to do so. There are few videos of recent memory that have evoked such powerful emotions of pride, sadness, unity and hope. As I heard the 18,000 voices belt out our national anthem in the wake of the Boston Marathon tragedy, I could not help but feel my eyes start to water. This rendition of the national anthem showed the world what the United States is at its best—a people united together, supportive in the face of adversity and determined enough to be defined by our shining moments and not our darkest ones. In stark contrast, the public and news media assumptions in the aftermath about who the unidentified perpetrators of this horrible crime were left me feeling ashamed.
Immediately following the Boston Marathon bombing, speculation was rampant about who could have caused this tragedy. While nothing was confirmed, the elephant in the room was that this was an act of terror committed undoubtedly by a radical Muslim for religious purposes. While no concrete evidence confirmed this, many of the friends that I talked to, comments that I read on the Internet and assertions made by the news media immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was a Muslim terrorist who carried out this attack. Although we have now learned that the perpetrators were Muslim, they were living here legally. While we still do not know the specific motives of the perpetrators, we should all agree that, like the saying goes, to assume who they are and what their motives were before any verification really “makes an ass out of you and me.”
I am not blind to the fact that there are radical Islamic extremists who want to bring harm to America. We felt the full effects of that hatred on September 11, 2011 when these truly evil people carried out the attack. However, the idea that our worst fears inspire us to make preemptive decisions about who is guilty before we know the truth is detrimental to the way we perceive those around us. By being assumptious of the culprits in situations like this, we are not only setting ourselves down a path of prejudice but we are also consciously creating a sense of discrimination toward those Muslims living in America who have done nothing wrong.
The news media is a main reason why our society has such feelings of trepidation toward an entire people rather than a select few radicalized individuals. Immediately after the events Monday, on his show, commentator Glenn Beck noted, “No American citizen blows up random people; that’s a Middle Eastern scene, that’s not an American scene. When our crazies go off, they target the government, not streets that are crowded with people.” As we learned late Friday, the younger brother was a naturalized American citizen. It is assumptions and referendums such as these that force citizens like Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, to immediately come out and distance himself and his organization from a tragedy that no competent person should be accusing him, his organization, or the religion he specifically practices of being complicit in.
Another striking example of this is the reckless speculation of a hospitalized Saudi national as a potential suspect. As the Boston Herald pointed out, while 176 other people were injured from the bomb, the Saudi man was the only patient being treated in the hospital that also had his apartment searched with “a startling show of force.” As it turned out, the only mistake this innocent man made was going to the marathon to see the sporting event.
While these may be small-scale examples of our country jumping to conclusions after facing a tragedy, we do not have to look far into the past to understand how dangerous preemptive skepticism can be. The blunder of entering the Iraq War under the assumption of Saddam’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction and alleged link to Al-Qaeda has cost America thousands of lives and billions of dollars. If anything has been gained from the Iraq War, hopefully it is that we can learn from our mistakes and avoid any type of assumption not backed by verified and factual information.
The takeaway from this week’s tragedy is this. Yes, there are Muslim extremists out there who want to do us harm and we should be vigilantly aware of this. And yes, the motive for these attacks might have been religiously driven. However, while we can have these sentiments in the back of our mind, proposing them anywhere more concretely without evidence is not only a disservice to yourself but also a disservice to the U.S. It causes people like Nihad Awad and theSaudi man to live a life feeling accountable for people’s actions who share the same religion, but with completely different beliefs. Could you imagine every white person having to constantly apologize for the actions of the Ku Klux Klan, African Americans for the views of the Black Panthers or Hispanics for the violence of the Mexican drug cartels? No. Just because someone may be different than you and what you are accustomed to does not make him or her the extreme you fear so deeply. As exhibited by the emotional rendition of the National Anthem before the Bruins game, embracing those singing next to you rather than alienating them creates a much more powerful performance.
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