By Darcy Keenan, The Miami Student
I'm going to take you back in time for a bit here. Imagine this: we're somewhere in America in the 1930's. Hitler is on the rise and demanding that all the Jewish people get out of Germany. The Jewish community reaches out to various countries, including our own beloved America. However, we graciously tell them that we don't want to deal with them. We turn around ships filled to the brim with innocent lives because we are afraid that they will take our jobs, never mind that they are scared their belongings, lives and family will be taken from them.
Some of them find shelter in other countries, but some of them aren't as lucky. Even the lucky ones aren't always particularly lucky, as some of the countries who house them eventually get taken over by his majesty (yes, I'm talking about Hitler), and they end up being tortured, forced to do hard labor and killed.
'If only there was something we could have done to save them,' the American people all think after the war ends, 'something we could have done to prevent all those deaths.' But there was.
Today, we think about that and we are ashamed of our country. Did we really let all those innocent people die? Just because we didn't want to risk competition in the job market? Yes. We did. And we're doing a similar thing today.
In the Middle East, there are Syrian men, women and children who are being tortured and killed. And for some reason America is debating letting them in, and how many of them we should oh-so-graciously let into our country (the huge number we decided on? 10,000).
This time, our excuse for being selfish is that we are afraid of terrorism. However, since 9/11 we have taken in around 800,000 refugees. You know how many of them have been arrested for acts of terrorism? Three. This being said, statistically less than one percent of the 10,000 refugees we are now letting in will be a terrorist. In fact, we could let in more than 260,000 refugees and according to these statistics not one of them would be a terrorist.
In another 50 years, people are going to look back on how we were so against letting in these innocent lives and how it took us so long to come to a decision. And they'll think that we are just as dumb and selfish as we were before World War II, when we refused to give the Jewish people a safe home.
Islamophobia has gotten way out of hand. In fact, it makes no sense. These terrorists are not actually in the Islamic faith, they are not true Muslims. It is like assuming that all Christians were a part of the Crusaders, or that all white people are in the KKK.
The Prophet Muhammad used to forbid the killing of women and children, as well as all punishment with fire. He listed murder as the second major sin (beaten only by comparing Allah to any Earthly thing, as Allah is of the most high and His followers should never associate anything with Him). He even insisted that they treat animals with the utmost respect. To this day, many Muslims eat food only if it has been deemed Halal. For meat to be considered Halal, it must be cruelty-free, completely. Treated nicely when alive and killed in the least frightening and painful way possible.
There is no reason for everyone who follows Allah to be feared. The Islamic faith is one of peace, love and kindness. I encourage all of you to do anything and everything you can to increase the number of refugees we let into our country.
keenandm@miamioh.edu