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Creating a Muslim Registry and Stereotyping Terror Is Dangerously Un-American

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Times of great fear can lead to greater oppression. For Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, the prospect of a Muslim registry is obscene, and it's slippery slope to something much worse.The media and politicians in the west are playing a dangerous game of word association, says founder and editor-in-chief of muslimgirl.com Amani Al-Khatahtbeh. In fact, it’s not so much a game as it is the dehumanizing of an entire population. By linking terrorism with Islam, and Islam with terrorism an impossible generalization is forged in the public consciousness that is extremely dangerous. It incites hate within institutions and within individuals, from the largest scale to the smallest.

There is not just one kind of terrorist. Al-Khatahtbeh’s definition is simple: a terrorist is anyone who incites terrors. Mass shooters, who are overwhelmingly white males, are terrorists but they are not the image that comes to mind when the word terrorist is spoken or written. It’s a painfully selective term, applied only to people with brown skin or of the Islamic faith.

Imagine if the future president of the United States proposed a registry for all white males. Is it conceivable? And yet that’s exactly what’s on the table for America’s approximate 3.3 million Muslims. Just 12 months ago, Al-Khatahtbeh could never have imagined that a Muslim registry would be discussed as a serious policy, and to watch it harden, set and become part of quasi-normal political discourse is in her view obscene. "If we don't stand up and recognize what's taking place right now then it's a slippery slope and it honestly is very terrifying to imagine where else it could lead," she says.

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh's book is Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age.
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AMANI AL-KHATAHTBEH:

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh is the founder and editor-in-chief of MuslimGirl.com, the #1 Muslim women’s blog in the United States. She regularly provides commentary on social, cultural, and political issues on outlets like CNN, Al Jazeera, and the BBC, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, and made Forbes “30 Under 30” list. She is a frequent speaker at conferences and events addressing issues pertaining to women, Islam, and the Arab world. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter at @XOAmani and read more on MuslimGirl.com.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh: To me terrorist means a person who incites terror. It's very simple. I think that Isis fighters are terrorists just as much as I believe that white mass shooters are terrorists. However, in the media's definition of terrorism the word is only ever applied when it comes to a brown person or a person of Muslim faith. And a person is only ever identified for their religion when it comes to a terrorist attack if they happen to be Muslim. And when we do that inevitably we are linking terrorism with Islam and Islam with terrorism and we make this common assumption that all Muslims are terrorists or that all terrorists are Muslim. And that, of course, is an impossible generalization it to make.

When you put into perspective that there are 1.8 billion Muslims on the planet it is impossible to say that they're all terrorists and it's actually a very dehumanizing thing to try to categorize them in that way. To put that into context there are 2.2 billion Christians in the world so you have a 2.2 billion Christians and 1.8 billion Muslims. So just as ridiculous it would be to make one assumption or one generalization about the entire Christian population that's just as ridiculous as it would be to make that assumption about the entire Muslim people. And yet when you ask a common American on the street what they think of when they hear the word terrorist, of course, the first image that comes to mind will be of the stereotypical person of Muslim faith.

And, of course, that is extremely dangerous. Like there was a situation a couple of years ago that is still a tremendous source of anxiety Muslim women today and that was when a Hindu man was pushed off of the platform on the subway onto the tracks of an oncoming train and was killed. And the woman that did so said that she's hated Muslims every since 9/11 happened. So let's think about that for a second. This woman hated all 1.8 billion Muslims in the world because 9/11 took place.

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