Once more, I find myself disagreeing with the actions of the Ahmadi community in the U.S. Their new program, while I’m sure well-intentioned, accepts certain false premises of the larger Muslim-American community, ignoring the work of many Muslim-American organizations. The program, known as “Muslims for Loyalty,” was apparently designed to encourage Muslims to be loyal to the U.S.
I am a firm believer that all citizens of the U.S., including Muslims, should be loyal to their country. To say that Muslims need to be targeted goes against the very nature of being American: no group receives special rights, treatment, or inspection because of their association. To demand that Muslims be targeted shows an ignorance of the historical fabric of America.
In addition, it also accepts an anti-Muslim bias in American popular discourse that ignores the long involvement of Muslims in the military, law-enforcement, civic engagement, and in reporting terrorist plots. The idea of dual loyalty is one that has been symptomatic of American xenophobia for generations. We have always risen to our better natures, yet the Ahmadi community thinks that all Muslims are responsible for the acts of the few. The Ahmadis may feel collective guilt, or as their National Vice-President and Missionary Incharge implies in his statement that the “message of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community” is different than the message of the rest of the Muslim community, which has made these arguments for years.
The international Amman Message, for example, was issued in 2007, and the Islamic Center at NYU is a center based on the message. The Islamic Society of North America issued a similar statement in 2005. The difference between these endeavors and the Ahmadi community’s statement is that that these other messages are far-reaching, including as they do wide sections of the Muslim community. They neither assume a collective guilt, nor do they demean other Muslim communities in their approach.
Much as I said in my earlier pieces, I think the Ahmadi community, or least people who identify as their leadership, have good intentions. Unfortunately, by not actually understanding the environment they are working in, being unfamiliar with the history and law of America, say, or working with other Muslim groups, they continue to set the Muslim-American community back.
