According the news presented by Vox on last Sunday, July 17, multiple police officers were shot and three of them were killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. The suspect who was killed by law enforcement in a shootout has been identified as Gavin Long, 29, from Kansas City, Missouri. The Baton Rouge Police Department has been under scrutiny in recent weeks after video surfaced of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, being killed by Baton Rouge police officers Blaine Salamoni and Howie Lake on July 5. Protests have ensued around the country since, and the American Civil Liberties Union is currently suing the department for violating black people’s rights to protest. Similarly, police departments have been on edge after Micah X. Johnson, a sniper, killed five police officers in Dallas on July 7 at the tail end of a protest for Sterling and Philando Castile, 32, who was killed by police in Minnesota.
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To understand the recent killing of police officers in the US by African-Americans, we need to know the underlying cause of these targeted attacks against white police officers; we need to understand the cause of resentment and frustration of black Americans that drives them towards this kind of violent act and most of all, we need to understand the social disparity present in American society. To understand this, we need to dig deep down the past few hundred years of racist history of America, which is full of brutal racial discrimination and full of shameful acts of white Americans against people of color.
The seeds of racism were sown into America the moment so called civilized white Europeans had stepped onto the land of Native Americans, who were later killed and expelled from their homeland. Shortly after that Africans came into the scenario. They were needed as labor (slave manpower) to cultivate the millions of acres of vast land stolen from the Native Americans to bring countless fortune to the new settlers. These poor African people were kidnapped from their homeland and sold in America as slaves. They were stripped off their identities and names and forced to be Christians. They were whipped, tortured and in many cases lynched or burned to death at the whims of their white masters, for whom slavery was the key to maintain their vast properties. Though after two and half centuries, slavery was officially banned in the US and finally, these poor Africans were accepted as citizens, but discriminatory laws barred them from owning property and even voting. Shameful Jim Crow Laws suggested that Blacks were innately, intellectually and culturally inferior to the Whites. It was taught by theologians that the Whites were the chosen people of God and blacks were cursed to be servants.
It is true that in today’s America, the law prohibits segregation, racism and discrimination against the black community, but all these exist in the subtlest way. The concept of white supremacy still prevails in every walk of American society where being a black in America is still a crime. In the eyes of white police officers, a black male is a potential criminal, a troublemaker or a dangerous person. Studies show that police are more likely to pull over and frisk black people or Latinos than whites. In New York City, 80% of the stops were made to black and Latino drivers, and 85% of those people were frisked, compared to a mere 8% of white people stopped. After being arrested, African-Americans are 33% more likely than white people to be detained in New York. Furthermore, in recent years killing of numerous African American shows that in the US an unarmed black man is highly likely to die anytime or without any reason at the hand of a white police officer.
After the Dallas and Baton Rouge shootings, US President Barak Obama called for Americans to have serious discussions about race relations and to reform the criminal justice system. But he should know that the root cause of the problem lies in their very ideology which propagates the concept of nationalism, which is inherently divisive. How can black Americans be integrated into American society without any prejudice when white Americans firmly believe that their race is far superior to the African-American race? We have seen what destruction Nazi Germany had brought to the world under the banner of German nationalism. We have seen how America had destroyed sovereign countries like: Afghanistan and Iraq, and killed hundreds and thousands of innocent Muslims just to uphold their national interest. We have seen how Rohingya Muslims are killed, tortured and expelled from their homeland by the terrorist Buddhist regime under their nationalist banner. Hence, nationalist concepts can never unite ethnic minorities; rather it encourages racial segregation and creates tension between different races as even after 400 years it has failed to integrate African-Americans into the mainstream American society.
History witnesses that only the Islamic ideology, under the banner of Islamic State had truly united people of different races, color, region and religion. The Islamic State, which had stretched from North Africa to Central Asia, united people from the Middle East, Africa, part of Europe, Central Asia, East Asia and even South Asia under its mighty banner where ethnic minorities were never subjected to any kind of discrimination or racial segregation. Black African Muslims, known as Moor, ruled Spain for 700 years and century after century under the banner of Islamic State, Spain was the melting pot for the people of different ethnic and religious background including Jews, Christians and Muslims. After 400 years America is still debating how to eliminate the concept of “white supremacy and black inferiority” from its society, whereas the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ destroyed this unjust concept 1400 years ago by saying that:
«أيها الناس، إن ربكم واحد، وإن أباكم واحد، كلكم لآدم، وآدم من تراب، إن أكرمكم عند الله أتقاكم، ليس لعربي فضل على أعجمي إلا بالتقوى، ألا هل بلَّغت؟ اللهم فاشهد»
“O people, your Lord is one and your father Adam is one. There is no virtue of an Arab over a foreigner nor a foreigner over an Arab, and neither white skin over black skin nor black skin over white skin, except by righteousness. Have I not delivered the message?”
Moreover, Islam vehemently rejects the concept of ‘Asabiyyah (nationalism / tribalism / patriotism / racism) and it is evident from numerous sayings of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Rasulullah ﷺ said in one hadith,
«لَيْسَ مِنَّا مَنْ دَعَا إِلَى عَصَبِيَّةٍ وَلَيْسَ مِنَّا مَنْ قَاتَلَ عَلَى عَصَبِيَّةٍ وَلَيْسَ مِنَّا مَنْ مَاتَ عَلَى عَصَبِيَّةٍ»
“He who calls for `Asabiyyah or fights for `Asabiyyah or dies for `Asabiyyah is not one of us.” [Abu Dawood]
When by the Will of Allah the second Khilafah Rashidah (Caliphate) upon the method of the Prophethood will be re-established soon in this world, the whole world including America will again witness the beauty of the Islamic ideology. The Islamic state will again act as a huge melting pot for people of all race, color, language, religion and region by eliminating the corrupt concept of racism from this world.
Fehmida Binte Wadud