The politics of fear and paranoia

The paranoia surrounding the post-9/11 world never ceases to entangle questions of security and economics in the United States.

This paranoia has consumed New York City’s education system. It is time for the United States to move past the fear and paranoia that exists in the minds of many and to embrace the principles of liberty, peace and freedom again.

Ms. Debbie Almontaser was the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York City. She had an ambitious goal for the school: to offer Arabic as a second language. Over one-fifth of the students enrolled at the high school in Brooklyn were Arabic students. Ms. Almonstaser hoped that students could join together in learning Arabic and become, as she says, “ambassadors of peace and hope.”

But her dream did not last long. Some students at the Academy have been suspended for picking fights, carrying weapons or taunting Arabic teachers as terrorists. Ms. Almontaser is not a comforting figure for the paranoid either. She recently endorsed the use of the word “intifada” on t-shirts, which resulted in widespread outrage and accusations of being an Islamic fundamentalist. Intifada is an Arabic word that means civil uprising, or literally, “shaking off.” It carries the association with the frequently violent Palestine uprising.

Ms. Almontaser was forced to step down as the founding principal by the Mayor’s office, after a bitter campaign was fought against her which labeled her as a militant Muslim. She has also been labeled as a “jihadist,” “9/11 denier” and “radical.”

The campaign against her was not only run by neighborhood activists or concerned parents. A growing organized movement exists in the form of conservative groups and interest groups that actively want to prevent Muslim citizens from seeking an expanded role in American public life. The expansion of a school like Khalil Gibran International Academy is a terrifying thought to some. They call it a place of recruitment and training for militant Islam.

Some don’t even go that far. Daniel Pipes, who directs the Middle East Forum, wants to erase Islam from all aspects of American public life. He fears that the expansion of rules and laws in the United States, even cab drivers who refuse to carry passengers with liquor purchases or Harvard University’s female-only hours at the gym, are adding to the possibility of sharia law.

As irrational as these ideas sound, they clearly have a large voice in New York City, where the memory of 9/11 stirs emotions. But these intolerant ideas are not new.

This post-9/11 battle, which some have termed the War on Terror, is a battle fought against a difficult enemy: it is a war fought against global terrorism that exists as a network of broken groups each seeking to wreak havoc on Western institutions, Western beliefs, and Western values. The media and many interest groups in America have painted the War on Terror as warfare raged from the West against the dangerous elements of the global fabric, mainly Islamic fundamentalists and those harboring or sympathizing with their cause.

Groups like the Middle East Forum view the attack on Western institutions as particularly strong, even from peaceful Muslims, and believe that countries like Britain and France have already bent to their early attempts to impose sharia law.

The War on Terror has a terrible track record with American civil rights and liberties groups. It regularly denies basic American liberties through acts like Senate Bill 1927 for wiretapping, the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay. The mired troubles of Iraq and Afghanistan only paint a partial picture of the failures of the War on Terror. And recently, the decision to force the resignation of Debbie Almontaser and attempts to shut down her school are only part of that paranoid tradition.