Stop Asking Muslims to Condemn Hamas

Here we go again. We’re about to head into 2024, and yet, little has changed since the aftermath of 9/11. Islamophobia is back in full swing (not that it ever left). Since that tragic day over 20 years ago, a population of nearly 2 billion Muslims worldwide have had to answer for the actions of just 19 hijackers, who by the way killed Muslim Americans working in the Twin Towers that day too. The people asked to answer for those heinous acts include myself, a Muslim American U.S. Marine veteran and children who weren’t even born at the time like my own.

In a normal world, this would sound ridiculous. But who says we’re living in normal times? I mean, why shouldn’t two billion Muslims have to answer for the actions of just 19 individuals?

Imagine for a second, right here in America, where the vast majority of mass shootings have been carried out by young white men, we started going around asking young white males around the country, hey, do you condemn mass shootings? Sounds ludicrous, right?

Those 19 hijackers were terrorists plain and simple. And they didn’t just terrorize Americans with their horrendous and inhumane acts; their terror extended to anyone who’s ever called himself a Muslim by hijacking an entire Islamic faith, which in its very core tenets teaches peace, love and harmony.

Fast forward to the recent Hamas attack of October 7 and we’re seeing a rerun. Muslims like me are once again being asked again and again to denounce Hamas’s horrific massacre against Israeli civilians.

I get it, of course. The Palestinians are mostly Muslim and Hamas lives among them, which means it only makes sense to associate all Muslims with Hamas—certainly all Gazans, even though Hamas membershipof roughly 20,000 to 25,000 people amounts to less than 1 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians. And since Hamas is a designated terrorist group and responsible for the October 7 attack on Israel which resulted in nearly 1,400 Israelis dead, it stands to reason that all Muslims must be terrorists too.

Scratching your head? Welcome to my world.

You would never dream of holding all Jews responsible for Israel dropping 6,000 or more bombs in the last two weeks alone on a city roughly the size of Detroit or Seattle. And this even though Israel is the Jewish state.

It would still be outrageous to demand every Jew denounce Israel for its civilian causualites, many of them children.

So why are we asking random Muslims (and even Jews for that matter) to condemn something we all know deep down their faiths would never condone?

It’s the very premise of this question that I personally find offensive, which all Muslims and Jews should too. If condemnation is something that must be sought out, consider posing the question to the leadership of Hamas.

As far as Islam is concerned, being Muslim and hating Jews is akin to not being Muslim. Moses, who Jews hold dear and base their teachings on, is revered in Islam. The Muslim Holy Quran states, “Allah (God) said, O Moses, I have chosen thee above the people of thy time by My messages and by My word,” (7:145) and in another verse, “And verily, We gave Moses the Book and caused after him Messengers to follow in his footsteps; and to Jesus, son of Mary, We gave manifest Signs, and strengthened him with the Spirit of holiness” (2:88).

In short, according to Muslims, Moses is among the greatest prophets to have ever walked this earth.

The bottom line is this: When we use words like Muslim and Hamas interchangeably, we play into an extremely dangerous narrative that hits directly at the emotions of Muslims worldwide. Similarly, when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uses words like Jews and Israel interchangeably, conflating the faith of Judaism with his own politics, he stirs religious discord and pits people against each other. Reducing this ongoing conflict to Muslims vs. Jews or Jews vs. Muslims is dishonest and deceptive.

The peaceful teachings of the Abrahamic faiths of Islam and Judaism never have and never will advocate for the killing of the innocent.

So please stop demanding I and other Muslims condemn the actions of Hamas. You can assume we do until otherwise informed.

Mansoor Shams is a Muslim American US Marine Veteran, the founder of MuslimMarine.org and a public speaker. He also serves as a Term Member on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Follow him on Twitter: @mansoortshams.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.