Beacon Broadside

Eboo Patel is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation and Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America. He is founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, an international nonprofit building the interfaith youth movement.

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post.

“So which side are they on?” The question was part of a
conversation I overheard on the street the other day, and it was in reference
to people like me—American Muslims.

As several of my country's embassies
have been violently threatened by people of my faith, this seems as good a time
as any to be clear about my answer: I am on the side of all those who seek a
common life together. I believe America's founding creed, E
Pluribus Unum, makes us humanity's best chance to achieve that
possibility. I believe that Muslim values—just like Jewish, Christian, Hindu
and humanist ones—can contribute to that spirit. And I believe, as the violence
and ugliness demonstrate, that building societies where people from different
identities live in equal dignity and mutual loyalty is one of the great
challenges of our times.

We find ourselves in a terrible situation. The evening news in
America is full of Muslims burning American flags and trying to breach
embassies. The evening news in Arab countries is full of stories of Americans
defiling the Prophet Muhammad. And the actions of a thuggish few are
increasingly viewed as representing the sentiments of entire nations and
religions.

The sad part is that those thuggish few are not just skewed
representations of the broader whole, they actually stand in violation of their
traditions. I believe as a Muslim that the mob violence we are witnessing does
a greater dishonor to the Prophet Muhammad than the original offense. Muslims
are meant to act in the tradition of the Prophet, who dealt with insults during
his entire mission, responded unfailingly with mercy and commanded his
followers to do the same: “You do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but
you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness…”

Moreover, Islam is a tradition that protected pluralism from its
beginnings. One of the Prophet Muhammad's earliest acts in his adopted city of
Medina was to enact a Constitution that created a single political community—barring
tribal violence, establishing basic freedoms and assuring collective security—between
his growing number of Muslim followers and the various Christian, Jewish and
pagan groups already present in the city. During Islam's expansion, the Caliph
Ali sent his governor in Egypt a letter that said, “All people there are your
equals in faith or your brothers in creation.” The Quran affirms the holiness
of this pluralistic view: “God made you different nations and tribes that you
may come to know one another.”

America, contrary to the strain of ugly Islamophobia that has
become more prominent since 9/11, has a long and positive history of respect
for Islam and Muslims. The Flushing Remonstrance, a 17th century document which
established the precedent of religious freedom and goodwill between different
faiths, explicitly includes Muslims: “The law of love, peace and liberty in the
states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sons of
Adam.” Thomas Jefferson famously owned a Quran and hosted an iftar dinner for a
Muslim diplomat. Benjamin Franklin started a hall in Philadelphia and said that
the pulpit would be open to all preachers, including a Muslim from
Constantinople. An envoy appointed by President George Washington negotiated
the Treaty of Tripoli with a majority-Muslim nation, a document which stated
that “no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an
interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” The treaty was
later signed by President John Adams.

Current events highlight a harsh reality of globalization. That
people on one side of the world can create something that incites violence on
the other side of the world. But there is a silver lining here: just as ugliness
begets ugliness, so might beauty inspire beauty. Let's not let the handful of
people who seek to spread hatred between faith communities pattern interfaith
relations across the world. Now more than ever, we need to lift up those
stories within Islam and America that speak to the power of pluralism. And we
need to act on those stories, by working together to apply the values of mercy,
compassion and hospitality that are shared across all traditions. I remember
President Obama telling his Inaugural Faith Council, of which I was a proud
member, that he hoped Americans of all faith backgrounds would participate in
interfaith service projects together. This was not just as a way of
strengthening our own nation, it was also an example of diversity leading to
harmony in a world that is increasingly convinced of the inevitability of
conflict.

In an interconnected world, the only chance we have is a common
life together. If we are to build it, we must insure the bridges between us are
strong enough to withstand the bombs of the extremists. As the American poet
William Stafford wrote, “The signals we give must be clear now … the darkness
around us is deep.”