Parker: Muslims not the enemy; they’re our fellow Americans

One such voice belongs to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. In his finest debate hour, days before he dropped out of the race, Graham issued a passionate apology for Donald Trump, who has said among other things that we need a ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

“Donald Trump has done the one single thing you cannot do — declare war on Islam itself … ,” Graham said. “To all of our Muslim friends throughout the world, like the King of Jordan and the President of Egypt, I am sorry. He does not represent us.”

These sentiments, still relatively rarely expressed, are crucial not only to civility but also to national security. Anti-Muslim rhetoric merely buoys the terrorist narrative that the U.S. is the enemy of Islam. Thus, demonizing or marginalizing Muslims leads not to greater safety but to greater numbers of recruits willing to self-detonate in the service of something no sane person recognizes.

It is also rude and un-American.

It’s funny, in an unfunny way. We seem to have no trouble demanding that moderate Muslims condemn the radicals, but we’re less than impressive when it comes to moderate Americans taking a stand against our own extremists. It isn’t really as painful as it looks and should be viewed as an act of patriotism, something the individual citizen can do as part of the nation’s war effort.

A failure to communicate

Our failure to communicate with each other can only lead to the sort of frenzied embrace of isolationism and marginalization we’ve witnessed of late.

Thus, I had hoped the president might call on Americans to do their part and issue a call to specific action. As I imagined it, he would have said something like: “I’m calling on all America’s mayors, of towns and cities large and small, to join the war on terror by hosting a public forum in your community bringing Muslims and non-Muslims together for conversation. The operating principle should be that communication is key to understanding and that understanding is central to peaceful coexistence and a better future.”

Something like that.

There are already several models available for replication. The “Welcome Table” created by the University of Mississippi’s William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation has been extremely successful in healing the wounds of the civil rights era. If blacks and whites can pull this off in places like South Carolina and Mississippi, then surely Muslims, Christians, blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians can do it in Detroit or Los Angeles.

The Village Square, begun several years ago in Tallahassee, Fla., brings citizens together for a bipartisan, formal debate on issues crucial to the community. The square also holds “speed-dating” occasions to connect citizens and elected leaders.

These approaches may seem like tiny pebbles tossed into a sea of distrust and fear, but they’ve proved effective often enough that they’re worth a try. Even pebbles cause ripples, and words have a way of spreading.