Where is the outrage?

More than a year ago I wrote about a cross-religious event at the Cape Girardeau Public Library designed to help local people of different faiths encounter Islam. The event was meant to dispel some of the myths and negative stereotypes surrounding the faith.

Shortly after the event, one of the organizers was kind enough to put me on a mailing list for daily updates of news concerning the acceptance of Islam in the United States. The group giving these e-mail updates is called CAIR, which stands for the Council for American-Islamic Relations. It is a Washington, D.C.-based organization and one of the largest advocacy groups pressing for the political and social rights of Muslims in America.

Thanks to CAIR, every day when I open my inbox I find links to news items describing Muslims barred from planes, hate speech and acts of aggression against Muslims on U.S. soil.

Tuesday I received an update on a lawsuit brought by six U.S. imams, or clerics, against US Airways. The clerics claim they were barred from flying on the airline after they were observed praying prior to takeoff. They call it a case of "flying while Muslim."

CAIR likens Muslim struggles to historical civil rights movements and even offers a college scholarship named after Rosa Parks.

It's a nice idea, but I can't help but groan at how misguided it seems in light of events around the world.

You see, if outrage is the order of the day, American Muslims, who are some of the wealthiest and most highly educated on the planet, have ample opportunity to express their outrage. But am I wrong to suggest this outrage should be channeled in a different direction?

Day after day we have new evidence that Islam is a religion at a crossroads with violence threatening to swallow it. But disappointingly, outrage in the community seems largely reserved for offensive Danish cartoons.

It's about time for CAIR and other groups to take a long, hard, painful look in the mirror.

Every time a young Muslim walks into a wedding celebration in Baghdad and detonates a bomb killing scores of innocent people, CAIR should be outraged.

Every time a Muslim waits for a market to fill with women and children shopping for dinner only to unleash fire and terror, CAIR should be outraged.

Basically, every time the Islamic faith is used to justify grotesque and inhumane attacks, American Muslims need to cry out the loudest and the longest.

Because today, when every edition of the evening news bears images of blood, limbs and disfigurement wrought by religious zealots, the silence from the Muslim community is deafening.

Mind you, I'm not excusing bigotry in America. I think we should hold our country to the highest possible standard when it comes to religious tolerance. It's not good enough for us to be better than Europe or the Middle East; we have to be the gold standard of acceptance and multiculturalism.

I believe the United States is today and always should be a place that cherishes civil liberties. It should be a diverse melting pot where people like the courageous best-selling author Ayaan Hirsi Ali of Somalia can flee from both a forced marriage in her homeland and death threats in her adopted home of Europe.

This is a safe place. And it isn't a place where people should ever be barred from planes or discriminated against without reason.

But before a group goes around comparing itself to a brave woman like Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat on the bus, it must make its top goal rooting out those who would blow up that bus.

TJ Greaney is a staff reporter for the Southeast Missourian.