ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today’s five OFF-SET questions is Arsalan Iftikhar, an international human rights lawyer, founder of TheMuslimGuy.com and global managing editor for The Crescent Post in Washington.

In an opinion essay for CNN.com, you wrote, “In addition to the vast majority of Americans who are relieved by his death, there are more than 1 billion Muslims around the world who salute the fact that bin Laden’s ungodly terrorist mischief has finally come to an end. Simply put, there has been no single person in nearly a millennium and a half of Muslim history who has ever hijacked our beloved religion of Islam more than bin Laden.”

Was bin Laden ever considered a Muslim leader?

Of course not. Osama bin Laden was no more of a Muslim leader than Timothy McVeigh was a Christian leader after the Oklahoma Citybombings.

Sadly, since many Americans do not know any Muslims, OBL became a symbol of Muslims with his long beard and turban. This is one of the reasons that there has been such growing Islamophobia in America, because idiots like Osama bin Laden kept making the global airwaves because people thought he was representing Islam, which one billion Muslims around the world would certainly take issue with.

Since 9/11, have you experienced prejudice as a Muslim?

I think a good portion of the American Muslim community has experienced some degree of prejudice since the tragedy of September 11.

For many American Muslim women who wear the hijab (or headscarf), they have been walking targets of discrimination. For young Muslim and Arab males, it might have been racial profiling at airports.

For young kids named ‘Muhammad’, it has been bullying or teasing at school. But again, it should be noted, this post-9/11 era in America that we are seeing is only the next chapter of the civil rights history of the United States–a history that has seen many major minority demographic groups being demonized throughout the last century.

On Sunday, President Obama said, “We must also reaffirm that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.” Are there actions the United States should make that point to Muslims around the world?

I think one of the important takeaways from President Obama’s speech is reiterating to the rest of the world that Islam and Muslims are not enemy.

Since many extremists on both sides of the political velvet rope try to perpetuate a ‘clash of civilizations’ theory, the message that the President was sending is that Osama bin Laden was not a Muslim leader and that, in fact, the vast majority of his victims have been Muslims around the world themselves.

Who reported that information?

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released these reports which said that Muslims have accounted for the vast majority of the total number of casualties from al Qaeda attacks between 2004 and 2008 throughout the world. From 2006 to 2008, 98 percent of al Qaeda’s victims were from Muslim-majority countries, according to theWest Point report.

You write that there were many among the 1 billion Muslims worldwide who uttered three simple words when we heard about the official confirmation of bin Laden’s death. Those three words were: “God is great.” In your view, was it right to kill bin Laden?

Osama bin Laden made it very clear from the outset that he had no intention of being captured alive. Although most international lawyers like myself would have preferred to see him captured and brought to legal justice at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, any reasonable global observer knew that the chances of this happening were slim to none.

I believe Mark Twain summed it up quite well when he said, “I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure and relief.”

Source: CNN

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