One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

by Omar El Akkad

In early February 2024, The Wall Street Journal publishes an opinion piece titled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital.” Dearborn is a city in Michigan. It has probably the highest per capita Arab population of any metropolitan area in the United States. It seems pointless to note that the few times I’ve visited Dearborn, I was treated with more warmth and hospitality than almost anywhere else in this country. As with Friedman’s Animal Planet cosplay, the Wall Street Journal piece doesn’t really matter as anything other than a celebration of agency. Look what I can say about these people; look how far beneath me they are. If anyone actually believed that Dearborn, or anywhere else in this country, was a “jihad capital,” whatever that may mean, wouldn’t the appropriate response be a military one? Isn’t that what this country does to jihadists as a matter of course? So why not wipe Dearborn off the map, bomb it to oblivion? Because the point is not the violence. Violence comes later, most often at the hands of someone who reads enough of these pieces and decides to act explicitly on what is only implicitly implied. The point, the fundamental prerequisite, is to say: Against those people, those lesser people, anything can be justifiably done. The point is to flaunt permission. Am I allowed to be afraid of this? And if so, what is the purchasing power of my fear?