Condemn the New York attacker, but respect Bangladesh

While Bangladesh is a predominantly Muslim nation, it is no hotbed of terrorism and shouldn’t be added to Trump’s travel ban list.

Of course, some aligned with the alt-right are jumping on Ullah’s citizenship as further evidence of America’s looming infection by Muslim extremism. Take John Cardillo…

Americans should have two problems with those tweets.

First, while more than 100,000 Bangladeshis live in the United States, very few of them have any nexus to terrorism. Instead, they came to America to work hard and provide better lives for their families. Indeed, especially relevant to today’s news, the New York Police Department boasts a good number of Bangladeshi-American police officers. That’s no coincidence; as former NYPD officer John Cardillo should know, the Bangladeshi-American community makes a point of encouraging law enforcement careers.

Second, while Bangladesh does struggle with occasional outbursts of violent Islamic extremism, its government and military take aggressive action of a far more coordinated and humanitarian nature than that of, say, Pakistan. The Bangladeshi armed forces also operate as an increasingly capable American ally. Moreover, while Bangladesh struggles with corruption, its political culture is more liberal than that of many other Muslim nations: next month, Bangladesh will have been led by a female Prime Minister for nearly nine years.

Consider, also, that this relative stability defines a deeply impoverished nation of 165 million people. The ingredients of terrorist recruitment would seem to thrive in Bangladesh and yet, for whatever reason, they do not thrive.

So yes, the New York attacker might be a complete loser. But don’t blame his national origins on his negative acts; the Bangladeshi people deserve American respect and the right to be able to visit our country if they so desire.