Hannah Nguyen

Period 2

Rhetorical Analysis of To Any Would-Be Terrorists

Nye argues that the Middle East should not be associated with terrorism by tieing

personal experiences into her writing and asking rhetorical questions to further embellish her

main argument. She also tactfully utilizes specific pronouns such as “you” and “us” when

referring to the audience and speaker that demonstrates both first and second-person

perspectives. Nye starts off by addressing the title of her letter and elaborating on how “hard

some of us have worked to get rid of that word”, when referring to the word “terrorist” (Nye 1).

Nye’s use of the pronoun “us” addresses the speaker’s point of view as an Arab-American who

knows the hurt of being called a “terrorist” and enhances the extent to which her community has

worked to deny its “instant connection to the Middle East”(Nye 1). By addressing this stereotype

that America has placed on Middle Eastern people, Nye is hoping to inspire change in American

society and hopefully give her audience some perspective on what life as an Arab is like in

America. Nye goes on to embellish her grandmother’s view of the Islam religion as a

“welcoming religion” which contradicts the American audience’s opinions at the time of this

letter (Nye 3). Nye goes on to mention how her grandmother would see the attacks as a “terrible

stain on her religion” (Nye 3). Her use of the metaphor of a stain is best likened to the tragic

events of September 11th since both require effort to fix and are still somehow present

sometimes not physically, but emotionally. Finally, Nye concludes her letter by sharing her

long-term goal of building togetherness by “figur[ing] out some really interesting things we

might do together”(Nye 5). This portion of the text demonstrates Nye’s exigence and how she

wants her audience to step away from her writing and feel inspired to change how they go about
life. This is also her way of showing the world that Middle Eastern people can and should

promote peace as opposed to violence which adds to her argument of denying the association of

terrorism to the Middle East. Nye’s response to the September 11th attacks in the form of this

letter offers a different perspective on terrorism and the Middle East in general which is a valued

opinion to expose a confused and frightened country to.