Slamming and Sliming Islam

By Luis H. Francia
First Posted 07:55:00 09/06/2010
Courtesy Of "The Inquirer's Global Nation"

NEW YORK, United States—A few days from now will mark the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Coincidentally, it will also be the end of Ramadan, which Muslims all over the world will celebrate.

In the United States, members of this faith are understandably worried that such celebrations might be seen as somehow rejoicing in the horrific events of that bloody September day.

That worry has been aggravated by the controversy surrounding the proposed, and city-approved, plan to build an Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero—a controversy fuelled partly by that perennial fault line in US society, the fear of the Other.

Right-wing talk show hosts and politicians seeking to advance their careers or stay in office (this year is an election year for many local and national offices) appeal to nativist, albeit ill-informed if not downright ignorant, sentiments that still envision a lily-white and overwhelmingly Christian nation.

Not an America where I as a Filipino, or any person of color, would be welcome. Definitely not in the border state of Arizona, where a recent state law grants the cops the powers to stop anyone they deem might be in the country illegally, obviously targeting the sizable Hispanic and mostly Mexican population.

Though I have mixed feelings about Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I salute him for supporting the center, unequivocally reaffirming the Constitution-guaranteed freedom of religious worship for all, and not backing down in the face of vocal and strident jeers from the peanut gallery, of whom it may be said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

President Obama did the right thing in asserting the same thing in a dinner before a Muslim audience to mark the start of Ramadan, but then the morning after, he backtracked a bit when he explained that he wasn’t commenting on the “wisdom” of building such a center, but merely on the right of its owners to express their religious beliefs.

He was obviously trying to have it both ways. The president should know by now that nothing he says or does will ever appeal to or appease hard-line Republicans and their party of No, and rabid right-wingers such as the Tea Partiers. Nor the birthers who still and will forever fervently believe Obama wasn’t born on US soil, and who now are using this latest dust-up to reiterate their belief that the president is a closet Muslim.

Apparently, an astounding 18 percent of the American public is convinced of this. What does one do in the face of such crackpot notions? Nothing, really. To argue with their adherents is to argue with flies. Enough to point to them as proof that garbage exists.

The Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan revealed the depth (or lack) of his spirituality by issuing a tepid statement that while not condemning the Park51 Project (as it is known) said that New Yorkers’ sense of tolerance and unity “may be a bit at risk” because of the heated debate. This is in line with those who proclaim loudly that they are for religious freedom, and then add, after a delicate pause and perhaps some throat clearing, “but … not there!”

Well, why not there? Would three blocks away do? Or not at all? Ah, that “but”! So many freedoms have been undermined by this midget of a word, representative perhaps of the mental and/or moral stature of many of the Islamophobes.

What critics fail to mention is that, long before the debate was ignited by demagogic talk-show hosts and particularly by Fox (or faux) News, Muslims had been going to the nondescript building that now occupies 51 Park Place every day and saying their prayers in a room reserved for worship.

They disregard the fact that the imam in charge, Imam Abdul Rauf, is a Sufi, with Sufism being the most moderate branch of Islam: Someone once described Sufis as the flower children of Islam. Moreover, Imam Rauf has gone on US State Department-sponsored talks abroad, to promote inter-faith dialogue and tolerance. Islamic fundamentalists such as the Wahabis and Al Qaeda detest Sufism and see it as a corruption of Islam, in much the same way fundamentalist Christians and Jews see their more moderate fellow believers as apostates and heretics.

Critics disregard the fact that Muslims died, too, in the 9/11 attacks, that among the first responders to the tragedy were Muslim firefighters, medics, and policemen, and that the overwhelming number of victims of terrorist attacks and bombings, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been Muslim.

Like Christians and Jews, Muslims come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and sects. Only a tiny but dangerous minority regularly grabs the headlines for their fanaticism, expressed in violence and repressive rule, as in the case of the Taliban.

No one reasonable would make the argument that since the Ku Klux Klan burnt crosses as their signature calling card we should therefore ascribe to all Christians the Klan’s hate-filled dogma. And yet, Islam is seen by so many as a monolithic Hydra-headed entity, bent on taking over the world.

This isn’t so much a clash of civilizations but good ol’ xenophobia rearing its ugly head. The subtext to all this Islam bashing—whose slogan could very well be “I slam Islam!”—is the perennial fear of the Other that lurks beneath the seemingly wrinkle-free surface of a post-racial America, that periodically slithers to the forefront of public consciousness, as has been amply demonstrated throughout US history, from the fears of Asiatic immigration endangering the purity of Anglo America, to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, from the lynching off African Americans during the Jim Crow era, to the harassment of Arab Americans in aftermath of 9/11—this last violently exemplified by the attempted murder of a Muslim Bangladeshi taxi driver in New York by his passenger, a young white man who had just returned from Afghanistan where he had gone to film US forces.

Supposedly the war in Afghanistan and Iraq is a war against terrorism, not Islam, a necessary distinction to validate the wars there, but it is one undermined by this burst of Islamophobia. As Frank Rich, a columnist for The New York Times put it, “An America at war with Islam plays right into Al Qaeda’s recruitment spiel. This month’s incessant and indiscriminate orgy of Muslim-bashing is a national security disaster—Osama Bin Laden’s "next video script has just written itself,’ as the former FBI terrorist investigator Ali Soufan put it …”

Yet, many of the hawks backing these two wars are among the loudest in railing against the Park51 Project. Today, mosques in the process of being built or planned far, far away from Ground Zero—for instance, in Tennessee and Wisconsin—have been the objects of negative campaigns and virulent public demonstrations.

I used to think that such voices full of venom, such shouts of bigotry and intolerance, were the dying rants of a disappearing breed. But the sad fact is that hate is alive and well in many sectors in this country, a flower of evil that shows no sign of wilting.

Copyright L.H. Francia