All-American Bigotry

By John Feffer
Co-director, Foreign Policy In Focus
Posted: 1/6/12 10:54 AM ET
Courtesy Of "The Huffington Post"

Islamophobes would like you to believe that they're not anti-Islam. They're only anti-Islamic extremism.

So why is it that Islamophobes are always going after mainstream Islam? They lampoon Muhammad. They want to burn not the writings of Osama bin Laden but the Quran itself. They target an Islamic community center in downtown New York City that's the brainchild of an interfaith dialogue proponent and an overseas emissary of the George W. Bush administration.

And now they're venting spleen at an innocuous cable TV show called "All-American Muslim." This reality show on TLC follows five Muslim families in Dearborn, Mich. It explores typical family situations (getting married, having a baby), cultural traditions (hookah, bellydancing) and religious experiences (wearing the hijab, converting to Islam). There's a cop, a football coach, a businesswoman, a tattooed rebel. The program showcases the diversity of the community.

It's so all-American, so earnest in its efforts not to offend anyone, that it verges on boring. Sure, the show does address some provocative issues, such as anti-Muslim sentiment and 9/11. And there are the usual inter-personal tensions familiar to reality-show connoisseurs. But all in all, it's light on outrageousness and exhibitionism, two critical qualities for successful television these days.

You'd think that social conservatives would embrace ventures like "All-American Muslim." The show features people who are hard-working, religious and family-oriented. But that's not how bigotry operates. Otherwise, social conservatives would be the first in line to support gay marriage and the repeal of don't ask, don't tell in the military.

It was no surprise, then, that the Florida Family Association, an evangelical Christian outfit infamous for its intolerance, called on advertisers to boycott "All-American Muslim." Several businesses cravenly followed suit, most prominently the home improvement chain Lowes. In mid-December, Lowe's issued a half-hearted apology but refused to reinstate its ads on the show, which will air the final show of its first season on Jan. 8.

Both Florida Family Association, and noted Islamophobes like Pamela Geller who have supported its campaign, complain that "All-American Muslim" is not representative because it doesn't dwell on sharia law or feature a terrorist or two.

But although it might boost ratings considerably -- and "All-American Muslim" has seen its viewership slip recently -- the inclusion of a terrorist in the program would not be representative. Political extremism is in fact extremely rare in the Muslim-American community.

Since 9/11, there have been only 11 cases of Muslim Americans who have committed terrorist acts in this country, resulting in 33 deaths. Between 1980 and 2005, according to FBI statistics, approximately 6 percent of all terrorist attacks in the United States were conducted by Islamic extremists. These perpetrators of violence are not representative of the 2.75 million Muslim Americans. Moreover, Muslim American organizations have all condemned terrorism, and the FBI has long relied on the help of the community to identify the few individuals who are inclined toward violence. As for sharia law, except for one minor case in New Jersey that was subsequently overturned, it has had no impact on the U.S. court system.

In other words, the attempts by Islamophobes to rationalize their bigotry on factual grounds is just plain wrong.

I'm no fan of reality shows. But if "All-American Muslim" can prove to mainstream America that Muslims are as boring, community-minded, socially conservative, occasionally wacky and celebrity-obsessed as the rest of us, then it deserves a place on TV. And companies like Lowe's should support it.

It's one thing for big mouths on the margins to voice their extremism. There's a long American tradition of that, from anti-Catholic Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan to anti-Semitic preachers and homophobic radio hosts.

But it's quite another matter when these extremists block community centers, win passage of ludicrous anti-sharia laws and convince major U.S. businesses to join their Islamophobic campaigns. There's an equally long American tradition of denouncing bigotry. In the TLC show, Muslims amply demonstrate that they're ordinary, mainstream Americans. Now it's time for the rest of us to do the same by standing up to the Islamophobes.

John Feffer's latest book is the forthcoming 'Crusade 2.0' (City Lights).

Anti-Muslim Sentiment On The Rise

Congressional Hearing Finds

By Sharzad Noorbaloochi
Created: Mar 30, 2011
Last Updated: Mar 30, 2011
Courtesy Of "The Epoch Times"


Muslims are experiencing increasing discrimination in the United States post 9/11, said Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, on March 29, in what was the first congressional hearing on the civil rights of Muslim Americans.

“Regrettably, while nearly a decade has passed since 9/11, we continue to see a steady stream of violence and discrimination targeting Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and South-Asian communities. In each city and town where I have met with leaders of these communities, I have been struck by the sense of fear that pervades their lives—fear of violence, of bigotry, and hate,” Perez said.

Perez pointed to several recent incidents of hate crimes against Muslims, most notably the case of a man who pleaded guilty to setting fire to playground equipment at a mosque in Texas.

The hearing came a few weeks after Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) held a congressional hearing on the radicalization of American Muslims, which was largely criticized for further inciting anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States.

The radicalization of Islam, however, is not something for which Muslims should not be blamed, argue many Muslims. There is evidence to suggest that radicalization has indeed grown. Some believe that this was a mere human response to the war waged in Iraq.

Some Arab Muslims who identify with the worldwide community of Arabs feel the American military operation in Iraq was a valid reason for self-defense and for taking up arms.

A recent documentary, “Meeting Resistance,” by journalists Steve Connors and Molly Bingham showed previously nonviolent Iraqis taking up arms in the name of Jihad because they believed their integrity as a nation had been destroyed.

More than 80 percent of these Jihadists were motivated by religion, an Iraqi lecturer of political science at Baghdad University, whose name was not disclosed, said in the documentary.

Many American Muslims fear that focusing on this radicalization and its hypothetical reach into America will incite hate and perpetuate anti-Muslim discrimination.

Anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States is on the rise, as the congressional hearing established.

An example of this rising anti-Muslim sentiment manifested in February when hundreds, including elected U.S. officials, protested outside of an event held by ICNA Relief, an American Muslim relief organization. The group held a dinner in Yorba Linda, Calif., to raise money for homelessness and hunger in the United States.

Protesters screamed, “Go back home,” and “Terrorist,” amidst a background of boos, as Muslim families, including young children, walked into the building.

Challenges have been issued to requests to build mosques. Oklahoma passed legislation saying that Shariah law could not be considered by its courts.

The congressional hearing last night pointed to rapidly increasing discrimination and bullying that Muslim American students face.

“I consistently hear complaints that children face harassment in school, that they are called ‘terrorists’ and told by their peers to ‘go home,’ even though America is their home. ... In fact, harassment of Muslim students is the largest category of religious discrimination matters that our Educational Opportunities Section handles, and this has been consistently true since 9/11,” Perez said in the hearing.

He said that the Department of Justice will protect Muslims in America: “As a nation, we believe strongly and unequivocally in religious freedom, and this belief is embodied in the laws we enforce. Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and South Asian-Americans contribute to our economy, play a vital role in our civic institutions, serve in our armed forces, and work in and with law enforcement to keep our communities safe. The headwinds of intolerance these communities face today are no different from the bigotry confronted by groups throughout our history—by Catholics, by Jews, by newcomers from Ireland and Italy, by Japanese-Americans in the wake of World War II, and by countless others who simply wanted to realize the promise of a free and tolerant nation.”

After Tahrir: Protecting US Muslims From Bigotry

Of all the images to come out of the North African uprisings, this is the one that consistently makes me tear up.

By Clay Shirky
Author, 'Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations'
Posted: March 25, 2011 01:19 PM
Courtesy Of "The Huffington Post"

These are Coptic Christians in Cairo's Tahrir Square, holding hands around Muslims during Friday prayer, to protect them from surprise attack.

We could do this. We could do this here, in the United States, to keep our Muslim citizens safe. All of us, Christians and Jews and atheists, anyone committed to the First Amendment, to the idea that religious freedom is essential to American society, could join hands to protect Muslims living here from rising prejudice.

The people of the United States are capable of visiting horrors on those we decide aren't really like "us" enough to count: Blacks owned, women silenced, Jews segregated, gays repressed, Japanese interned, the catalog of American hate and fear runs to many pages.

And now it's happening again, with political fear-mongering around the Park51 Islamic community center in New York and Rep. Peter King's recent grandstanding on radicalization in the American Muslim community fueling a 'guilty until proven innocent' attitude towards Muslim citizens and organizations. We should certainly worry about murderous homegrown radicals, but that's because murderous radicals are dangerous, not because they are religious; David Koresh, Timothy McVeigh, and David Brian Stone were all homegrown and all evil, but none of them were Muslim.

I don't know how bad this kind of prejudice will get, but it will get worse than today. To counter this threat, we have to integrate the Muslim experience into the American experience, just as the Protestants came to shed anti-Catholic prejudice, and the Christians anti-Jewish prejudice. As imperfect as those expansions have been, even today, the United States is a better place for having widened our sense of who constitutes "us," of having engaged in what Richard Rorty called justice as larger loyalty.

I don't know how to do this, how to keep people safe from the bigots who want the very fact of Muslim faith or heritage to generate suspicion and oppression. I do know some ways to start. We can respond to prejudice when we hear it; the thing that woke me up was hearing one of my cousins argue that a mosque in lower Manhattan was an affront to American identity, as if Muslim citizens were inherently less American than Christian ones.

We can care about how Muslims are treated, here and abroad. Democratic governments respond to public preferences; bigotry thrives on the silence of those of us who support freedom of religion, but not out loud. (Hence this post.) Democratic governments also respond to voters; it's a safe bet that the organizations helping register Muslim-American voters in 2008 will do so again in 2012, and they need our help.

We can donate. I've given money to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and to Irshad Manji'sProject Ijtihad (ijtihad meaning, roughly, independent reasoning.) These are of course political choices -- Project Ijtihad is explicitly progressive and feminist -- and your politics may run more to What Unites Us, an organization set up to combat anti-Muslim prejudice, to the American Muslim Law Enforcement Officers Association, or any number of local or interfaith organizations opposed to religious bigotry.

Perhaps most importantly, we can tell people we've donated or participated. It will be better to donate $5 to a group combatting anti-Muslim prejudice and then announce it on Facebook or Twitter, than to give $500 quietly. (I'm using #AfterTahrir.)

As President Bush said at the Islamic Center of Washington

Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.

Bush was right. America's finest hours have always been integrative and our most shameful ones prejudiced. Now, again, we have to pick, and we have an opportunity to learn from the protesters in Tahrir what political courage looks like.

Crossposted from Shirky.com.

Message To Muslims: I'm Sorry

I apologize to Muslims for another reason. This isn't about them, but about us. I want to defend Muslims from intolerance, but I also want to defend America against extremists engineering a spasm of religious hatred.

By: Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times* -
September 22, 2010
Courtesy Of "IslamiCity's iView's"

That's reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I'm going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.

I'm inspired by another journalistic apology. The Portland Press Herald in Maine published an innocuous front-page article and photo a week ago about 3,000 local Muslims praying together to mark the end of Ramadan. Readers were upset, because publication coincided with the ninth anniversary of 9/11, and they deluged the paper with protests.

So the newspaper published a groveling front-page apology for being too respectful of Muslims. "We sincerely apologize," wrote the editor and publisher, Richard Connor, and he added: "we erred by at least not offering balance to the story and its prominent position on the front page." As a blog by James Poniewozik of Time paraphrased it: "Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human."

I called Mr. Connor, and he seems like a nice guy. Surely his front page isn't reserved for stories about Bad Muslims, with articles about Good Muslims going inside. Must coverage of law-abiding Muslims be "balanced" by a discussion of Muslim terrorists?

Ah, balance - who can be against that? But should reporting of Pope Benedict's trip to Britain be "balanced" by a discussion of Catholic terrorists in Ireland? And what about journalism itself?

I interrupt this discussion of peaceful journalism in Maine to provide some "balance." Journalists can also be terrorists, murderers and rapists. For example, radio journalists in Rwanda promoted genocide.

I apologize to Muslims for another reason. This isn't about them, but about us. I want to defend Muslims from intolerance, but I also want to defend America against extremists engineering a spasm of religious hatred.

Granted, the reason for the nastiness isn't hard to understand. Extremist Muslims have led to fear and repugnance toward Islam as a whole. Threats by Muslim crazies just in the last few days forced a Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris, to go into hiding after she drew a cartoon about Muhammad that went viral.

And then there's 9/11. When I recently compared today's prejudice toward Muslims to the historical bigotry toward Catholics, Mormons, Jews and Asian-Americans, many readers protested that it was a false parallel. As one, Carla, put it on my blog: "Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people."

That's true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction.

Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger. Many Americans believe that Osama bin Laden is representative of Muslims, and many Afghans believe that the Rev. Terry Jones (who talked about burning Korans) is representative of Christians.

Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We've mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it's still O.K. to make sweeping statements about "Muslims" as an undifferentiated mass.

In my travels, I've seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God's bidding.

But I've also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.

I'm sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me onFacebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

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Source: New York Times