By Eboo Patel
How is it that fear of Muslims in America is actually higher nine years post 9/11? Watching Christiane Amanpour’s special on Islam Sunday provides plenty of clues.
The most striking voices in the debate were Amjad Choudry and Reverend Franklin Graham. Choudry wore a regulation size beard, looked menacingly at the television camera and declared that the flag of Islam will one day fly over the White House. He knew full well that he was playing the scary Muslim figure from central casting. His message: Islam requires me to dominate you.
Franklin Graham talked about church-burnings in the Sudan, the dangers of Sharia law, and the purpose of mosques as vehicles of conversion and domination. In other words, he agreed with Amjad: Islam requires Muslims to dominate others.
There are Muslims who go on television representing Islam and non-Muslims who go on television representing “Why you should fear Islam” and they are saying the same scary things. Is it any wonder that many Americans, whose first conscious experience with Islam was 9/11, are thinking: “I’m scared of these people.”
What about the moderate Muslims?
Daisy Khan, leader of a group called the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), explained that she was moved by the events of 9/11 to leave her corporate career to start an institution to grow the moderate voice in Islam. She has led Muslim youth and women’s events all over the world. One of the “fear Islam” panel members was unimpressed. “How do we know you are not a secret radical?” he asked.
The imam of a Muslim community in Murfreesboro, TN pointed out that Muslims had been a visible part of Murfreesboro for 30 years and not one member of the community had been involved in a single crime in that time. Recently, the community’s mosque construction site had experienced vandalism and arson, likely because of the fear of Islam cutting through the culture. Robert Spencer’s response: Muslims have a pattern of fabricating such things, and perhaps the imam was making this up as well.
There you have it in a nutshell. The forces of intolerance scream from the rooftops, “Islam is about domination”. The forces of moderation are questioned with the intent of delegitimizing them (they’re either just liars, or liars and secret radicals).
How do you build a fear bomb? Here’s how:
1) A high-profile event like 9/11 that raises fears and suspicions of a religion and a community.
2) People like Amjad Choudry who claim to represent that religion and community who look scary and say scary things.
3) People who claim to want to protect everybody else who point to people like Amjad Choudry and say, “See, he represents Islam. Told you they were scary.”
4) A deliberate campaign to delegitimize humanizing, moderate voices.
The role played by Reza Aslan in the conversation was hugely important. He made a few compelling key points. Number one: Islam is a huge religion with a long history. Saying all of its adherents are about one thing – domination – is the very definition of bigotry.
Number two: people like Franklin Graham and Amjad Choudry say they’re on different sides of the debate, but really they represent the same position (and ought to go have coffee together and leave the rest of us alone, as Reza colorfully suggested).
Finally, people like Robert Spencer who seek to intentionally delegitimize moderates are advancing a not-too-subtle form of racism, and their ideas will join anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism in the dustbin of history.
The problem of the 20th century, said W.E.B. DuBois, was the problem of the color line. We made progress on that problem by getting our perspective right, recognizing that the color line didn’t divide black and white but, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, those who want to live together as brothers from those who want to perish together as fools.
The challenge of the 21st century is the faith line. We have to bring King’s perspective to the issue of the faith line. The faith line doesn’t divide Muslims and Christians. It divides the forces of hope and inclusiveness from the forces of fear and intolerance. Reza is right: Amjad Choudry and Franklin Graham are on the same side of the faith line.
Let all the people who want to spread fear – whether they pray in Arabic or Hebrew or English or not at all – have their coffee and their intolerance with each other.
Let the rest of us get on with building a civilization based on equal dignity and mutual loyalty.
