Writers, philosophers, professors, and politicians have referred to the United States of America as "a nation founded by immigrants." This fact can hardly be refuted -- especially considering the existence of the term "Native American." America has dealt with the question and issues resulting from immigration since its birth in the 18th century. The most cancerous aspects of America's response to immigration are bigotry and racism, and they are flaring up again, this time in reference to Muslims.
America's unofficial "open-door" attitude during the colonies' infancy worked to bring the new nation out of economic obscurity. Yet the American legacy, built on the backs of immigrants, has not been historically favorable to its creators. Quakers in colonial Massachusetts were subjected to auto-de-fé ("act of faith"), a ritual associated with the Spanish Inquisition that involved public penance of condemned heretics and apostates. The Blaine Amendments, whose adoption in many states was made an explicit condition for entering the Union, were motivated by anti-Catholic animus and remain on the books in several states today. Anti-Irish sentiment permeated the U.S. during the Industrial Revolution; the Catholic Irish who immigrated to America in the late 1850s faced "No Irish Need Apply" (NINA) notices in New York City shop windows, factory gates, and workshop doors for years.
Mormons, too, faced discrimination. The Missouri Executive Order 44, or "extermination order," was issued by Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs to ensure that "the Mormons ... be treated as enemies, and ... be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace. The Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century faced anti-Chinese riots, lynching, murders, and the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 -- even after helping the nation complete the Transcontinental Railroad. Jewish Americans also faced bigotry and discrimination. And perhaps the most devastating case of racism: the Japanese internment camps starting in 1941, which targeted all Japanese, regardless of citizenship. In each case, the anti-immigrant backlash was fueled by paranoia -- a deep-seated fear of those who are different.
The latest outbreak of this paranoia is the anti-Muslim sentiment that is becoming increasingly common and increasingly pernicious. While by no means at the level of interment camps or extermination orders, the anti-Muslim rhetoric nonetheless raises serious concerns. A Houston radio host feels comfortable advocating that a mosque be bombed if built near the site of Ground Zero. A few weeks ago, a mosque in Jacksonville, Florida actually was bombed -- the most recent of several mosque bombings that have occurred over the past few year.
Richard Bernstein's recent New York Times piece, "The Danger of Demonizing Adherents of Islam," focuses on another egregious incident of anti-Muslim paranoia. He describes a bus ad campaign created by Pamela Geller, the executive director of Stop the Islamization of America and the editor and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com. The Geller bus ads ask questions like "Leaving Islam?" "Fatwa on your head?" and "Is your family or community threatening you?" Geller started her campaign in response to a bus ad campaign in San Francisco intended to inform and educate the general public about the Islamic faith. According to Geller, these informational ads put out by Muslim groups were mere bait to first convert people to Islam and then to violently punish anyone who decided to thereafter leave the religion.
How Geller came up with this bizarre interpretation of the ads is a mystery. As Bernstein rightly notes in his article, there is scant evidence that Muslim Americans hold such a belief, much less actively go out and ensnare innocent Americans into a deathtrap. While in some Muslim countries apostasy is a crime punishable by death, such absurdities do not make the faith.
Geller and others are welcome to pose sincere theological or ideological questions to Muslims, as theological debate about any religion, including Islam, helps keep it vibrant and relevant to changing times. But generalized stereotypes rooted in hate and suspicion simply perpetuate what Bernstein calls a "vicious cycle." Well-meaning initiatives like the San Francisco bus campaign, a vehicle of a counter-narrative to radicalism, are denounced by Geller-ites as symbols of precisely that radicalism. In turn, "if there are more terrorist attempts by Muslims on American soil, there will be more Americans paying for bus ads and other things to express their rage at Islam itself as well as at Muslims in America, and to encourage the idea that America is, or ought to be, its and their enemy." Creating that dichotomy then just serves to create more enemy Muslims. Endlessly spiraling downward, such a cycle may lead to the death of "the live-and-let-live civility of American life."
Undoubtedly correct in his analysis, Bernstein overlooks one point: Americans, generally living in peace with one another, nonetheless created that peaceful coexistence after years of strife suffered by minority groups at the hands of the majority. Geller and her supporters are, in that sense, traditional Americans. What complicates their position, though, is the fact that while roughly half of the Muslim American community consists of first-, second-, or third-generation immigrants, the other half are African-American Muslims who have been here since this country's inception. The Islam of the Black American had, however, constituted "Black Religion" -- what Dr. Sherman Jackson describes in Islam and the Blackamerican as a "holy protest against anti-black racism." Only with the influx of immigrant Muslims has Islam become a religion to be contended with by the broader culture.
Geller's relegation of Islam to enemy status creates an Islam to be feared and abhorred. It is a conception that is not grounded in reality, but it is nonetheless propelling American society down the same road it has traveled many times before, to its own detriment. Reflecting upon this historical trajectory should help us see past the present environment, fraught with fear, and move to the next stage of coexistence, where we learn to look past two-dimensional stereotypes and generalizations and see the newcomer not as "other" but as "American."
Follow Asma Uddin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/altmuslimah
Islamophobia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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- islam forbids alcohol - bad for the beer, wine, and hard liquor industry
- islam forbids the consumption of swine - bad for the pork industry
- islam forbids intimacy outside of marriage - bad for the sex industry
- islam demands modest clothing - bad for the "fashion" industry
- islam forbids usery - DISASTER for the financial industry
since the majority of musims don't purchase those goods and services they present an economic challenge to those industries
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/084.sbt.html#009.084.057
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/084.sbt.html#009.084.058
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/089.sbt.html#009.089.271
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/083.sbt.html#009.083.017
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/052.sbt.html#004.052.260
“Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world".
Voltaire French Philosopher and Writer. One of the greatest of all French authors, 1694-1778
BORN-AGAIN BUSH
GOD TOLD ME TO INVADE - THE INDEPENDENT
President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin... Another telling sign of Mr Bush's religion was his answer to Mr ...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bush-god-told-me-to-invade-iraq-509925.html
TOTAL IRAQI CASUALTIES
Estimates of the total number of Iraqi war-related deaths are highly disputed. National Public Radio has a bar chart with various estimates.[1] Project Censored has named the "corporate media blackout" of the number of Iraqi deaths caused by US occupation (which it estimates at over one million) as the number one censored story for 2009.[2]
IN DECEMBER 2007, THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT REPORTED THAT THERE WERE 5 MILLION ORPHANS IN IRAQ - ALMOST HALF OF THE COUNTRY'S CHILDREN.[68]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Before making such a statement you would need further experiments. At the minimum you would need two woman one white and one of middle eastern appearance. Both acting the same in manner and temperament. Both dressed the same. Going to the same places. Doing the same things and interacting with the same people. Oh, and those people your test subjects interact with, would have to be in the same frame of mind when dealing with both woman. There are more things that would need to be controlled but I think you get the idea. Your experiment may have been a bit of personal fun but it has no scientific basis what so ever.
I agree with you that wahabi sauds are the real enemies of peace, you are right there....but Irans oppressive regime is not helping the nation, people must become free...work on it
a bangladeshi muslim runs this- www.islam-facts.com
please forward this info.and let the muslim apologists debate them
yes , as someone said below we are islam ignorant and and we will get the enlightenment from the above sites.Hope those guys running the sites will not be killed.
Why is that?
think about it! MusIims have to support other MusIims no matter how eviI they are.
120 ahmedis were massacred in Pakistan last month in an explicitly religious violence. The Ahmedis were declared nonmuslims by the sunni Pak govt. Not a whimper from Saudi, Turkey or Malaysia etc, why so? 9 were killed off Israel coast everyone started to complain.
That statement is worth repeating.
If anyone is interested in "Islamophobia" and the origins of the word you'll get alot out of this video:
http://fora.tv/2007/10/30/Islamophobia
IThe fact that woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's. Men are allowed multiple spouses, while women are not. The terms under which men and women can seek divorce are unequal. The amount they inherit is unequal. Men are given the authority to chastise their wives. Women are given NO such authority to chastise their husbands. The debate over the type of chastisement overlooks this serious flaw. Men can take women as sex slaves - for repeated, at-will rape - under the Koran, and are referred to as "right hand possessions". Men are never subject to this. Men can have a limitless number of right hand possessions.
Discriminating against individual Muslims based upon their religion is a problem; however, my - and many, many others' - problem with Islam is with the content of the Koran.
Also the ten commandments refer to women as property and yet millions of Christians want them posted on our courthouses. The problem is with interpretation and fundamentalism, as it is with every religion, not the religion or the adherents of such religion.
Lol, there was a pretty nice one;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_War
They were kicked out of several states and had to give up polygamy by order of the Federal government....at gun point
What we are talking about is current, prevalent practice. In that there is a SIGNIFICANT difference.
And should you think one people or another an enemy consider that Jesus rejoins us to "Love your enemies."
As I ride the church bus on Sundays we pass a lot of Muslims in their colorful dress and that brings me joy at the sight. When I get to church I go to the Saigon Deli for Vietnamese coffee and leave the change in the Buddha dish.
No wonder Jesus said His burden was easy and His yoke light. When you bury your prejudice and embrace love .... the world will love you back.
Embrace hate and reap injustice.