Can you believe that, at one point, women couldn't vote in America? That Japanese American citizens were put in detention camps because of the actions of the Imperial Japanese Navy? That Jackie Robinson was spat upon on the baseball diamond because of the color of his skin? That there were quotas on Jews at Ivy League Universities? That mosques were opposed across the country and a shocking number of people suggested that a Muslim should be disqualified from the Supreme Court or the Presidency because of his religion?
Oh yeah, that last one is still happening. But one day, I promise you, we will be as ashamed of the way American Muslims are viewed and treated in 2010 as we are of Japanese internment and Jim Crow. America's promise is meant for everyone or we are not America.
But the tide is turning. Several articles over this past week are shining a spotlight on the forces of division that manufactured the "ground zero mosque" controversy. The pieces reveal a small cabal of professional Muslim-haters who gleefully found an issue that resonated with a larger public.
The visionaries behind Park51, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan, have a long track record of interfaith cooperation and peace-building. (Nick Kristof and Rev. Jim Wallis are the most recent in a long line of distinguished people vouching for them; Kristof calls them "the real thing" in his Sunday column, and Wallis writes that American Muslims are not responsible for 9/11.) Meanwhile, the forces of division have a long track record of spreading vitriol and conspiracy theories about Muslims. It's shocking to think that so many in the media have treated Imam Feisal and Daisy as if they're criminals and given the forces of intolerance a free ride.
My sense is that that free ride is coming to an end. With these recent articles, journalists worth their title are going to start asking questions like, "This isn't really about a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan, is it? You've been writing negative things -- ridiculous and hateful things, in fact -- about Muslims for years. Isn't this more about your long efforts to prevent American Muslims from living lives of full dignity and freedom in this country?"
It may even be that some of the more self-aware members of the hate-machine are getting a little nervous. The overwhelming success of their "Ground Zero mosque" campaign has generated astonishing, if ephemeral, vitriol against Muslims in America. And now that the prejudice is apparent for everyone to see, the better angels of America will start to go into action. Universities will make interfaith cooperation a higher priority on campus. Educators will include appreciative knowledge of Islam in the curriculum. Foundations will increase investments in religious pluralism. Corporations will add Muslims into diversity training seminars. Pastors and rabbis will begin preaching sermons on common ground Christians, Jews and Muslims share. Publishers will seek new manuscripts humanizing Muslims and illuminating Islam.
American history is an arc toward freedom, dignity and inclusiveness for all. That will include Muslims, sooner or later. Everyone knows that you can't stop that arc. And everyone knows that those who try to throw the arc off course are recorded and held up in history books years later as an example to kids of whom not to be like. They are the demons of American history.
Remember this picture of the hateful white girl screaming at a dignified black student as she tries to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957? "Hate assailing grace" is how the Arkansas Democrat Gazette referred to Hazel Bryan Massery's treatment of Elizabeth Eckford. Guess which part the anti-Muslim cabal is trying out for?
At the 40th Anniversary Celebration of Integration at Central High, Hazel asked forgiveness of Elizabeth. And Elizabeth, ever dignified, forgave. Such a story of transformation and reconciliation is also deeply American.
We are entering into the second ten days of Ramadan, the days devoted to forgiveness.
Will America be America to its Muslim inhabitants? I have no doubt.
Will any of the members of the hate machine against Muslims one day have a change of heart and seek our forgiveness? I believe in God, so I believe in miracles.
Will Muslims forgive? I begin my spiritual preparation for that possibility now.
This piece originally appeared on the Washington Post's On Faith as "The Faith Divide."
Follow Eboo Patel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EbooPatel
Russell Simmons: The Sacred Ground of Deep Seated Hate
Obama supports 'the right' for ground zero mosque - Yahoo! News
FOXNews.com - Offer Rejected to Move Mosque Away From Ground Zero ...
Ground Zero mosque debate swirls in world capitals - CSMonitor.com
Ground Zero Mosque - The Daily Beast
Obama backs 'Ground Zero mosque' - Americas - Al Jazeera English
'Ground Zero Mosque' Imam Helped FBI With Counterterrorism Efforts
'Ground Zero Mosque' Park51 Not a Triumph of Radical Islam - TIME
It's a permanent THREAT.
ALL Threats ARE psychological ATTACKS (aka: "terrorism") & all Attacks are already CRIMES.
SO: Islam IS a Crime, & all it's members ('muslims') ARE criminals.
There's countless examples of "allahs" hatred for all non-members, and Jews and Christians are called "perverse and corrupt pigs and monkeys, the worst of creatures, less than braying donkeys," and "worse even than Demons" (who must be killed) etc, etc, etc!
The First Amendment right now only UN-Democratically PROTECTS all the unelected, self-proclaimed "religious" groups' "rights" to freely speak & criminally threaten (terrorize) all non-members.
Even simply commenting in public about how very BAD islam really is, for American politicians, is "Un-Constitutional" and so, "illegal" right now.
Right now, America's Foundational Dhimmi-Document, the Constitution, SUBMITS to the muslim's Foundational Document, the Qur'an!
Only individuals should have 'Rights,' and any and all groups should ONLY be assigned temporary, revokable privileges.
SO: Amend the First Amendment, by adding a simple Definition of religion, that:
a) precludes rivarly in the secular (road-paving, voting, taxation) realm,
...and:
b) does not attack others first!
Thus, ONLY islam would instantly disqualify its SELF!
;-)
Recently, I was at the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial. There is a shuttle boat that takes people out to pay thier respects. There were a lot of Japanese people there, young and old alike. When you dismbark, there is no talking loud, most words, if any are said in a whisper. The Japanese tourists had brought flowers and respectfully dropped them into the water over the sunken vessel. I was so moved and impressed by that, that I wept openly.
I too hope that we as a nation will learn not only to tolerate, but to embrace or our differences and cling to the things that make us human. The sounds of children laughing.
From "South Pacific"
“You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”
Rodgers and Hammerstein
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught
Aloha
Luddites of the conservative fundamentalist Christian Taliban ilk? Not so much.
"American Exceptionalism" has raised it Ugly American head ala Sinclair Lewis' words ~ awfully white/right of them
I don't expect the current promoters to pay any price.
720 military bases around the world.
massive industrial military complex.
pre existing medical conditions to enhance corp profits.
wall street greed and scams.
private security forces to protect our puppet gov in iraq for their oil wells for corp profits.
corp control of congress, white house, supreme court.
here is the best part of corp fascism our supreme court rules that corporations are persons and money is free speech.
how is that for corp fascism going wild and control.
we are heading straight for third world status then you will see all kinds of racism.
that big beck deal today is racism with many white faces in fear.
the list is long but you get the picture.
what we sow we reap and americans actually thought they could be imperialists and materialists and not reap what they sowed.
now the good news all of this self destruction tells us that karma is well and alive and it is not due to some chance lightening making humans.
without karma we humans would never learn these profound lessons in life.
Peace/Salaams/Shalom
the arc of history moves towards justice...always
Peace/Salaams/Shalom
I would like to think that racism and all forms of bigotry would one day become rare as hen's teeth.
We have a very long way to go.
I think they will see that two proselytizing religions with strong exclusionary tendencies came head to head and avoided a world war.
The war was avoided because Islam was guided into reform rather than confrontation. Islam chose to reconcile Sharia with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights rather than cling to the Salafist dream of the triumphant Islam of the seventh century.
Our descendants will note that the reform of Islam was guided not by the likes of Mr. Patel or Imam Rauf or Tariq Ramadan, but by people like Asma Uddin, M. Zuhdi Jasser, Mike Ghouse and Stephen Schwartz.
We are living in "interesting times". We are witnesses to history. We have ringside seats at the birth of Reform Islam.
What they all have in common is that they are all Muslims concerned with the future of their own faith. What is unseemly is you as an outsider deciding who the good reformers are and who are the bad ones. Especially when you seem so unfamiliar with their work
You might want to study these issues a bit more deeply as you are so invested in them. Or become a Muslim and argue among us from the inside....I can teach you the shahadah..
Peace/Salaams/Shalom
.
Good post. Islam is in need of serious reform. It needs an identifiable institution of reformers, not just an occassional "moderate" clearic or journalist covering for militant Islam. As it stands now, Islamic theology deems all non-muslims as second class citizens and the non-islamic world as the "World of War", meaning that it will convert the entire world to Islam, even by force. Islam needs to renounce this as clearly as possible.
Christianity already underwent its reform. Christianity was defanged after the European wars of religion. The most important issue was the defacto and then de juris separation of church and state. ISLAM HAS NOT SEPARATED ITSELF FROM THE STATE. In Muslim theology, God is the head of state and Islam is the state: witness Iran.
The Cordoba Project Muslims have warned us by their name (subsequently changed to "Park 51"). The church is Cordoba was first a Roman temple, then a church, then a mosque, and now a church again. The Muslims in Spain have been plotting for a long time on how to recapture it as a mosque. Once a mosque, always a mosque. The Ground Zero mosque site is seen by them as a variation of this theme. Building a mosque as near as possible (they knew it was impossible to build on the actual site) is a form of claiming the site for Islam. Is there anything more to say?
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I'd love to hear the blogger make such impassioned remarks on behalf of homosexuals. Should they be considered for the Supreme Court, or the Presidency? Or does he retain his own faith's unreasonable prejudices against the "other".
And while we're at it, how about speaking out against the imposition of Islamic Law, which INSTITUTIONALLY marginalizes and persecutes others in many countries: not just gays, but Jews, Christiians, Bahai's, atheists and agnostics.
This is a religion that has, in full active form, some of the most virulent memes on the planet today. This religion needs to change, to catch up with 21st century ideas of pluralism and tolerance. The reason for the fear and loathing is not just because of a few crazy people taking down the towers, but because of the public global face of this religion - with a triumphalist agenda supported by folks with very, very deep pockets.
None of this is to excuse hatemongering here in America. But there are deeper issues in play - issues that even supposedly moderate Muslim countries (like Jordan) are unwilling to address fully and directly.
It's not reasonable to expect the attitudes of many in the west to change, until Islam itself changes. This is true not just in America, but Europe as well.
Your stereotype of Muslims and Islam is sadly inaccurate and ugly...
Peace to you
But here is what I do think, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong: For most countries living by Islamic Law, rather than a secular constitution, the basic human rights of homosexuals, Christians, Jews, Bahai, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists and agnostics are INSTITUTIONALLY diminished.