Why is there so much anti-Muslim sentiment just now, nine years after September 11?
(I was asked this by a Brazilian journalist, Manuela Franceschini, who writes for Veja, a Brazilian magazine. I have been working on politicized religion for many years. This is how I answered her.)
I cannot know for sure because I have not seen any survey data, but I suspect there are a number of reasons. Most importantly, I think there is a perception that large numbers of Muslims hate America and wish to do us harm. We perceive ourselves as a country that has sought to liberate Muslims from brutal dictatorship in Iraq, to counter and undermine a repressive theocracy in Iran, to broker peace between Israel and Palestine, to save the Albanian Muslims of Kosovo and feed them in Somalia, to liberate Afghanistan from the radical Islamism of the Taliban. The endless attacks abroad, and more recently the two attacks by Muslims on Americans in Times Square and at Fort Hood have made many Americans hateful, condemning an entire religion based on the actions of its jihadist and radical stream.
We are just now drawing down our troops from Iraq. In Iraq we expected that the Iraqis would receive us as the Europeans did with the defeat of the Nazis. That so many Iraqis treat America as an occupying force after so many American soldiers have given their lives for their country is deeply offensive. In Pakistan, that we have poured resources into the state hoping to help build democracy and protect it against radical Islam and they for so long refused to vigorously pursue Talibani and Qaeda forces, and indeed publicly could not acknowledge our contribution, has been deeply offensive to Americans. There are hundreds of thousands of American troops who have returned from these military theaters with their stories, their frustrations, their angers, their sense of, "What was it all for in the end?"
American foreign policy is in part built around the universal mission of bringing liberty to the world. Crippled and distorted as that mission has been by corporate and geo-political interests, particularly regarding oil, this has been a critical vector. That our efforts are failing, that the people themselves we are seeking to help have not risen to the challenge with American backing, is understood as a repudiation of our mission, of ungratefulness and of an incapacity and unwillingness to reach for freedom. Americans look for a reason, and many of them conclude that Islam must be the explanation. They do not want us there, so why should we welcome them here? And why should we allow them to build a mosque so close to the site of our collective wound, the place where we learned that a few of their angry men infused with a sense of divine mission could attack the very centers of our land? I can understand the rage, but from my point of view, the building of a mosque dedicated to liberal Islam and inter-religious dialogue would be a testament to the best that America represents, a defiant realization of what al-Qaeda and the Islamist movements around the world are fighting against.
Is there a problem in how the U.S. government is conducting itself?
Yes, there is a problem, and that is our sense that we can most effectively counter these movements with massive military force. Much of the Islamic world understands these interventions as humiliations in which they see us as killing large numbers of Muslims. Remember that Saudia Arabia expelled Americans from bases on their soil in the lead up to the Gulf War. We have allowed a theater of terrorism to become a theater of war with disastrous results. We must operate with arms and aid, intelligence and targeted undercover operations. We must learn the lessons of Afghanistan when the mujahadeen pushed the Soviet forces from their land. Only people willing to die for their land, for their principles, for their lives, can realize political change. Clearly many of our allies are willing to die for their people, but not for our principles.
And then there is the question of Israel and Palestine, in which the United States is not understood in the Islamic world as an honest broker. The relentless attacks by the Hamas regime in Gaza finally lured Israel into a disastrous and brutal war, which has undercut the legitimacy of Israel in the world, and, by implication, our legitimacy. The enemies of peace -- radical religious Muslim among the Palestinians and radical religious Jews among the Israeli settlers -- have been allowed to win. But rather than put the pressure on both parties, particularly Israel, the United States backed away under President Bush. Our government allowed Israel to continue to expand its settlement of the West Bank. If the United States does not intervene more forcefully, the West Bank may become another Gaza. Both Israel and Palestine, and importantly America, will be tested in these coming months.
What is your sense of the future of this intolerance?
If Islamist radicals continue to attack America on its own soil, I am very worried about our capacity to withstand the forces of exclusion and hatred. But I also think you need to put the hostility to Islam in context. This is the same year in which we elected a Muslim woman as Miss America, in which there are two Muslims sitting in Congress. There are pockets of hate and intolerance. They are real and dangerous, but there are also millions of cordial, generous and intimate encounters that go on all the time. Hopefully we will be able to build on those. It is a very dangerous time, in part because we are living through the eclipse of American hegemony, when Americans feel the limits of our power, our wealth, the capacity of our vision to animate the world. There is a way in which Osama bin-Laden has won, weakening our country more than military battalions ever could. We have been drawn into his war on his terms. And we cannot even find him. That sense of helplessness is crippling a giant who is capable of great things in this post-Cold-War period.
Asma Uddin: What's Behind the Negative Characterization of Muslims?
"Bush kept us safe! Obama has no foreign policy experience" (apparently you can't see Russia from Chicago)
Then they went on with the "Obama is a muslim!" or "arab", and well the fear just went on and on from there. After all the work Bush put into the "If you're not with us you're against us" mentality to justify an attack on Iraq, he used the 9 11 attacks to benefit his agenda, and the right has lost their minds over Obama getting elected and so fear is all they have!(they certainly don't have the intelligence to compete with him).
You gotta give the right credit though because there are certainly a lot of Americans who are happily misinformed about what being a muslim is and they can't differentiate a radical extremist, from an American who follows the muslim religion!
Muslims and non-Muslims of the world have had a 9 year education in just who is for what--thanks to bin Laden and company.
Among Muslims, I differentiate between friend and foe in this manner:
Our enemies are Islamists, both violent and non-violent. Their goal is to spread the dominance of Sharia law by legal and illegal means. To the extent that secular law is displaced by Sharia law in Muslim and non-Muslim countries, they win.
In the United Nations, this ideological conflict is clearly spelled out in the incompatibility of the contents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam.
How do you differentiate?
Sharing riches with the ppl!! Well that's communism!
The trick is to get the ppl believing welfare works so much better!
The ppl need to believe...
Cases in point: Newt Gingrich has falsely accused the intention of the community center in NYC as a victory over democracy. This has not been challenged effectively by the media; Palin's ridiculous tweet about "refudiation." Although she has been mocked, she has been given too much attention; the nutty Florida pastor was given a national stage on every cable and network channel. His story should never have made the news at all.
The best thing about today's version is the co-operation from most modernized nations like China and Russia who have learned that the recources of the world are more important than any culture or political difference we might have with one another...
This is just one quote from the article that makes me question Mr. Friedland's news sources. Has he seen the state of Iraq since we "liberated" the Iraqis? It is a shambles! Millions have left the country, perhaps never to return. 100s of thousands of their own are dead. What do they have to be thankful for? Saddam's execution is not enough.
As to why the mosque (being constructed for about a year now) issue was brought up now? November elections and the continuing racism in our country directed at our President (including the claim that he is a muslim). Fan the fear. That's what Republicans do best. Oh, and cut taxes for people who don't need their taxes cut.
With peacekeeping like that, it's no wonder that we need a vast security state, but it won't protect us from the biggest threat of all -- our government's intrusion into our private lives and an ever growing military-industrial complex.
That mosque is less of a threat than some of the actors and agencies in our own government.
Right-wing politicians are more able to fan the flames than they were in the 2001 incident.
Another part is the nature of the "offense" concerning this so-called "Ground Zero Mosque (a phrase entirely composed of mistruths)":
The 9/11 attacks had very tangible enemies involved. And offense taken by this group was universal.
The current fiasco offends only xenophobes (I'm not going to sugar-coat this... even 9/11 victim family members who take offense because members of the religion they associate with the terrorists is moving to so-called "hallowed ground" are taking a bigoted position and one of white Christian privilege). It is not a shared rage, and certainly not found in any large part of the Muslim community.
Also it is seen as more of a "blasphemy" than a real crime. People have a tendency to react more harshly to attacks on the seemingly sacred than attacks on life, liberty, or anything else.
But there is no sane, logical, or rational reason that bigotry is stronger now, nor does it have anything to do with time per se (except that the political climate for the right has changed over that time).
That's a reality worth chewing on for a bit.
What is really naive and very dangerous is the refusal of acknowledging the reality he is talking about, the reality that with all our best intentions, we don't always act in the best interests of others and ourselves. Either in personal life or on the international scene the attitude "I'm always right and everybody else is wrong and out to get me" never brought any positive results.
We responded to the attacks of September 11, 2001, exactly as Bin Laden intended -- with force that has ruined alliances, devastated our economy, killed thousands of our own people, murdered millions of innocents in other countries (thus supporting extremism abroad), and given support to political extremism here at home.
We have converted the good will and concern expressed by so many countries after 9/11 to hatred and fear, while committing ourselves to apparently endless war in Afghanistan and an endless occupation of Iraq.
We have solved nothing. Only blind (religious) hatred and capitalism run amuck explain that kind of behavior.
Jingoism appears to be a permanent part of our national character, or at least of the political and moneyed interests that control our government.
Surely, only the most naïve of Americans believe our purpose in Iraq was to liberate Muslims (did you mean Iraqis?). Going into Iraq was about power and influence, dressed up as a concern about nuclear weapons.
The "endless attacks abroad" and at home are slight compared to what our bombs have done in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the last decade.
Our soldiers have indeed given their lives, doing their duty as they see it. But their country has sent them on a self-defeating mission that has killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
"The enemies of peace. . . " include the U.S., no matter what you believe the intentions of our government are.
Now with a Democrat in the White House, it is in the interest of conservatives to fan the flames. There is simply not the push on the right to keep the war of civilizations feelings in check. In fact they are busy fanning the flames against a President who is a bit different. And so the anger explodes.
Iraqis are no more or less grateful now then they were 4 years ago. But the voices of Republicans who need to pursue a sensible foreign policy are gone, so only the demagogues remain yelling.