The Myth of Muslim Fingerprints

The inevitable backlash against Muslims has begun in earnest. On the one hand, it isn't new. Even before 9/11, a headscarf could be a magnet for epithets. After 9/11, being a minority Muslim became dangerous. But now, since the London bombings, last month, the temperature of rhetoric about Islam has been climbing. The escalation is steep, fast and worrying. Before the last US Presidential election, my mom sent me a piece of writing that frightened me. In fact, it's intent was to frighten me, but not in the way it did. It was standard fear-mongering stuff: part of the campaign to make Americans afraid of what they couldn't see or hear, and, so, vote to “stay the course in the war on terror”. The reason it frightened me was that it took, as its dark and mysterious protagonists, not terrorists, but Muslims. It was the first time I saw the rhetorical fillip of broadening the threat base from a few terrorists (...dozens? ...hundreds?) to the entire Muslim world. The piece had one saving grace: It was transparent propaganda. In fact, it virtually plagiarized an earlier document: the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a late 19th century anti-semitic forgery that was successfully passed off as a secret Jewish how-to manual detailing a plot to control the world. It was used, in Russia, just after the turn of the century, to incite anti-semitic sentiment and justify the slaughter of thousands of Jews. The piece my mom sent suggested a similar message. All Muslims want to take over the world. Sure, there may be some moderates, but they're a distraction to the real Islamic agenda: domination. Be afraid! Boo! It then went on to talk about how liberals/Democrats were soft on this threat, etc, etc. My dad, just a few days ago, sent me a different kind of article. Its German author's message was simple: appeasement won't work. Now, German authorship is poignant in any argument about appeasement. And the author references Neville Chamberlain's laughable “peace in our time” with solid effect. That said, I was left wondering what course of action the author was arguing for. I think it was: (1) Don't support the proposed Islamic holiday in Germany, and (2) all us cowardly Europeans should support Bush! All of that would have made it no more than a Republican op-ed piece – with the novelty of having been written by a German – but for one thing. And that one thing is, to me, terrifying. For the author to stake his claim against appeasing the enemy, he requires a premise that there is a coherent, cohesive enemy. And he names it: “Islamists”. Not Osama. Not the terrorists. Islamists. The implied battle cry is clear: “Fight the Islamists.” The sickening irony, here, of course, is that appeasing Germany prior to World War II allowed the persecution of a religious minority: Jews. Appeasement enabled the Holocaust. Is it not striking that this author seems to be saying, this time, we should do it differently – ie, no appeasement – but just ends up demonizing another religion? Don't make the same mistake that killed all the Jews. Persecute the Muslims! Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. What's got me worried is not the odd anti-Muslim screed here or there; it's that an anti-Muslim meme seems to be taking shape in Western culture. Have a look at this piece, titled “The myth of moderate Islam”. (Hat tip to Norm at OneGoodMove.) You might say its angle is predictable because it was published in The Spectator (UK), a conservative air horn. But it's a loud horn. Moreover, it's one that has consistently opposed the Iraq war (garnering accusations that it supports – wait for it – appeasement). What's most worrying is how good the article is. I was impressed enough to Google the author, Dr Patrick Sookhdeo. He is the director of something called the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, which sounds like a good thing. And it may be, but most of the literature I could find on the Institute website was about how badly Muslims treat Christians. (There's a fascinating rebuttal of Sookhdeo's article, here.) So, we can still say this is just in the hands of wing-nuts, right? Okay, then how about this article from the Journal of Foreign Affairs, the deeply respected organ of the Council on Foreign Relations? Titled "Europe's Angry Muslims", it's a well-reasoned, compellingly articulated piece. I highly recommend it. That said, its clear message is that there is a massive potential threat lurking in the broad European Muslim community. Policy makers may read that dispassionately, but to the general public I imagine it would be translated thus: Muslim = scary. (The general public doesn't read the Journal of Foreign Affairs? Really? Hey, it's available in airport bookshops!) Regardless of what they read, the public is getting the message. The Independent (UK) reported, yesterday, on the “dramatic rise in [anti-Muslim] racist assaults and abuse in the aftermath of the July 7 suicide attacks." To be clear: Only an idiot would claim cause and effect between the anti-Muslim propaganda and the spike in folks beating up Muslims for fun. It seems plain enough that the propaganda and the racist violence are both effects of the same cause: the fear and anger triggered by the bombings. It happened to an extent in the US after 9/11. It's happening in the UK after 7/7. They're terrorists, and we're reacting to the terror. What I am saying is that, under the cover of this understandable reaction to terror, we are being sold a turkey, and we're buying it. The turkey is the ever-expanding definition of who the enemy is. After 9/11, it was Osama and Al Queda. Then it was Iraqis. After that, it was Islamic extremists. Then it was Islamic fundamentalists. Now, it's Islam. The rise in the frequency and legitimacy of this expanding definition of the enemy is frightening. As we battle terrorism, don't let us fall into this trap. It is no different than Catholics versus Protestants (Northern Ireland), no different than Christians versus Jews (the Inquisition, the Holocaust), no different from Hindus versus Muslims (India and Pakistan), no different from Jews versus Muslims (the Middle East for, um, forever). Way back in grad school, I posted on my pinboard a simple line from the Qur'an meant to remind me that lowly academic struggle was noble: “The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr.” I haven't heard much of that from either the Muslim or Christian/Western communities, recently. I'd be in favor of a little more. That's not about appeasement; it's about not being a fear-mongering bigot. If we start to hate each other, just picture Osama's glee.