The original mission of the Southern Poverty Law Center (splcenter.org) was to track hate groups and violent extremists, mainly Southern white supremacists. Last year it still counted 1,018 such groups – but they were distributed all over the United States. In 2010 the FBI reported that violent attacks against Muslims had increased by 50% in just one year. Mosques have been burned – sometimes repeatedly, people murdered, beaten, and stabbed. The recent mass murder by a neo-Nazi in a Sikh temple highlights the fact that those who hate the most are among the least informed.
Which brings us to Wayne Atkinson’s piece, “Islam and Christianity contrasted” (September 25th). His piece was less a promised “contrast” than simply a recitation of talking points from the usual Muslim-bashing hate groups, many of whom were once in the Jew-bashing business but have now diversified.
Last week in France, for example, the French political “tea” party headed by Marine Le Pen proposed an anti-Muslim law which made wearing headscarves illegal in public. Their new legislation would also prohibit Orthodox Jews from wearing yarmulkes.
The same week, the French satire magazine “Charlie Hebdo” capitalized on the furor over the recent Islamophobic movie, running front and back covers lampooning the Muslim prophet. The back cover was simply pornographic but the front cover broke new ground by presenting hook-nosed caricatures of both a Muslim and a Jew in a single image. When the German satire magazine “Titanic” tackled the Vatican [correspondence] leaks last July, it depicted the Pontiff in various forms of incontinence. The issue was almost immediately pulled out of circulation and images removed from its website. Apparently some kinds of “free speech” are more free than others.
Here in the US, Congressman Peter King conducts his McCarthyesque hearings on Muslims, and some Republicans sound frighteningly like German propagandists of the 1930’s. We learn that the New York City Police has been illegally spying on Muslims not only in Gotham but in New Jersey. And in two dozen states so-called “anti-Shariah” legislation has been filed, authored by the same man, David Yerushalmi, who is one of a number of high-profile haters which include Frank Gaffney, Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, and David Horowitz – who frequently present their ugly views of a culture war between “Judeo-Christian” values and Islam.
Feeling obliged to defend the very foundations of Western Civilization itself, these cultural jihadis promote American Exceptionalism, an aggressive Christianity, and snipe at non-interventionists, “multiculturalists” and religious moderates. It is no coincidence that some of the strongest supporters of this supposed “clash of civilizations” are far-right Christians like those who made “Innocence of Muslims” – as well as far-right Jews who have funded films like “Obsession” and “the Third Jihad.”
So when folks like Mr. Atkinson grasp at simple answers to complex issues, they often end up grabbing the wrong thing. Islam is not the Arab world’s only feature. Look at a map of American military bases in the Middle East. One of the only nations that we do not have some type of military presence in is Iran. American foreign policy looms large in everyone’s mind – not only rioting mobs or Al Qaeda plotters – but in the daily lives of the overwhelming majority of peaceful Muslims who experience “surgical” drone strikes, unwelcome military operations, and our propping up repressive governments.
Anarcho-terror groups like Al Qaeda indeed create a stew of politics laced with Islamic supremacism. But then American ideologues infuse their politics with the supremacy of “Judeo-Christian values” (as if Buddhists or Hindus have no place in the national conversation) and tirelessly promote American and Israeli exceptionalism. During my son’s life, he has never known a year in which we were not bombing somebody – and it has cost us trillions. Now our cultural warriors are at it again – calling for jihad against Iran next Spring.
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