You're Gonna Reap Just What You Sow

Notes on the Politics of Fear and Loathing

I observed elsewhere a couple of days ago that Bryan Fischer of The American Family Association had posted a screed on the AFA site, bellowing, "No more mosques, period." As in, anywhere in the US. He also insists that "Muslims cannot claim religious freedom protections under the First Amendment." I came across this via Lauri Apple, who noted some other examples of similar such bed-wetting, too.

Now, here's another, more detailed and comprehensive look from Stephan Salisbury, which begins as follows.

The Far-Right's Anti-Mosque Mania Spreads from Ground Zero to Across the U.S., Pointing to Dark Politics Ahead

The phony 'debate' over the construction of an Islamic cultural center near the former World Trade Center portends darker things to come.

August 11, 2010 | There is a distinct creepiness to the controversy now raging around a proposed Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan. The angry “debate” over whether the building should exist has a kind of glitch-in-the-Matrix feel to it, leaving in its wake an aura of something-very-bad-about-to-happen.

It’s not just that opposition to the building has coalesced around a phony “Mosque at Ground Zero” shorthand (with its echoes of dust, death, and evildoers). Many have pointed out -- futilely -- that the complex will be more than two blocks from the former World Trade Center, around a corner on Park Place, and will feature an auditorium, spa, basketball court, swimming pool, classrooms, exhibition space, community meeting space, 9/11 memorial, and, yes, a prayer space for Muslims. The shorthand still sticks.

Nor is it just that this is only the most visible of a growing number of nasty controversies over proposed mosques in Tennessee, California, Georgia, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Illinois as well as Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and Midland Beach, Staten Island, in New York City. Such protests are emerging with alarming frequency. Nor is it simply that political leaders -- from Republican presidential wannabes to New York gubernatorial hopefuls -- have sought to exploit the Lower Manhattan controversy. (Sarah Palin demanded that “peaceful Muslims” step up and “refudiate” the plan; Newt Gingrich denounced the building of such a “mosque” as long as Saudi Arabia bars construction of churches and synagogues; Rick Lazio, a Republican campaigning for the governorship of New York state, asserted that the plan somehow subverted the right of New Yorkers “to feel safe and be safe.”)

No, it’s the déjà-vu-ness of the controversy that kindles special unease, the sense that we’ve been here before as a country, and the realization that, for a decade, a significant number of our nation’s political leaders have been honing an anti-Muslim narrative which fertilizes anti-Muslim sentiment to the point where it is now spreading like a toxic plume, uncapped and uncontrollable.

The mosque controversy is not really about a mosque at all; it’s about the presence of Muslims in America, and the free-floating anxiety and fear that now dominate the nation’s psyche. The mere presence of Muslims at prayer is now enough to trigger angry protests, as Bridgeport, Connecticut, police discovered last week. Those opposing the construction of the center in New York City are drawing on what amounts to a decade of government-stoked xenophobia about Muslims, now gathering strength and visibility in a nation full of deep economic anxieties and increasingly aggressive far-right grassroots groups. Lower Manhattan and Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Temecula, California, are all in this together. And it is not going to go away simply because the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission gave its unanimous blessing to the Islamic center plan. Since that is the case, it’s worth pausing to consider what has happened here over the past 10 years.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t: @ronaldjackson)

What Ken Layne Says

Toward at the end of last night's epic liveblog:

... this New Yorker piece about the “Ground Zero Terror Mosque-Disco” is actually worth reading even if you don’t want to hear another word about this nutbag white trash crusade against some people in a big liberal city full of gay foreign liberals.

It's a really good post. (By Hendrik Hertzberg.) Not too long. Go.

(x-posted)

Matt Goes MSM!

Matt Yglesias has an op-ed in the WaPo, datelined today (8 August 2010): "Anchor babies, the Ground Zero mosque and other scapegoats."

It's a pretty good read, even as I suspect most of you will think "I already think these things," and I'm happy someone is pushing the message Matt is for people whose reading habits aren't as enlightened as yours.

(h/t: @AdamSerwer | x-posted)

The Least Surprising Sentence of the last Eighty-Seven Months, at Least

If you read no further, know this: RedState supports the Anti-Defamation League in its opposition to the so-called “Ground Zero mosque.”

Okay! No need to read any further!

P.S. Go DIAF, wingnut. And take all your anti-American allies with you. In my country, we have a constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion, and it doesn't just apply to those who worship Republican Jesus.

(h/t: Riley Waggaman)

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P.P.S. Shoutout to Mike Bloomberg. I don't agree with him on everything, but on this? That's how a real America's Mayor acts.

GOPTRUST.COM

Sounds like the beginning of a joke about the world's smallest website, doesn't it? But no, it's a real thing, run by something called The National Republican Trust (that word, you keep saying that word …) Political Action Committee … no, seriously, this is not at all funny, because it is "committed to continuing the legacy of Ronald Reagan," you haters.

And speaking of not funny, have you heard about their great new ad, which you can Trust? It is called "Kill the Ground Zero Mosque." Yes. Not just "Stop," but "Kill." And shut up about Republicans' excessive use of violent rhetoric, okay?

You must go over to Jim Newell's house and watch it, to remind yourself what it's like to be a RealAmerican™ -- full of fear and hatred of others, eager to cheapen the term sacred, and most importantly, all about Us vs. Them.

And catch the none-too-subtle insinuation that President Obama is not an American. All in one minute!

Hurrah for the legacy of Ronald Reagan!

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(previously)

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[Added] Also over at Jim's place: more Republicans demanding that Obama stop hating bidnessmen as much as they hate him, and more Republican fear and loathing, this time, for Muslins of the fake Mexican variety -- they're the worst.

[Added2] Oh, but wait. You know when the Republicans do like themselves some Muslins? Correct! When it comes to being united against Teh Gheys, as TPM's Rachel Slajda reports.

A Mosque at "Ground Zero." The Horror!

Here is the latest from Pat Condell. My comments are below. Up to you whether you want to read them before or after watching.

(alt. video link)

Pat Condell is someone I hugely admire, someone far more articulate than I could ever dream of being, and someone with whom I often agree to the point of raising a clenched fist and shouting BOO-YEAH!

However, I also feel that he sometimes goes one step too far. This impassioned speech is one of those times.

As much as I dislike organized religions, especially the top three monotheistic brands, as much as I dislike people who let their lives be run by religious superstitions and the related pretensions of tribal superiority, and as much as I agree with many of the subsidiary points Pat makes here (the anti-free speech initiatives of Saudi Arabia, et al, at the UN is an especially sore point), it is at the very least a strategic mistake to think that the way to win the struggle against all the bad parts of religion (and they are legion) is to tar everyone with the same brush.

For example, to refer to "the religion that murdered them [the 9/11 victims]," as he does around 0:50, is idiotic, both as an assessment of reality, and as a tactical choice of rhetoric. It's been said many times, but evidently not enough: not every Muslim in the world approved of the attacks, or thinks that every "infidel" should be killed, or even that violence is the best way to deal with grievances. Not even close.

We will beat those insane people who cloak themselves in religious guise by separating them out from those who do not present any sort of threat to civilization, and by showing that overwhelming majority, just in case they have any doubts, which is the better way. We will only aggravate the problems by making a group of people, who already feel put-upon, think that we cannot tell any of them apart.

(I'll leave aside the obvious problem of trying to win their proverbial hearts and minds by dropping things on them from airplanes. That's a topic for a different screed.)

I don't doubt Pat's deeper-than-my concerns about Islam as its ugly aspects infect his home land. By all accounts I've seen, England and other parts of Europe are having more problems integrating immigrants who are Muslim into their society than we are in the US. However, it's more than a bit hysterical to warn us against "falling asleep," or indeed, even to tell us that any sort of inevitable menace is looming.

Another bit: At around 4:20, Pat refers to "conquered sacred ground." Ugh. In the first place, it's hardly "conquered." Last I looked, I'm pretty sure I saw the Stars and Stripes flying somewhere around there. Also, women delightfully not in burqas. And as far as "sacred ground" goes: Wingnut, please. It was a terrible thing that happened that day, but you don't get to be stridently anti-religious and then use the s-word to privilege your own sense of righteous indignation. (As you'll have noted from the irony quotes in the post title, I don't even like the term "Ground Zero.")

And yes, some people in the "Muslim world" will see this construction as a beachhead, as Pat calls it, or as a symbol of their ongoing conquest, as he would also have it, or whatever. So what. We can't make decisions based on a requirement that unanimity obtain, that nothing should be done unless we can be sure that absolutely no one will get the wrong idea.

Another: Pat talks about the US becoming "soft" and "decadent," in part because we are, in his view, dhimmi-ing out. To my mind, we are at our softest and most decadent when we let the actions of a fringe few cause us to scurry under our beds.

One more: Pat says, around 4:52, that this will be a "permanent affront." Okay, fine. So let it be, if that's how he wants to take it. But you know who else it's going to be an affront to? A whole lot of Muslims who are unhappy with how their faith has been misappropriated, that's who. In other words, the way to think of this is not as an "affront," but rather, as a permanent reminder, of the dangers of letting religious fanaticism run amok. And to all those whose SUVs feature fading bumper stickers saying "Never forget!!!1!," well, here ya go -- this will guarantee that nobody will.

The way to deal with a billion Muslims, no matter how much of a threat you think "they" are, is to encourage the religion to come to its own Enlightenment. Rather than refusing its adherents admission, or suppressing their cultural expressions and monuments, the way to beat their bad parts -- in particular, their occasional susceptibility to opportunistic faux-populists trying to rev them up with hate speech -- is to welcome the people, warts and all, and show them how they have nothing to fear from us or our ways of life.

I am fairly described as a militant atheist.* And, despite what Sarah Palin would have you believe, I am also a proud American. But I do not take the building of a mosque near one of the sites of the 9/11 attacks to be an "insult." In fact, my feeling is, if you wanna get right in the face of the extremists and the psychopaths, this is exactly how to do it. I look forward to this mosque as a reminder of what can go wrong, as I have already said, and better still, as a symbol that we Americans can take a punch and still open our arms to the masses who want only to bring their better angels.

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Hat tip to SkepticDoc, who has started a discussion thread about this issue over at Bh.tv. If you'd like to weigh in over there, you only need to give an email address to be allowed to post. (And they won't share it or spam you.) You can post under a pseudonym, if you like, or your real name, as I do. In any case, I encourage it, not only for this issue but as a general principle -- though of course it's got no shortage of noise (in no small part from your humble servant, it must be admitted), the Bh.tv forum continues to be one of the best places on the Internet where a real spread of perspectives is presented.

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* [Added] Or not. Please see Alastair's reaction, in the Comments.