Does America Have a Muslim Problem? …Islamophobia in the U.S. doesn’t approach levels seen in other countries where Muslims are in a minority. But to be a Muslim in America now is to endure slings and arrows against your faith — not just in the schoolyard and the office but also outside your place of worship and in the public square , where some of the country’s most powerful mainstream religious and political leaders unthinkingly (or worse, deliberately) conflate Islam with terrorism and savagery. In France and Britain, politicians from fringe parties say appalling things about Muslims, but there’s no one in Europe of the stature of a former House Speaker who would, as Newt Gingrich did, equate Islam with Nazism. [Time]

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p>My answer to Bobby Ghosh, the author of Time’s cover story, is “no.” America, despite all the ugly rhetoric of the past several weeks, is not Islamaphobic. Instead, I would say that America is currently in the grips of yet another episode of ugly Nativism, this particular episode fueled by power hungry ideologues that have access to methods of mass communication not present during former episodes of Nativism in our country: the 24 hour media cycle and the internet. “Islamaphobia” is not what afflicts our nation. It is merely a symptom of the underlying malady which, like chronic malaria, can flair up and leave the collective “us,” the American people, weak until treated. It will never be totally eradicated. Treating the problem by adopting an “enlightened” us vs.”ignorant” them mentality will make things worse, as will appeasement (see examples of the latter here, here, and here).

Before continuing the discussion it is important to understand what “Nativism” is in the context of American history. History has always been my favorite subject because historians are like fortune tellers. Everything that has happened will likely happen again. Let’s start with the most basic place to learn about the history of Nativism in our country. You guessed it, Wikipedia:

Nativism favors the interests of certain established inhabitants of an area or nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. It may also include the re-establishment or perpetuation of such individuals or their culture.



Nativism typically means opposition to immigration or efforts to lower the political or legal status of specific ethnic or cultural groups because the groups are considered hostile or alien to the natural culture, and it is assumed that they cannot be assimilated. [Wikipedia]

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p>The table of contents on the Wiki page alone tells you the story:

* 1.1.1 Anti-Catholic nativism in the 19th century

* 1.1.2 Anti-German nativism

* 1.1.3 Anti-Chinese nativism

* 1.1.4 Anti-Catholic nativism

* 1.1.5 20th- and 21st-century anti-immigration movements

* 1.1.6 Language… [Wikipedia]

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Throughout American history, established inhabitants have been manipulated whenever ideologues or politicians decide to use fear of the “other” to win power or wealth for themselves. It was bad enough when it was just ideologues and politicians creating mischief. To that add the modern media, which perpetuates and amplifies the mischief to make money by attracting viewers/readers.

The current target of Nativist anger in our country includes Muslims and Mexicans as its largest subsets. The target this time around is an umbrella group that I will call the “Global American.” The Global American “thinks he/she is better” than the “established” American. The Global American has traveled often outside of America, and having seen the struggle abroad has some misguided empathy for those that may want to come here for work, even if they may have illegally cut in line to do so. Even when English is the second language for the Global American, he/she can spell in English better that the established American. The Global America, like President Obama, read Fareed Zakaria’s Post-American World and belives America is in decline. The Global American is a Manchurian Candidate, just waiting to turn on any established American that hasn’t stockpiled five guns. The Global American is making money in America and then funneling it off to fund the United Nations so it can establish a world order with America in its proper place.

Think I’m off the mark and that it really is only Muslims and Mexicans that need to worry? Well, let’s take a look at another headline that may have gone unnoticed this week while everyone was concentrating on the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

As Russians Move In and Flourish, Resentment Follows Staten Island’s Russians — even if many are really from Ukraine or other lands of the former Soviet Union — number 22,288 by the most recent census estimates, or more than 50,000 by their own estimates, which would make Russians one-tenth of the island’s population. As immigrant strivers, they moved to Staten Island for the affordable houses, good schools, suburban feel and pace, even a boardwalk in South Beach that can match Brighton Beach’s in length, if not in ambience.



But they have not escaped the ethnic encounters often associated with urban migrations, including grumbling by natives that the newcomers are taking over. This has surfaced most vividly as a result of a Russian-run community and day care center’s plan for a new 10,000-square-foot building that it promises would be for all Staten Islanders.



It will become another “Russian thing,” one skeptic, Joanne Bennetti, a 60-ish retired beautician, said at a meeting of the South Beach Civic Association. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel like a foreigner in your own neighborhood.” [NYTimes]

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p>Ahhh, I can see it now. Some blowhard on Faux News will make reference to the recently busted spy ring and then ask the question, a rhetorical one naturally: do we really want these Russians/Ukrainians (what’s the difference again?) who have recently spied on us and helped the Iranians go nuclear, settle so close to…lower Manhattan?

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p>Meanwhile, also in New York, the Global American was busy doing their global thing:

When Maureen Mazumder enrolled her daughter, Sabrina, in a Spanish singalong class a year ago, she hoped it would be the first step in helping her learn a second language. But the class did not seem to do the trick, so Ms. Mazumder decided to hire a baby sitter, one who would not only care for her daughter but also speak to her exclusively in Spanish. Ms. Mazumder, whose daughter is nearly 3, has company. Although a majority of parents seeking caretakers for their children still seek ones who will speak to their children in English, popular parenting blogs and Web sites indicate that a noticeable number of New York City parents are looking for baby sitters and nannies to help their children learn a second language, one they may not speak themselves.[NYTimes]

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p>I am plain afraid of what will happen when the Nativists realize that the Hindu members of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association are trying to make the Gita, “the Hindu Bible” a standard in all their hotels.

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p> In no way am I trying to say that Muslims should not be both concerned and saddened by what is happening right now . On the contrary, I am saying that none of us non-Muslims should for a second believe that we will be spared or that we need not concern ourselves because we are not the immediate targets of this ugly behavior by some politicians and media organizations . This isn’t just the Muslim and Latino community’s problem. This is the Global American’s problem too. Shit, some are even going after Christiane Amanpour!:

Without having the courage to do so explicitly, [Tom] Shales links (and even bolsters) charges of her “anti-Israel” bias to the fact that her father is Iranian and she grew up in Iran. He sandwiches that biographical information about Iran in between describing accusations against her of bias against Israel and her defensive insistence that she’s capable of objectivity when reporting on the region.



So here we finally have a prominent journalist with a half-Persian background — in an extremely homogenized media culture which steadfastly excludes from Middle Eastern coverage voices from that region — and her national origin is immediately cited as a means of questioning her journalistic objectivity and even opposing her as a choice to host This Week (can someone from Iran with an Iranian father possibly be objective???). Could the double standard here be any more obvious or unpleasant?… [Salon]

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p>Very similar to how Mike Huckabee went after President Obama:

“His worldview is dramatically different than any president, Republican or Democrat, we’ve had,” said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, who attributes conservative fear not just to Obama’s effort to expand the federal government but to the president’s overall governing philosophy.



“He grew up more as a globalist than an American,” Huckabee said. “To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation.” [Politico]

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p>Enough talk about the present for a minute. How about some images from our nation’s past? Here are some political cartoons that will hopefully give American Muslims a little bit of comfort in knowing that they are not alone. Previous Americans, including the ancestors of some of the ones behaving so badly now, have faced similar:

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This cartoon is one of Thomas Nast’s most famous. It depicts Roman Catholic clergy as crocodiles invading America’s shore to devour the nation’s schoolchildren–white, black, American Indian, and Chinese. (The white children are prominent in front, the rest are in the background.) The public school building stands as a fortress against the threat of theocracy, but it has been bombarded and flies Old Glory upside down to signal distress. [Link]

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p>I love the political cartoon above because it captures so many biases and contradictions at once. At the time, America had a “Catholic Problem.” Seeing the clergy-gators come out of the dirty Ganges River implies that Americans did not think too highly of India either. What is equally striking is that the public schools in 1875 were apparently regarded as bastions of secularism. Today, public schools are under assault in places like Kansas and Texas for not beging Christian enough.

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p>Here is another anti-Catholic cartoon where the message is clear and ominous:

At the time of the great wave of immigration from the Catholic countries of Europe, there was an ongoing undercurrent of resentment about the “Romanization” of the public school system. Elsewhere on this site we have “Puck” and “Judge” cartoons with a more mainstream (i.e. Protestant) view on the subject, but the truth is that in their views on the Pope they weren’t much different than the Atheists, [Link]

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p>The website where I found the above cartoon is full of all sorts of anti-immigrant gems. I highly recommend visiting it.

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p>Here is a cartoon which shows a fear of both white Irish and Chinese-American immigrants at once:

This is a one panel, three scene cartoon showing, in the first scene, an Irish man with the head of Uncle Sam in his mouth and a Chinese man with the feet of Uncle Sam in his mouth. In the second scene they consume Uncle Sam, and in the third the Chinese man consumes the Irish man; on the landscape in the distant background are many railroads. [Link]

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p>So what am I advocating? Under no circumstances should we battle the invective we have been seeing with mere contempt or an air of superiority. Americans aren’t bad. Turning inward would be disastrous. Polls saying Americans are anti-Muslim don’t mean as much given what else the polls say. However, the individuals that manipulate the public, and the media that assists in that manipulation, are bad. They should be fought with logic and reason and their hypocrisy should be laid bare. Call out bullshit whenever and wherever you see it. And don’t appease ideologues. It is much better to improve the discourse like NJ’s Republican Governor Chris Christie did then to fold like Ami Berra. In the coming years gays and abortion will be on the outs as wedge issues. Nativism will be in:

But the current tribalistic turn on the right — declaring, in essence, that the First Amendment shouldn’t apply to Muslims, and the Fourteenth Amendment shouldn’t apply to Latinos — has real promise as the next long chapter in the culture war. There will always be people who have different skin colors, different religious creeds, and the gall to believe they can be Americans too, for the right to get mad at. [Politico]

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p>A reader of Andrew Sullivan’s blog at The Atlantic sent him a note that I believe perfectly captures how Muslims will eventually triumph in the same way that Catholics, the Irish and the Chinese all did: