Islamophobia? Not Really

Via-Townhall

JONAH GOLDBERG

Here's a thought: The 70 percent of Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from ground zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and the much-ballyhooed anti-Muslim backlash is mostly a myth.

Let's start with some data.

According to the FBI, hate crimes against Muslims increased by a staggering 1,600 percent in 2001. That sounds serious! But wait, the increase is a math mirage. There were 28 anti-Islamic incidents in 2000. That number climbed to 481 the year a bunch of Muslim terrorists murdered 3,000 Americans in the name of Islam on Sept. 11.

Now, that was a hate crime.

Regardless, 2001 was the zenith or, looked at through the prism of our national shame, the nadir of the much-discussed anti-Muslim backlash in the United States -- and civil libertarians and Muslim activists insisted it was 1930s Germany all over again. The following year, the number of anti-Islamic hate-crime incidents (overwhelmingly, nonviolent vandalism and nasty words) dropped to 155. In 2003, there were 149 such incidents. And the number has hovered around the mid-100s or lower ever since.

Sure, even one hate crime is too many. But does that sound like an anti-Muslim backlash to you?

Let's put this in even sharper focus. America is, outside of Israel, probably the most receptive and tolerant country in the world to Jews. And yet, in every year since 9/11, more Jews have been hate-crime victims than Muslims. A lot more.

In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim incidents by at least 6 to 1. Why aren't we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America?

Because there isn't one. And there isn't an anti-Muslim climate either. Yes, there's a lot of heated rhetoric on the Internet. Absolutely, some Americans don't like Muslims. But if you watch TV or movies, or read, say, the op-ed page of the New York Times -- never mind left-wing blogs -- you'll hear much more open bigotry toward evangelical Christians (in blogspeak, the "Taliban wing of the Republican Party") than you will toward Muslims.

No doubt some American Muslims -- particularly young Muslim men with ties to the Middle East and South Asia -- have been scrutinized at airports more than elderly women of Norwegian extraction, but does that really amount to Islamophobia, given the dangers and complexities of the war on terror?

For 10 years we've been subjected to news stories about the Muslim backlash that's always around the corner. It didn't start with President Obama or with the "ground zero mosque." President George W. Bush was at his most condescending when he explained, in the cadences of a guest reader at kindergarten story time, that "Islam is peace."

But he was right to emphasize America's tolerance and to draw a sharp line between Muslim terrorists and their law-abiding co-religionists.

Meanwhile, to listen to Obama -- say, in his famous Cairo address -- you'd think America has been at war with Islam for 30 years and only now, thanks to him, can we heal the rift. It's an odd argument given that Americans have shed a lot of blood for Muslims over the last three decades: to end the slaughter of Muslims in the Balkans, to feed Somalis and to liberate Kuwaitis, Iraqis and Afghans. Millions of Muslims around the world would desperately like to move to the U.S., this supposed land of intolerance.

Conversely, nowhere is there more open, honest and intentional intolerance -- in words and deeds -- than from certain prominent Muslim leaders around the world. And yet, Americans are the bigots?

And when Muslim fanatics kill Americans -- after, say, the Fort Hood slaughter -- a reflexive response from the Obama administration is to fret over an anti-Islamic backlash.

Obama and Co. automatically proclaim that such orchestrated terrorist attacks are "isolated" events. But when it comes to mainstream Americans, veterans, ObamaCare opponents or (shudder) tea partiers, there's no generalization too broad or too insulting for the left.

It's fine to avoid negative stereotypes of Muslims, but why the rush to embrace them when it comes to Americans?

And now, thanks to the entirely avoidable "ground zero mosque" controversy, we are again discussing America's Islamophobia, which, according to Time magazine, is just another chapter in America's history of intolerance.

When, pray tell, will Time magazine devote an issue to its, and this administration's, intolerance of the American people?

Toon

Worse Than Carter

Via-The American Spectator


By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

WASHINGTON -- It is becoming apparent for all to see, that a man who made his name as a community organizer does not have the skills to be President of these United States. Maybe he could develop the requisite skills as a governor. Possibly, he could develop such skills were he to sit in the Senate for a couple of terms. Yet there are delicate sensitivities, the ability to listen, to stick by your guns, occasionally to remain reticent. These are the fundamentals of a leader, and President Barack Obama has demonstrated that he lacks all of them, most notably reticence. I now think it is clear even to Official Washington that President Obama is the worst president of modern times. President Jimmy Carter is redeemed.

The other night at a White House dinner solemnizing the opening of Ramadan he leaped right in to endorse the building a mosque at Ground Zero. He -- a man who has shown no religious fervor during his time in the White House -- let out a ringing defense of religious liberty and tolerance. Of a sudden, he was at the center of a national controversy that was growing. It put me in mind of his inability to defuse the controversy over healthcare. Any sensible president would have relented, as opposition to healthcare grew to the majority position. He would have settled for some sort of compromise, but not the community-organizer-turned-president. He wanted it all. He lunged on and created among the electorate a row over national healthcare that divided the nation, and put some of us in mind of a civil war that continues to rage. What is more, he imperiled his party's margins in both houses.

Notwithstanding his apparent personal insouciance toward religion, he made it clear that the mosque should be built. Who cares about the sensibilities of the loved ones of the 3,000 victims? Or for that matter, of the 68% of the American people who according to a CNN poll oppose the mosque? It took him less than a day to make things worse. While on a swing through Florida, he claimed that he was not speaking "on the wisdom" of building the mosque. He was merely commenting on the Constitutional right to build the mosque and to practice one's religion. A right "that dates back," the prof allowed, "to our founding. That's what our country is about." Blah, blah, blah -- the community organizer turned-lecturer at the University of Chicago could not resist.

Now he has a red hot national controversy on his hands. It is somewhat like the controversy he created over Professor Henry Louis Gates when he pronounced the Cambridge police's reaction to Gates's truculence "stupid." Or when Mr. Obama barged into the Arizona immigration pother. He cannot resist showing the world how smart he is, but at what cost? Every Democrat battling a tight race will be called to answer questions about the mosque. It will become an issues even in remote places such as Nevada. There the Senate leader, Harry Reid, fighting for his seat against a Tea Partyer, Sharron Angle, has come out against the President. He announced that it is not a question of right but a question of prudence. He says the mosque should be built elsewhere. How many other Democrats will join him? This could develop into a major rebellion against President Obama's leadership. It could be the beginning of the end of his presidency.

President Obama represents the leadership of a sterile elite. His weird lectures play at the University of Chicago or in the communities he has organized in Chicago, but not among the mainstream of the American electorate. He has brought it together and it is against this idiocy. As I said in this space two weeks ago, he represents the leadership of the Ruling Class. It is not the leadership of the consensus of the American people. Only the most extreme voices in this debate are speaking intolerantly about Islam and its right to build a mosque. Most of the American people are siding with the dread Sarah Palin who was quick to say, "Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where the radicals killed 3,000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have a right to do it, but should they? And no, this isn't above your pay grade."

Yet it is. It is above the pay grade of a community organizer. That is what our president is. Increasingly, it is clear that the Democrats brought down on the country a community organizer as president. Maybe in the future they will consider experience a qualification for the presidency. Possibly the age of charisma is behind us. Possibly Mr. Obama even lacks that dubious quality

Shut Up, He Explained

Via-The Weekly Standard

Mayor Michael Bloomberg to New Yorkers.

BY William Kristol

Last Tuesday, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke on the subject of the proposed mosque at Ground Zero. His remarks will be read with curiosity by future generations of Americans, who will look back in astonishment at the self-deluding pieties and self-destructive dogmas that are held onto, at once smugly and desperately, by today’s liberal elites. Our liberation from those dogmas, and from those elites, is underway across the nation. But it’s worth taking a look at Bloomberg’s speech, if only to remind us of what we need to ascend from so our descendants can look back with curiosity at the ethos to which we did not succumb.

As is the way of contemporary liberals, Bloomberg spoke at a very high level of abstraction. He appealed to the principle of religious toleration, while never mentioning the actual imam who is responsible for and would control the planned Ground Zero mosque. To name Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf might invite a consideration of his background, funding, and intentions. Do Rauf and his backers believe in the principles underlying the “inspiring symbol of liberty” that greets immigrants to the United States and before which Bloomberg stood? Bloomberg didn’t say. It apparently doesn’t matter. Toleration means asking nothing, criticizing nothing, saying nothing, about whom or what one is tolerating. This is the Sergeant Schultz standard of toleration: I know nothing.

Knowing nothing, or wishing to know nothing, about the mosque, Bloomberg took it upon himself to lecture his fellow New Yorkers on their obligation to be true to “the best part of ourselves.” That part is apparently the part of us that allows at once for intellectual obfuscation and moral preening. Bloomberg never acknowledged that sane and tolerant people might object to a 15-story Islamic community center and mosque right next to Ground Zero. He could not be bothered to take seriously the reservations and objections of a clear majority of his constituents. “In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists—and we should not stand for that.” So public sentiment be damned. There’s nothing to be learned from the ignorant and bigoted residents of New York.

Instead, Bloomberg lectured: “On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked ‘What God do you pray to?’ ‘What beliefs do you hold?’ ” True, certainly true. But Bloomberg did not permit himself to ask what vision of god, what set of beliefs, inspired those who set those buildings aflame. Bloomberg said that it was our “spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.” But attacked by whom? Bloomberg wouldn’t say.

In fact, he denied the propriety of asking such a question. It would have been one thing—a more defensible thing—if Bloomberg had argued that there was little that could be done legally to stop the mosque and that New Yorkers should therefore make the best of a bad situation. But that was not his message. Instead, Bloomberg came to the Statue of Liberty not simply to accept the mosque, but to praise it: “Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation—and in fact, their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. By doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our City even closer together. .  .  . I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire City.”

But have the real, existing organizers of the mosque shown much sensitivity to other New Yorkers? The answer is no—but if you’re a contemporary liberal, you don’t get into the actual, existing facts in order to make a judgment. You govern on the basis of what the organizers’ “plan” nominally “envisions,” you appeal to a hope and expectation that even Bloomberg can’t really believe in. But it allows him to avoid coming to grips with what is really happening and what lies behind the popular sentiment of disgust, even revulsion.

The conclusion of Bloomberg’s speech was odd: “Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure—and there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God’s love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us can attest.” Do the rest of us need Bloomberg’s hand-picked religious leaders to tell us that there are no limits to God’s love and mercy? We do doubt that encouraging this mosque to be built is an appropriate expression of respect for God’s love and mercy for those who were killed almost nine years ago. And we would note that no expression of New Yorkers’ love and gratitude for the victims of September 11 has yet been built at the site of Ground Zero during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure.

It is likely, we believe, that civic pressure will cause the mosque to be moved elsewhere—Bloomberg’s lecture notwithstanding. But if Bloomberg were to have his way, it’s worth noting that he would presumably attend a dedication of Feisal Abdul Rauf’s mosque at Ground Zero before he would attend a dedication of a proper memorial to those who died there.

Contemporary liberalism means building a mosque rather than a memorial at Ground Zero—and telling your fellow citizens to shut up about it.

—William Kristol