SPEAKING FREELY Muslims' turn for fear and
hate in US By Ben Tanosborn
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Pleaseclick here if you are
interested in contributing.
Muslims
are a small minority in the United States in numbers,
and an even smaller minority in influence. Why, then, do
we say it is "their turn" in the current presidential
campaign?
For more than a century, and as late
as the Kennedy-Nixon duel in 1960, Catholics had their
turn as the "threat" minority in US politics (Alfred
Smith in 1928; John Kennedy in 1960). The possibility of
a Catholic president for the United States conjured, for
many, visions of Old Glory flying at the White House
below the yellow-and-white flag of the Holy See.
Anti-Catholic hate articles and letters had
appeared openly for more than a century in the US press;
that is, until the Catholic minority reached a position
of economic power that rendered this open hatred
politically inopportune. So the haters took their cause
to a less visible plane (pulpits, letters), often in
anonymity.
Now that Catholicism has joined the
acceptable melange in the United States, there is,
according to the present generation of hatemonger, a new
evil facing this Judeo-Christian nation: Islam. Never
mind that Islam is also a monotheistic religion paying
homage to the very same and only god.
Last week
I received a chain e-mail, a 2004 version of
yesteryear's hate letters that appeared during
presidential campaigns. It was forwarded to me by
someone I like and respect, although I could hardly say
the same about its author, the original sender.
"Presumably", and I venture this presumption in
quotation marks, it's a letter from a Thomas Segal,
retired lawyer (?), written to his sons Tom, Kevin,
Kirby and Ted, dealing with "the world situation". It
came to me bearing the subject: "The Muslim threat (a
must-read letter)".
I am not much for reading
any kind of junk e-mail, be it of the commercial,
exploitative variety or plain political spam. But it had
been forwarded to me by someone I know, which in turn
had been forwarded to him by someone else I also know.
So I went ahead and read what soon promised to be a hate
piece just after finishing with the disclaimer in the
very first paragraph.
There is really very
little to be said about this hate-instigating letter.
But dismissing it solely on its negative merits is not
quite enough. After all, this e-mail had been forwarded
by two people I know, neither a good candidate for
hatemongering. So I am compelled to do two things; one,
give the rationale as to why I am dismissing the letter
as trash; and the other, state my view as to who stands
to gain political ground from the dissemination of such
malicious Muslim-bashing.
Not only do the
generalizations made in the letter defy logic, but the
sourcing for the relevant information, including some
statistics, is but a joke. For example, Segal claims
that "France is already 20% Muslim and fading fast."
Current data provided by the French government indicate
a figure closer to 7%, although that figure might be
understated by 1-2% (illegal immigrants), much like
America's own flawed census' count of illegal
immigrants. Perhaps 8-9% of France's population is
Muslim, but 20%? So goes the misinformation and
statements of simplistic ignorance, such as, "Anything
else they [Muslims] want Spain to do, will be done." To
boot, these idiocies and inaccuracies are
chauvinistically wrapped in a way that can make any
"thinking" American blush.
Who stands to gain
from the dissemination of letters of this sort? One
candidate for sure: the commander-in-chief now in power
in the United States, Crusader Bush. Whether he condemns
this type of letter or remains silent (best bet), rest
assured that some of his followers are certain to spread
this gospel of hate. Given the mood of the nation, this
approach, abhorrent as it may seem, will garner a lot of
votes, perhaps enough to win in November's election.
Ben Tanosborn's website can
be found at www.tanosborn.com.
http://www.tanosborn.com/
(Copyright 2004 Ben
Tanosborn.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Pleaseclick here if you are
interested in contributing.
