DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA Mosque mania
By Stephan Salisbury
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, a memorial for the September 11,
2001, attacks, 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. (Failed vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin demanded that
"peaceful Muslims" step up and "refudiate" the plan; former House Speaker 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 deja-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 that 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.
Panic in the streets
In the panicked wake of 9/11, revenge attacks on Muslims (and dark-skinned
people mistaken for Muslims) swept the country. Hundreds of beatings and even
some random reprisal killings were reported coast to coast.
On September 17, 2001, the day after he told the nation that a "crusade"
against terror was in order, president George W Bush stood in the Islamic
Center of Washington and piously proclaimed that "Islam is peace". At virtually
the same moment across town, attorney general John Ashcroft and Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) director Robert Mueller III were at a press conference,
announcing that 55,000 tips had flooded into their ballooning 9/11
investigation, an undisclosed number of immigration violators and uncharged
material witnesses were being hauled into custody, Arabic and Farsi speakers
were suddenly in demand at the FBI, and major legislation was already in the
works to beef up government surveillance, immigration, and anti-terror
capabilities. But no, Mueller said, there was nothing at all to complaints of
ethnic targeting from Arab-American communities.
After the Patriot Act became law that October, Ashcroft launched a nationwide
program of 5,000 "voluntary" interviews with Muslims from the Middle East.
Internal Justice Department memos instructed interviewers to detain anyone
suspected of immigration violations. "Let the terrorists among us be warned: If
you overstay your visa - even by one day - we will arrest you," Ashcroft
proclaimed.
When that initial set of 5,000 interviews was deemed complete (leading to no
terrorism arrests of any kind), Ashcroft announced that another 3,000 would be
conducted. He vowed to find anyone who had skipped out on the previous
"voluntary" round.
By the end of 2001, a minimum of 2,000 Middle Easterners and South Asians had
been taken into custody, the vast majority without criminal charges of any kind
being lodged. Arrests were often highly publicized; the aftermaths of those
arrests were shrouded in secrecy as court and immigration hearings were closed
to family, public, and press. Vague color-coded attack alerts were announced by
federal officials, and citizens were instructed to be prepared for a second
9/11 at any time. In 2004, another round of 5,000 voluntary interviews with
Arabs and Muslims was announced.
The FBI began toting up the number and location of mosques around the country.
The Census Bureau was drawn into a scheme to identify and enumerate areas with
large Middle Eastern populations. The Energy Department was engaged to monitor
mosques for suspicious levels of radiation.
A year after the 9/11 attacks, a special immigration program was instituted
that required men from two dozen predominantly Muslim nations (and North Korea)
to register with immigration authorities. Nearly 84,000 did so, with about
3,000 abruptly detained and over 13,000 promptly subjected to deportation
proceedings. Muslims began to "disappear" from the streets of America. Lawyers
wearing yellow shirts with "Human Rights Monitor" written on the back sought to
keep track of individuals heading into registration centers in New York and Los
Angeles - and never leaving again.
Not surprisingly, this frenzy of law-enforcement activity led many Americans to
believe that there must be a dark reason so much attention was being paid to so
many Muslims. By 2003, announcements of elaborate terror "plots" and
investigations had already taken over the news. These would regularly serve,
like booster shots, to revitalize public suspicions that foul things were
afoot. Muslims in Lodi, California, were plotting to blow up supermarkets. In
Columbus, Ohio, they were targeting malls. In New York City, it was the Herald
Square subway station.
Dozens and dozens of such cases have been reported over the past decade.
Virtually all of them involved Middle Eastern and South Asian Muslims.
Virtually none of the supposed plots had any chance of happening, and many
were, in fact, fueled by zealous government informers and covert agents. As
with the numerous immigration detentions and deportations in the immediate
aftermath of 9/11, much publicity surrounded announcements that violent and
deadly "jihadist" plots had been thwarted. Often, when the suspects finally
came to trial, charges and evidence amounted to something far less ominous (and
so, far less publicized).
Nevertheless, the threat, said authorities, was everywhere - even if it
couldn't be seen.
New administration, old story
Throughout this period, the number of vigilante attacks on mosques, as well as
individual Muslims, continued to rise, though these received little press
attention. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) received 602
credible Muslim civil rights complaints in 2002, 1,019 in 2003, and 1,522 in
2004. Such complaints included 42 hate crimes reported in 2002, 93 in 2003, and
141 in 2004. CAIR also cited and described several significant acts of violence
against mosques, including bombings and arson, but did not specify the figures.
In its 2009 civil rights report, CAIR said it had processed 2,728 civil rights
violations, including 721 that involved mosques or Muslim organizations, up
from 221 mosque incidents in 2006. The organization expressed some optimism in
its report, however, because there had been a decline in the number of reported
hate crimes to 116 in 2008 from 135 the previous year. Again, CAIR reported
serious mosque attacks and vandalism without separating out the figures.
It seems hardly coincidental, at this point, that when authorities announce
another incident or terror plot - the failed effort to blow up an SUV in Times
Square in May, for instance - random attacks on Muslims and Muslim institutions
as well quickly follow. For example, a bomb was detonated at a mosque in
Jacksonville, Florida, shortly after the Times Square incident. As the Lower
Manhattan controversy spread in the news, arsonists attacked a mosque in Texas,
and a church in Gainesville, Florida, announced that it would hold a bonfire of
Korans on the anniversary of 9/11.
The change in presidential administrations has had no discernable moderating
effect on such passions. In fact, as if to assert its own toughness, the Barack
Obama administration has now given its tacit blessing to legislation introduced
in congress late in July by Adam Schiff, a congressman from California, that
would carve out "terrorism exceptions" to constitutionally mandated Miranda
warnings.
The legislation would extend to up four days the period when law enforcement
agents can question terrorism suspects without informing them of their right to
remain silent and to receive the assistance of an attorney. If past is prelude,
such exceptions will initially have a disproportionate impact on Middle Eastern
and South Asian Muslims in America, only later spreading to wider groups of
Americans taken into custody.
Parallel to the federal law-enforcement focus on Muslims, the past decade has
witnessed a proliferation of anti-Muslim "analysts", "terror experts",
political commentators, and websites. This burgeoning industry, focused on
Muslims as virtually a fifth column seeking to take over the country, has
attracted ever more media attention, particularly as Fox News has chronicled
and promoted the rise of the Tea Party movement.
It is in this alternate universe, after so many years of heightened anti-Muslim
sentiments, that a Lower Manhattan prayer space designed to promote
reconciliation has become the dreaded Mosque at Ground Zero, a "monument that
would consist of a mosque for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god," as
Mark Williams, then-chairman of a group known as the Tea Party Express, put it.
Waiting for the demagogue
Here we come to the real source of unease over what's now going on - the
realization that we've seen something like this developing before, only it
wasn't "diaperheads" and terrorism inflaming the country. It was dirty commies
and Jews.
Sixty years ago, on February 9, 1950, senator Joseph McCarthy rose before a
Republican women's club in Wheeling, West Virginia, and delivered the famous
speech in which he waved a sheet of paper and claimed that on it were the names
of - there is dispute - 57 or 205 known communists "working and shaping policy
in the State Department". In doing so, he put his incendiary, eponymous stamp
on the most oppressive period of the Cold War, and as it turned out, the nation
was ready for the message.
McCarthyism did not emerge on that cold day solely from the fevered imagination
of the Wisconsin senator. There had been a drumbeat of anti-communist
red-baiting, hearings, speeches, treason charges, and grandstanding coming from
Washington for years. The House Committee on Un-American Activities,
anti-communist informer Whittaker Chambers, ambitious congressman Richard
Nixon, FBI director J Edgar Hoover, president Harry Truman - all did yeoman's
work in preparing the soil for McCarthy and his reckless accusations of "20
years of treason!"
There are some substantial differences between then and now. Most importantly,
McCarthy operated from within the political system, using his subcommittee
chairmanship as a vehicle for pseudo-investigations and attacks. When his
senate colleagues turned on him following a particularly reckless campaign
against the US Army, McCarthy was stripped of his chairmanship and his power. A
true demagogue, he had no organization to speak of, only those who feared him
and those who followed him.
By contrast, while some extreme anti-Muslim sentiment is in evidence in
Washington, the real juice for an anti-Muslim movement is now bubbling up
outside the Beltway, much as virulent racist hysteria has, in the past, bubbled
up from the grassroots. In that regard, it's worth noting that about a third of
America's five to eight million Muslims are African-American.
Some mainstream politicians have actually tried to tamp down the Lower
Manhattan controversy. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has, for instance, made
numerous comments in support of the project and the principle of freedom of
religion that goes with it. Such statements have, however, had little effect in
quieting the dispute, countered as they are by opposition not only from the
fringes, but from some mainstream Republican politicians and establishment
non-governmental organizations.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), for example, recently came out with a
statement opposing the construction plan, despite the fact that the rest of the
opposition, the group said, exhibited elements of bigotry. It is better to side
with bigots, the ADL essentially argued, than ignore the post-9/11 "healing
process".
Because of the decentralized, grassroots nature of this anti-Muslim movement
and the accompanying hysteria, it will be no easy task to put the
mosque-at-Ground-Zero genie back in its bottle. Those who think that the
decision by the New York City Landmarks Commission to clear the way for
construction is likely to end the antagonism are undoubtedly engaged in wishful
thinking. There are virtually endless potential flashpoints embedded along the
road ahead, nor are the issue and its passions purely dependant on what happens
in Manhattan, where a recent poll showed a majority of residents favor
construction (although a majority of all New York City residents do not).
In California, those opposed to mosque construction in Temecula were urged to
protest by rallying at the mosque with their dogs. Muslims "hate dogs", an
unsigned e-mail alert erroneously claimed. Counter-demonstrators turned out.
There, too, the dispute continues. "The Islamic foothold is not strong here,
and we really don't want to see their influence spread," Pastor Bill Rench of
Temecula's Calvary Baptist Church told the Los Angeles Times. "There is a
concern with all the rumors you hear about sleeper cells and all that. Are we
supposed to be complacent just because these people say it's a religion of
peace? Many others have said the same thing."
In Kentucky, a fledgling controversy over a proposed mosque in Florence, south
of Cincinnati, is also spreading thanks to anonymous communications. One
unsigned protest flyer stated that "Americans need to stop the takeover of our
country, our government is not protecting us".
Such sentiments are common to virtually all anti-Muslim protests: somehow,
Muslims are taking over. Oklahoma legislators, fearing the imposition of
Islamic law in Oklahoma courts, have even asked voters to amend the state
constitution to forbid it. The government, increasing numbers of Americans
evidently believe, is passively allowing Muslim subversion, and citizens need
to defend themselves.
In Tennessee, a rancorous fight over a planned mosque in Murfreesboro has been
rife with such sentiments. Lou Ann Zelenik, a Tennessee Republican
congressional candidate locked in a tough primary race, denounced the mosque
plan, characterized its leaders as foreign agents with a "radical agenda," and
received strong support from the Wilson County Tea Party, a local group.
On its website, the Tea Party curtsies to the US constitution and then quickly
cuts to the chase: "But this question must be asked based on repeated violence
committed by Islamists in the name of religion: Is Islam nothing more than a
front for terrorism?" Tennessee's lieutenant governor Ron Ramsey, a Republican
candidate for governor, went out of his way last month to characterize Islam as
a "cult" which may not warrant First Amendment protection: "You can even argue
whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, a way of
life, or a cult - whatever you want to call it ..."
The proliferation of, and acceptance of, such talk, particularly from major
political candidates, may be preparing the American ground for the emergence of
a leader who can synthesize the demonizing and scapegoating of Muslims, fears
augmented by severe economic anxiety, the maturing of extreme rightwing
activism, and a widespread and growing contempt for official Washington. If
that happens, the nation - and American Muslims - could face something far
worse than McCarthy, who held sway in a golden era of rising expectations and
general economic growth.
Mosque controversies will be the least of it then.
Stephan Salisbury is cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His
most recent book is Mohamed's Ghosts: An American Story of Love and
Fear in the Homeland (Nation Books).
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