Wednesday, June 15, 2016

On Muslims, America, and the Value of the First Amendment

I’ll give The Donald this much: he sure does offer a scholar of Islam a variety of options to rebut his xenophobic nonsense.  I could talk about Islam and how ISIS is not “real” Islam.  But “real” is a social construction, and it sure seems like the Islam of ISIS is real to them.  I could talk about American Muslims and how cool they are as a group, but experience is better, so by all means, find an interfaith iftar (the meal at the end of the day to break the fast during Ramadan) and go meet some for yourself.  What I want to talk about instead is why I’m not afraid of American Muslims, of shari‘a, of ISIS, of anything BUT Donald Trump and his hateful and incendiary rhetoric.  And, good Baptist that I am, I will do so, in part, by extolling the virtues of the First Amendment.

Yesterday, President Obama responded to Trump’s allegations that he was afraid to use the term “radical Islam” and that as such, he was either hurting our counter-terrorism efforts or worse, aiding our enemies.  You can listen to the president’s remarks here.  I affirm what the president says here—“radical Islam” is not the “open, sesame!” of counter-terrorism.  Calling ISIS “radical Islam” will not make our efforts to contain it easier.  In fact, it will likely make it harder to shut down ISIS.  Perhaps now is a good time to discuss how college students of the early-2000s wrote a lot of papers without a lot of effort.

"Work smarter, not harder:"  Wise advice, given by many college professors, including me.  In the late-1990s and early-2000s, many political science, sociology, and religion majors at colleges around the United States did so by writing paper after paper rebutting Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” hypothesis.  Trust me on this: I was one of those undergraduates.  Huntington argued, first in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article then in a 1996 book, that the next world war, if there was to be one would be between civilizations rather than nation-states.  Specifically, he predicted a clash of civilizations between “the West” and “Islam.”  Here’s where undergrads like me started to have a field day.  You see, there is no “the West” and there’s no “Islam.”  Every country contained in both of those supposed civilizations has its own issues, history, culture, and political obstacles.  When posed this way, however, any conflict between any part of “the West” and “Islam” plays into the narrative, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The problem today is that ISIS has latched on to the “clash of civilizations” hypothesis with a vengeance.  ISIS wants Muslims in the West to become disenfranchised, to feel bullied, ostracized, and ganged-up on.  Because then it can step in and be the savior: "Those people hate you.  Come hang out with us.  We LOVE you!"  Thus, everything Donald Trump opens his mouth to say something bad about Muslims, he’s helping ISIS.  In short, Donald Trump’s openly bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric is treasonous.

Last night, appearing with Sean Hannity on Faux…I mean, Fox News, Trump said that even American Muslims were dangerous because they haven’t assimilated into American society well.  As usual, The Donald is full of it.  Study after study suggests that not only have Muslims in America assimilated, they are, in fact, the gold star immigrants—successful by every metric, prosperous, educated, and engaged in their communities.  The same can be said with even greater confidence of Americans who converted to Islam.  Law enforcement agencies from local police forces to the FBI will tell you that the American Muslim community is the best source of intelligence on radicalization in the U.S.  American Muslims DON’T want terrorist attacks, because such attacks threaten their lives and livelihoods.  Inevitably, The Donald and his surrogates will point to the problems Muslim immigrants have assimilating in Europe and say, "See?  They don’t like us!"

Again, not the let the facts get in the way of a good story, but what’s happening in Europe and what’s happening in the United States are night-and-day different.  For one thing, all kinds of immigrants in Europe face barriers to assimilation, especially if they are of a different faith than the established religion.  In Europe, indeed in much of the rest of the world, there is an established faith, supported either tacitly or legally by the state.  That support could mean leaning on religious leaders of that faith for legitimacy, tax-payer funding of churches/mosques/synagogues/temples, and/or the conferring of privileges to members of the established faith.  Because Islam is not the privileged religion of any of the major European countries, Muslims find it quite difficult to fit in.  Occasionally, such disaffection leads to protests and riots as Paris saw in 2005.  Other times, disenfranchised young Muslim men turn to violence, as happened in Paris last fall and Brussels this spring.  That violence is often given rhetorical significance and currency by ISIS. 

Contrast that with the United States.  Here, we have a legal separation of church and state.  There is no church establishment nor are there barriers to being able to freely practice one’s religion.  Muslims can immigrate to the United States, find educational and employment opportunities, and maintain their religious faith without fear of persecution or loss of opportunity.  In the United States, it is and rightly should be, okay to be Muslim.  THIS is the heart of the religious liberty that my Baptist forefathers fought so hard for.  Unfortunately, even some Baptists have forgotten this.  Our First Amendment protects Muslims from xenophobia and Islamophobic nonsense.  It also protects the rest of us from the (as yet unrealized) threat of “creeping shari‘a.”  If no religion can be the established faith of the United States, than means that shari‘a (which is, by the way, not as scary as everyone thinks it is) can never become the law of the land.  See how fun the First Amendment can be?  

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