This year we saw a spike in anti-Muslim hostility — even hysteria — from the right. Even some who have long claimed to support the First Amendment’s protections for religious freedom have been among those ready to target others politically and legally simply for their religious beliefs. So today we review some of what we heard from the right when it came to anti-Muslim hysteria in 2010. You can read earlier reviews of what we heard from the far right this year here, here and here.
“I urge all Texans to support the Texas State Board of Education members who want to stop the pro-Islam/anti-Christian, anti-Judeo bias in our students textbooks. School children should be spared the move to ‘political correctness’ and instead be taught a true and correct version of history.”
— Texas state Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van, speaking in support of an anti-Muslim resolution passed by the State Board of Education in September, Texas Insider, October 5, 2010
“Progressives and Islamists are indeed on the same side. Their common disdain for Christianity explains why left-wing judges in America find any inkling of Christianity in the public square unconstitutional, while Islamist judges in the Middle East deem it executable. Their common view that life is expendable explains the left’s embrace abortion-on-demand and why the Islamists don’t hesitate to deploy their own children for homicide bombings.”
— Religious-right leader and former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer, in an essay exploring President Obama’s “affinity for Islam.” Human Events, August 31, 2010
“Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got questions? Get answers!”
— Ads on buses in the San Francisco Bay Area, Miami and New York by a group calling itself Stop Islamization of America, Christian Science Monitor, July 28, 2010
“I’m a big believer in freedom of religion but believe it would be best for all involved to put the facility elsewhere.”
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry, speaking about a planned Muslim community center near 9/11’s Ground Zero in New York, Dallas Morning News, August 6, 2010
“Is it just that we can offend Americans and Christians, but not foreigners and Muslims?”
— Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, shamelessly spinning the debate over a proposed Muslim community near Ground Zero in New York, Politico, August 15, 2010
“I have no experience with it whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says.”
— Terry Jones, the evangelical pastor of Dove World Outreach Center who planned to memorialize the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with a bonfire of Korans, responding to a question about his knowledge of the Koran. New York Times, August 25, 2010
Dogmatism is the preferred prescription for fear of inadequacy either of the inner or outer self. It displaces the need for understanding, as the dogma sees all, knows all, and recitations of dogma serves as a surrogate shout at the Devil. This applies to all sort of dogma. The dogma shouting match between the extreme Moslem and extreme Tea Partista encourages synergistic heat without much light.
On closer examination, it should be noted that those to shout about their nemisis do so with a primary concern about how the fellow dogmatist is thinking as opposed to opposing dogmaist, even upon the explosion of what ever device they hsve cooked up.
The leading theme of any of the sides of the cluster buzz is to accsue the other side of fanaticism exacerbated with stupidity. For example, !ACT America characterises all Moslims are part of a great evel plot, as cited in selective quotes from the othder side’s Holy Books. They claim to be experts in Muslom theology. This is normal in dogmatism, regardless of flavor, one hears the from pulpit howling or from Howling by Ginsberg.
It seems to me that Christian missionaries from Spain, France, England, and the USA all treated natives of whatever land wasn’t under pre-existing European managment as savages that needed to be converted from the ways of Satan, even though in many cases the heather were Catholic. The unfaithful or heretical of the early days of Western Renaissance served double duty as kindling, in the fires of orthodoxy.
While psychological satisfying for thd dogmatic to shout at the Musom faithful, but fare more practical to note that the lead edge of the battlefield in Festung Amerika is the Muslom population in America. This cooperatin, done is the best interests of securing a safe and profitable family environment, has worked in defusing and breaking up quite a fair number of evil plots. and even some of the nuttier ones.
“I urge all Texans to support the Texas State Board of Education members who want to stop the pro-Islam/anti-Christian, anti-Judeo bias in our students textbooks. School children should be spared the move to ‘political correctness’ and instead be taught a true and correct version of history.”
Anti-Judeo bias in our students textbooks? What in the Sam Hill do they think they are doing with the Speaker of the Texas House?
The Muslim bashing is an attempt by the Religious Right and neocons to treat as trash the many law-abiding fellow Americans of a different religion. Trash. H-m-m-m-m-m.
That leads me to another greatly cherished American freedom that has been stolen from us by Federal, state, and local governments nationwide. I remember the loss of this freedom crystal clear from when I was a kid. I would zoom down the highway in a car and view with wide-eyed amazement the great billows of discarded waste paper that would blow up high into the air as our car passed it at a high rate of speed.
Then that awful liberal woman in Texas—Mrs. Johnson—came up with her beautify America campaign. Before you know it, every government in sight was passing laws that took a way our precious American freedom to use the great highways and outdoors as our own personal trash can. They even started to fine people for something they called “littering.” I personally remember the conservatives of that time squealing about the loss of this freedom like a pig impaled on a rusty, wrought iron cemetery post.
Great Lost American Freedom No. 2: “The Right to Treat America as our Own Personal Trash Can”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF3oZqFOBXc&feature=related
When I was a student at UCLA back in Medeval times, the Lordship of the Manor posted a modern work of art in front of the Art Building. The dutify Grounds Keepers, like Game Keepers of a more genteel time, set upon this structure of beams and bolts, broke it up, and hauled it away as trash.
They never could put that one together again.
Think of all the fine artistic enhancement of those halcyon days now banished from sterilized eyes.