The growing boldness of anti-Muslim bigots
By Hank Kalet, Managing Editor
Anti-Muslim fervor is alive and well and going mainstream.
How else to explain the repeated attacks on Islam during the Value Voters Summit, which took place in Washington over the weekend.
The event, sponsored annually by the conservative Family Research Council, featured high-profile Republican Senate and House candidates and most of the party’s anticipated 2012 presidential hopefuls — along with several speakers who said things no public figure would dare utter about other racial, ethnic or religious groups.
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, frequent guest on cable news and a likely presidential hopeful, continued his attack on Islam, raising the specter of Sharia law replacing the Constitution and once again linking Islam to Nazism and the Japanese under Emperor Hirohito.
The former speaker is part of a larger rhetorical push on the right to delegitimize Islam — one conservative questioned whether Islam was a religion or a cult, others have called for a ban on Muslims serving in the military or immigrating into the United States.
American Muslims have taken notice. An Associated Press story earlier this month — published on the MSNBC Web site — reports that American Muslims are starting to ask what it will take to be accepted as full partners in the American project.
It is a question that, by all rights, they should not need to ask. Muslims do not make up a new religious group in America, though they do make up a growing one. And Muslims are not a monolithic group — as Arif Patel, a member of board at the Islamic Society of Central Jersey, reminded me in an e-mail last week. The Muslim community in the United States is composed of numerous smaller communities — Pakistanis, Indians, Egyptians, etc. — each with their own customs, clothing, etc.
”Everyone has their own unique perspective,” he said “My experience in terms of assimilation would be different compared to my dad for sure. At school, I loved sports and could connect with people on a level that, let’s say, my dad could never relate with people in his office in the same way.”
Reem Nasr, who attended Noor-Ul-Iman School on Route 1, has had a slightly different experience. The religious school is affiliated with the Islamic Society of Central Jersey, which meant that she had limited contact with non-Muslims (though she did intern with The Princeton Packet group and wrote occasional freelance stories during high school).
”I went to a private Islamic school my entire life so I never really realized what it would be like to be around people who saw me as something alien,” she said in an e-mail. “When I went to NYU, I realized that certain parts of my lifestyle, like not drinking or partying, kept me from socializing with some people who invited me to their parties.
”That doesn’t mean that I don’t feel assimilated. On the contrary I feel very American and my relatives overseas can attest to that. But it is frustrating when people I meet for the first time ask me where am I from when that is a question I do not feel the need to ask them.”
The “isolated instances of racism and bigotry” — like the political attacks on Muslims and some of the more angry opposition to the Park 51 community center (known as “the Ground Zero mosque”) — “are more of a reflection of American politics than of racism and bigotry.”
The problem, however, is that the opportunism of politicians like those at the values summit is generating real racism. The more politicians conflate the handful of fanatics with the broader Muslim community, the more the general public does so, making it seem OK to say things about — and possibly do things to — Muslims that we would never accept when dealing with another racial, ethnic or religious group.
I’m not saying that racism or anti-Semitism are things of the past — far from it. But for the most part, it happens below the surface or in private (or at Tea Party rallies).
For Muslims, however, the bigotry remains overt. All Muslims are held responsible for terrorism — both the big attacks like 9/11 and the smaller ones. Consider the controversy over the Islamic cultural center proposed for downtown New York, in the attacks on mosques around the country and the ugly things Park51 opponents have been saying.
And consider further how we might react were a politician or activist to call for a ban on military service for Jews or Christians, as some conservative groups are demanding for Muslims. He certainly would not be asked to speak at a major, mainstream political event, as David Corn pointed out last week on Politics Daily. He’d likely be a political pariah.
That anti-Muslim bigots were front and center at the Values Voters Summit alongside mainstream Republican presidential hopefuls just shows how mainstream this kind of bigotry has become.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post. E-mail, [email protected]www.kaletblog.com@newspoet41facebook.com/hank.kalet.

