'Hate Free' or 'Hate Filled': Muslim-bashing in America

This is a really great article and something I want my granddaughter to read someday. I am posting all of it here just in case someday it no longer exist at that website.~Mem

Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Last updated 10:21 p.m. PT

By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Seattle defined itself proudly as a "Hate Free Zone" after 9/11, with Church Council volunteers doing protective duty at the Idriss Mosque and our religious and civic leaders calling for respect of Islam.

"It was immediately realized by a number of us that distinctions should be made between what was a criminal act and the actions of people of faith in our midst," said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash.

Watching Fox News or listening to Rush Limbaugh these days, you'll see a concerted effort to create a "Hate Filled America." A Islamic cultural center in lower Manhatten has become a fulfrum for stirring up antipathy toward Muslims.

Our homegrown American Taliban (phrase courtesy of liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas) is stirring up nativist resentment across the land. They follow footsteps of the 19th Century anti-Catholic Know Nothings, and later haters of Italian immigrants, Chinese laborers, and lately Hispanics.

The resentment has two goals, reaping political advantage in the 2010 election and de-Americanizing America's 44th president.

Who's the real winner? Well, listen to the words of Anwar al-Awlaki, the Internet extremist linked to the Fort Hood killings and the botched attack on a Detroit-bound jet last Christmas.

In his latest video, Awlaki uses Islam-bashing as a recruiting tool:

"To Muslims in America, I have this to say: How can your conscience allow you to live in peaceful coexistence with the nation that is responsible for the tyranny and crimes committed against your own brothers and sisters?"

Awlaki has been given lots of locker room fodder by the American Taliban.

Ex-presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan likened the lower Manhatten cultural center to letting Nazis march through Skokie, Ill.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, responded on Fox to calls for forbearance with the words: "That argument is like saying this: It would be appropriate and show tolerance to allow a monument to kamikaze pilots at the site of the Arizona at Pearl Harbor."

On Fox & Friends, Newt Gingrich said: "Nazis don't have the rights to put up a sign next to the Holocause museum in Washington."

Rush Limbaugh asked, on his radio show: "What would happen, do you think, if the Ku Klux Klan established a memorial at Gettysburg?"

The bombardment on the Internet and airwaves seems to be moving opinion, if you look at the latest Pew Research poll.

By a 38 percent to 30 percent margin, with many undecided, Americans now have an unfavorable view of Islam. It was 41-35 favorable last year. The number of people who believe President Obama is a Muslim has risen from 11 percent to 18 percent, including a plurality of Republicans. The percentage believing that Obama is a Christian -- which he is -- has fallen from 48 percent to 34 percent: Again, many are undecided.

It's working overseas as well -- against America. "The 'War on Terror' is becoming a 'War on Islam'," said McDermott. "This creates a black eye that will not be forgotten. With headlines in other countries, it becomes a black mark against us."

The hate campaign, particularly on Fox, raises a question: Where are the decent voices in America's political opposition?

In the 1960's, when the (now-resurgent) John Birch Society proclaimed President Eisenhower "a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy," conservative columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., was there to repudiate (or "refudiate" if you prefer Palin-speak) the Birchers' off-the-wall arguments.

Not today! Listen to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, asked about the president's religion on "Meet the Press": "The president says he's a Christian. I take him at his word."

What a weasel-worded way to spread a rumor while keeping distance from it. Or Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama: "Well, his father was born in Kenya and they say he was born in Hawaii, but I haven't seen any birth certificate."

On Monday, Republican National Committee member Kim Lehman of Iowa claimed: "BTW (By the Way) he (Obama) personally told the Muslims he IS a Muslim." She later repeated the charge to Huffington Post.

Lehman is distorting a 2008 campaign speech in which Obama actually said: "I'm a Christian but my father came from a Kenyan family that included several generations of Muslims . . .As a young man I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in this Muslim faith."

Ah, but here is what evangelist Franklin Graham said on CNN the other day: "I think the president's problem is that he was born a Muslim. His father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father, like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother."

One can ask: Has the seed of Christianity passed from the tolerance-preaching Rev. Billy Graham to his prejudice spouting son?

What is the seed talk anyway? Faith is discovered and embraced, a commitment that Obama reached as an adult. Christianity, Judaism, Islam -- all bring the challenge of living the faith. President George W. Bush, post-9/11, condemned nativism and repeatedly spoke of Islam as a religion of peace.

We have the word of Mitch McConnell, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Newt Gingrich (a recent, noisy Catholic convert) that they are Christians: They might consider reading -- and heeding -- a basic commandment of the faith: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor!

Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160
or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com
Follow Joel twitter.com/joelconnelly.