Islamophobia in the US

Last weekend, the ABC television network in the US caused a stir by broadcasting a debate show asking the contentious question: should Americans fear Islam?

The feisty discussion on that show proved that Islamophobia in the US did not fizzle out the day after Pastor Terry Jones agreed not to burn religious texts to commemorate 9/11.

Even Christiane Amanpour, with her reputation for toughness, struggled to balance bigoted comments with voices of reason as she moderated the show. Undoubtedly, the ugly phenomenon of Islamophobia is thriving in the US. But it would be a mistake to hijack this trend by framing it exclusively in terms of US foreign policy, or simply subscribing to the ‘clash of civilisations’ theory that is often conjured up to contextualise the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact is Islamophobia is primarily a domestic American issue, and one of the most worrying consequences of a country at war with itself.


Present-day Islamophobia has many incarnations: the Cordoba House/Park 51 controversy continues with 68 per cent of Americans (according to a CNN poll) opposing the construction of the ‘ground zero mosque’ at its proposed location. Opposition also rages against the construction of mosques in Wisconsin, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Several hate crimes — incidents of vandalism at Islamic centres and the stabbing of a Muslim taxi driver — occurred this summer. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 38 per cent of Americans have an unfavourable opinion of Islam, as opposed to 30 per cent who have a favourable take on the religion.

One can expect these statistics to nosedive in the foreseeable future. News headlines offer many reasons for Americans to be increasingly suspicious of Muslims and those who have ties with Muslim countries: Faisal Shahzad’s sentencing a few days ago to life imprisonment for the attempted Times Square bombing; rumours of ‘foreign’ militants planning attacks from Pakistan in the West; excessive media coverage of Fata-based converts such as Azzam The American. The knee-jerk reaction in places like Pakistan is to see American responses to Islam as a sign of worsening relations with the Muslim world. But Islamophobia poses the greatest challenge to American national identity and the country’s aspirations to moral leadership. For a nation founded on the basis of religious freedom, pluralism, and tolerance, Islamophobia undermines its raison d’être.

It is telling, then, that the phenomenon is largely political, rather than ideological, in nature. Speaking at an event titled ‘Challenging Islamophobia’ at Washington’s Centre for American Progress (CAP), Haris Tarin, a director at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, pointed out that anti-Muslim rhetoric was initially espoused in state-level campaigns in the 2006 midterm elections in the US.

Those initial incidents of emotionally manipulative politicking now manifest as the game-changing Tea Party Movement, a socially conservative effort with immense financial backing to reclaim the US Senate for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. The Tea Party’s success can be attributed to its creation of a compelling American narrative. In this narrative, American-ness is narrowly defined as white, Christian and middle class, and Islam emerges as a symbol of all that threatens the beliefs and traditions of the mythical America.

Glenn Beck, one of the leaders of the Tea Party, has been promoting a narrative of ‘reverse’ grievance, arguing that whites are now suffering at the expense of the US’s diverse racial, ethnic and religious groups. In well-attended rallies, he regularly calls for “taking back” what has, by his logic, been stolen by one group of inauthentic Americans from another group of truer Americans.

This fanciful rhetoric aims to take advantage of the disenfranchisement that working-class whites feel in an economy with a 9.6 per cent unemployment rate. And it’s working: according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released recently, whites without college degrees prefer Republicans to Democrats (58 per cent support the former, while 36 per cent support the latter). In this context, Islamophobia starts to have little to do with a perceived physical or security threat posed by Muslims with extreme or violent views.

It doesn’t help that, unlike Europeans (who are Islamophobic for a host of different reasons), Americans have little interaction with real-life Muslims. Panellists at the CAP event emphasised a shocking statistic: 60 per cent of Americans have never met a Muslim. Their only knowledge or experience of this community — which comprises only two per cent of the US population — comes from the media, and is thus confined to a barrage of horror stories about suicide bombers, decapitators, kidnappers and assorted, bearded crazies.

The failure of American-Muslims to respond to this stereotype stems from the diversity and resulting disconnect among Muslim communities in the US. As occurs globally, American-Muslims are divided along racial, economic, sectarian, national and linguistic lines. To counter a politically motivated Islamophobia, they will have to play by American rules and organise a political response. This will entail organising at the grassroots, creating savvy lobby groups to cultivate congressmen and senators and using a combined American-Muslim voting bloc as a force for change.

American-Muslims will also have to remind their administration that they are the first lines of defence against homegrown terrorism. Wajahat Ali, a US-based, Muslim playwright and blogger, likes to point out that many recent attempted terror plots were foiled by cautious Muslims, for example, it was the father of the Nigerian ‘underwear’ bomber who told security officials about his son’s plans.

For Muslims based outside the US, it is time to see American Islamophobia as the domestic, political issue that it is. Inflating it to epic civilisational and imperialistic proportions is irresponsible and ultimately, dangerous. By buying into a grander ‘us versus them’, ‘America against Islam’ narrative, we are perpetuating the logic that drives militant recruitment from Pakistan to Sudan.

Posted in: america,Amerika,global