All-American Bigotry: Hating Muslims for Fun and Profit
by Sidney Carton
In New York Harbor there stands the statue of a lady, whose name is Liberty, and within her base lies an inscription that, depending on how you look at it, is either one of the most inspiring expositions of American idealism, or one of the greatest pieces of unintentional irony ever carved in stone. The statement, by Emma Lazarus, is as follows:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Considering the current atmosphere of anti-immigrant hysteria, in light of our nation’s history of less-than-welcoming behavior toward the newly arrived other (No Irish Need Apply, anyone?) I wonder some times if Ms. Lazarus penned these words to shame us collectively into better behavior, as if we might compare our personal pettiness with the ideals outlined in those words and find ourselves wanting. If so, I fear the lesson remains lost on us over a century after the fact, a fear sadly illustrated by the recent scandal regarding the TLC reality show “All-American Muslim.”
The show, which purports to follow the daily life of 5 Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan is an attempt to show American Muslims in a somewhat different light than viewers of American television may be used to: As relatively normal, mainstream people, working out a life for themselves and their families. No car bombings, no jihad, no burning of American flags, just football, weddings, and humdrum suburban life.
Such a depiction, according to the Florida Family Association (FFA), is absolutely horrifying. Finding nothing in this program that reduces American Muslims to their stereotypical vision of homicidal hordes of fanatics determined to destroy all we hold dear, they have done the only thing any rational individual could be expected to do, realize their preconceptions of Islam to be incorrect and reconsider their intolerant and hateful views…
Just kidding. No, faced with a reality that conflicted directly with their vision of an imminent existential threat from mobs of hijab-wearing, bomb-throwing, sharia-advocating fanatics, they immediately declared the show to be a work of propaganda, stating that the show is: ”…clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law.” Mobilizing their legions of dedicated followers with this new source of outrage and hysteria, the FFA set them loose on the show’s advertisers, a number of which promptly withdrew their funding, most notably Lowe’s hardware.
While I have no doubt that a number of individuals in the FFA actually believe the paranoid pap that is daily churned out from an infinite number of sources both online and on the air, which would have them believe that there are jihadis under every rock and behind every tree, the truth behind this outburst is far more sinister. Islamophobia after all is an excellent tool for mobilization and fundraising and with the ongoing and ever-increasing union of politics and religion in this country, fearing and hating Muslims has made a lot of money for a select group of people, and kept a lot of people in political power.
Alas, fear and hatred are high maintenance tools, particularly when the group you have chosen to fear suddenly have faces, names, and friday night football games. How much harder is it to hate your Muslim neighbors when you see that, much like you, they spend their evenings watching the same moronic TV shows, that, instead of spending time brainwashing their children into becoming suicide bombers, they love them, play catch, or hide and seek with them and basically are nothing like the monsters you have been led to believe… and if you don’t believe that any more, why would you donate money to the people who led you to believe your neighbors were monsters, or vote for the politicians who claimed to be protecting you from them?
And thus the whole mess becomes clear, despite the FFA’s protestations of its role in protecting the traditional family and biblical values, it’s all about money and power. It’s all about whipping people into a froth so that they’ll open their wallets, and vote for the “right people” who will, (surprise, surprise) advocate policies in the legislatures and statehouses that allow groups like the FFA to make even more money. Hence the need for monsters among us. Hence the lingering stereotypes, the crazed, sinister militant, Muslim waiting to plunge you into Sharia-based dhimmihood; the depraved, quasi-pedophiliac homosexual seeking to convert your children, the dangerous, vicious, immigrant, creeping across the border to drop their “anchor babies” and undermine our way of life. It’s all a lie. A lie designed to keep you afraid, to keep you paying, voting, and acting in such a way to let them keep feeding at the trough, because they know the moment you stop being afraid, they lose their meal ticket.
