Islamophobia - Does America Have a Muslim Problem?

Islamophobia -  Does America Have a Muslim Problem?

By Bobby Ghosh/Dearborn Monday, Aug. 30, 2010

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JAMES NACHTWEY FOR TIME
Prayer during Ramadan in the controversial mosque near Ground Zero

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To experience what it feels like to be a Muslim in America today, walk in the shoes of Dr. Mansoor Mirza of 

Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. It's a February evening, and you're at a meeting of the planning 

commission of Wilson (pop. 3,200), which is considering your application to open a mosque in the nearby 

village of Oostburg. You're not expecting much opposition: you already own the property, and having 

worked in the nearby Manitowoc hospital for the past five years, you're hardly a stranger to the town. 

Indeed, some of the people at the meetings are like most of your patients — white Americans who don't 

seem to care about their doctors' race or creed when they talk to them about their illnesses.

But when the floor is opened to discussion, you hear things they would never say to you even in the privacy 

of an examination room. One after another, they pour scorn and hostility on your proposal, and most of the 

objections have nothing to do with zoning regulations. It's about your faith. Islam is a religion of hate, they 

say. Muslims are out to wipe out Christianity. There are 20 jihadi training camps hidden across rural 

America, busy even now producing the next wave of terrorists. Muslims murder their children. Christian 

kids have enough problems with drugs, alcohol and pornography and should not have to worry about Islam 

too. "I don't want it in my backyard," says one. Another says, "I just think it's not America."

Looking back, Mirza recalls that a couple of speakers tried to steer the conversation into calmer territory. "I 

don't think that we should be making broad, sweeping generalizations," said one, according to minutes of 

the meeting obtained by TIME. But such words barely gave pause to the blunt expressions of suspicion 

and hostility toward Islam and Muslims. When it came Mirza's turn to speak, his shock and hurt were 

palpable. "If we are praying there, we don't stink. We don't make noise. We just come, pray and leave," he 

said. He kept calm when a commissioner asked if there would be any weapons or military training at the 

mosque. But afterward, Pakistani-born Mirza, 38, was shaken. "I never expected that the same people 

who came to me at the hospital and treated me with respect would talk to me like this." His lawyer had to 

take him to a nearby café to help him calm down.

Some of Mirza's roughly 100 fellow Muslims in Sheboygan County would say he was naive. The majority 

are Bosnians and Albanians who fled to the U.S. to escape persecution by Serbs after the collapse of 

Yugoslavia. Scarred by their experiences back home, some chose to keep their faith under wraps. They 

feared that plans to build a mosque would draw too much attention to their community. They were not 

entirely wrong. After the meeting, pastors in Oostburg began a campaign against the project. "The political 

objective of Islam is to dominate the world with its teachings ... and to have domination of all other religions 

militarily," said the Rev. Wayne DeVrou, a pastor at the First Reformed Church in Oostburg.

The battle in Wilson received little national attention until this month, when a much larger and noisier uproar 

erupted in New York City over plans to build a Muslim cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground 

Zero. Park51, as the project is called, is the brainchild of Imam Feisal Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, 

American Muslims well known for promoting interfaith dialogue. Their plan has been approved by city 

authorities and has the backing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but it has ignited a nationwide firestorm of 

protest.

Some opponents are genuinely concerned that an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero would offend 

the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. Paul Walier, a 

Buffalo, N.Y., lawyer whose sister Margaret died in the towers, acknowledges that Rauf and Khan are 

within their constitutional rights but adds, "I just don't think it's the appropriate thing to do." You don't have to 

be prejudiced against Islam to believe, as many Americans do, that the area around Ground Zero is 

sacred. But sadly, in an election season, such sentiments have been stoked into a volatile political issue 

by Republican leaders like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. As the debate has grown more heated, the 

project has become a litmus test for everything from private-property rights to religious tolerance. But as in 

Wisconsin, some of Park51's opponents are motivated by a troubling Islamophobia.

Islam Meets America
The proposed site of Park51 is close not just to Ground Zero; it's also a stone's throw from strip clubs, 

liquor stores and other establishments typical of lower Manhattan. Local Muslims have been praying in the 

building for nearly a year, a fact that has been lost in the noise of the anti-mosque protests. But since early 

August, the site has been the scene of frequent demonstrations in which protesters carry signs saying such 

things as "All I Need to Know About Islam, I Learned on 9/11." Like Mirza, Rauf and Khan seem stunned 

into paralysis. While opponents have cast them as extremists sympathetic to al-Qaeda, they themselves 

have given very few interviews. Rauf has been abroad for much of the time, but pressure is mounting on 

the couple to move their center to a less polarizing location.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2011936,00.html#ixzz2Zx45iTfA

The controversy, meanwhile, has brought new scrutiny to other examples of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim 

protests across the country, raising larger questions: Does the U.S. have a problem with Islam? Have the 

terrorist attacks of 9/11 — and the other attempts since — permanently excluded Muslims from full 

assimilation into American life?

Muslims and Mosques in the West
Muslim Americans need no convincing. The Park51 uproar, says Ebrahim Moosa, an associate professor 

of Islamic studies at Duke University, "is part of a pattern of intolerance" against Muslims that has existed 

since 9/11 but has deepened in the past few years. Although the American strain of Islamophobia lacks 

some of the traditional elements of religious persecution — there's no sign that violence against Muslims 

is on the rise, for instance — there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that hate speech against Muslims and 

Islam is growing both more widespread and more heated. "Islamophobia has become the accepted form 

of racism in America," says Muslim-American writer and commentator Arsalan Iftikhar. "You can always 

take a potshot at Muslims or Arabs and get away with it."

There's reason to think that the sentiments expressed in lower Manhattan and in Sheboygan County are 

not isolated. A new TIME — Abt SRBI poll found that 46% of Americans believe Islam is more likely than 

other faiths to encourage violence against nonbelievers. Only 37% know a Muslim American. Overall, 61% 

oppose the Park51 project, while just 26% are in favor of it. Just 23% say it would be a symbol of religious 

tolerance, while 44% say it would be an insult to those who died on 9/11.

Islamophobia in the U.S. doesn't approach levels seen in other countries where Muslims are a minority: 

there's no American equivalent of France's ban on the burqa or Switzerland's new law against building 

minarets. Polls have shown that most Muslims feel safer and freer in the U.S. than anywhere else in the 

Western world. Two American Muslims have been elected to Congress, and this year, Rima Fakih 

became the first Muslim to be named Miss USA. Next month, the country's first Muslim college will formally 

open its doors in Berkeley, Calif. Zaytuna College's motto: "Where Islam Meets America."

But where ordinary Americans meet Islam, there is evidence that suspicion and hostility are growing. To 

be a Muslim in America now is to endure slings and arrows against your faith — not just in the schoolyard 

and the office but also outside your place of worship and in the public square, where some of the country's 

most powerful mainstream religious and political leaders unthinkingly (or worse, deliberately) conflate 

Islam with terrorism and savagery. In France and Britain, politicians from fringe parties say appalling things 

about Muslims, but there's no-one in Europe with the stature of a former House Speaker who seemed to 

equate Islam with Nazism, as Gingrich did recently. "The core argument emerging from [the anti-mosque 

protests] is that Muslims are not and can never be full Americans," says Eboo Patel, an American Muslim 

on Obama's advisory council on faith-based and neighborhood partnerships.

It makes sense that the most heated encounters take place over mosques. Since America's Muslim 

population tends to be much more diffusely scattered than Europe's (with the exception of concentrations 

in cities like Dearborn, Mich.), places of worship are often the most tangible targets for hatred. And there 

are suddenly many more of them than before. According to Ihsan Bagby, an Islamic-studies professor at 

the University of Kentucky, there are now 1,900 mosques in the U.S., up from about 1,200 in 2001. Many of 

these are little more than makeshift prayer rooms in shops and offices; when Muslim groups set out to 

build formal mosques, they become more exposed and vulnerable.

This year, at least six mosque projects across the U.S. have faced bitter opposition. In Temecula, Calif., a 

group in July brought dogs to a protest where Muslims were praying, knowing full well that the animals are 

regarded as unclean in Islam. And the rage against Muslims is by no means limited to proposed mosques. 

In Gainesville, Fla., a pastor has announced plans to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the 

9/11 attacks, arguing that Jesus would burn the Koran because "it's not holy." Groups calling themselves 

the Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop the Islamization of America have sponsored advertisements 

offering Muslims a "safe" way to give up Islam — the sort of exhortation directed at Jews and Roman 

Catholics in generations past.

But perhaps the most vicious attacks take place online, where extreme bigotry can easily metastasize. 

Bloggers like Pamela Geller, a New Yorker who runs the website Atlas Shrugs, played a pivotal role in 

making Park51 a national issue even after mainstream conservative commentators had given it a 

thumbs-up. In December, Laura Ingraham, sitting in for Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, interviewed Daisy Khan 

and ended the segment by telling her, "I like what you're trying to do." Geller, however, mounted a 

concerted campaign against the center. "This is Islamic domination and expansionism," she wrote. "The 

location is no accident — just as al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem." Eventually other 

bloggers picked up the thread, and the campaign went viral.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2011936,00.html#ixzz2Zx4T6ZkW

Abandoned by Friends
The arguments marshaled by Islam's detractors have become familiar: Since most terrorist attacks are 

conducted by Muslims and in the name of their faith, Islam must be a violent creed. Passages of the Koran 

taken out of context are brandished as evidence that Islam requires believers to kill or convert all others. 

Shari'a laws requiring the stoning of adulterers or other gruesome punishments serve as proof that 

Muslims are savage and backward. The conclusion of this line of reasoning is that Islam is a death cult, not 

a real religion, so constitutional freedoms don't apply to it. Religious intolerance is not limited to Islam, of 

course: Jews, Mormons and others still experience hate speech. But the most toxic bile is reserved for 

Muslims. Franklin Graham, son of Evangelical giant Billy Graham, tells TIME that Islam is "a religion of 

hatred. It's a religion of war." Park51 should not be allowed, he says, because Muslim worshippers will be 

able to walk there, and "the entire area they walk by foot they claim as Islamic territory. They will claim now 

that the World Trade Center property ... is Islamic land."

Those railing against new mosques also use arguments of equivalence: Saudi Arabia doesn't allow 

churches and synagogues, so why should the U.S. permit the building of Islamic places of worship? Never 

mind that the U.S. is not, like Saudi Arabia, a country with a state religion, or that America was founded on 

ideals of religious freedom and tolerance.

It's worth noting that wherever opposition has been nakedly anti-Islamic, it has been denounced by many 

Christian, Jewish and secular groups. Muslims are by no means friendless. But in recent weeks, they have 

felt abandoned by people they would have expected to be their staunchest allies. Prominent Democrats 

either have been notably silent on the Park51 controversy or, like Senator Harry Reid recently, have sided 

with those who think the center should be moved someplace else. Even André Carson, a Democratic 

Congressman from Indiana and one of two Muslims in the House, skirted questions on the location of the 

project, telling TIME, "That's certainly a question my friends in New York will have to hash out."

Over the weekend, Muslim hopes were first raised, then dashed, by President Obama. On Friday, Aug. 13, 

hosting a dinner for Muslim leaders at the White House, he eloquently defended the community's 

constitutional right to practice its faith — and by inference, to build their mosques where legally permitted. 

But the very next day, Obama added a rider: he was not, he clarified, commenting on the "wisdom of 

making the decision to put the mosque there." A White House official explains the Saturday restatement by 

saying, "There's a reason the President rarely makes the tactical decision to speak" with reporters in 

impromptu media gaggles.

Even from the distance and relative safety of Dearborn, Muslims expressed alarm at the explosion of bile 

over Park51. A heated discussion broke out among customers at a bakery on Aug. 11, the start of the 

fasting month of Ramadan. Some argued that the Park51 project should be scrapped, lest it inflame 

anti-Muslim sentiment; others said backing down would be a mistake. "If they don't build it, they will be 

agreeing with those who say Muslims are not proper Americans," said Sami, a recent Iraqi immigrant who 

would give only his first name. "If that's the case, I might as well go back to Baghdad, because I will never 

be accepted here."

In Dearborn and elsewhere, many American Muslims are especially distressed by the demonization of 

Rauf, one of the country's foremost practitioners of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam reviled by extremists 

like Osama bin Laden. "It demonstrates that this is not about distinguishing good from bad, extreme from 

moderate," says Saeed Khan, who lectures on ethnic-identity politics and the Muslim diaspora at Wayne 

State University in Detroit. "Muslims are being subjected to a broader brush as a community." In reality, the 

U.S. has probably the most diverse Muslim population of any country: American Muslims represent 

practically every race and sect, even those regarded by many Islamic states as heretical.

Why has Islamophobia suddenly intensified? Some Muslim Americans argue it hasn't: these sentiments 

have existed for years. Others say there have been peaks and troughs since 9/11. Muslim-American 

commentator Iftikhar recalls the "first wave" of anti-Muslim outbursts after the terrorist attacks, when 

leading Christian figures like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell openly questioned whether Islam was a 

religion at all and labeled the Prophet Muhammad a robber, brigand and terrorist. Political leaders were 

hardly more circumspect. Saxby Chambliss, then a Representative from Georgia (now a Senator), said his 

state should "arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line," though he later apologized for the 

remark.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2011936,00.html#ixzz2Zx4ZaoS9

The venom was diluted by President George W. Bush. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Bush visited an 

Islamic center in Washington and declared that there would be no reprisals against Muslims. Islam, he 

said, was a religion of peace. The message was reinforced by top Administration officials like 

Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. While Bush's credibility with American Muslims would eventually be 

blighted by the war in Iraq and the attendant death of tens of thousands of Muslims there, some 

commentators give him credit for reining in Islamophobes. Patel says, "Bush was very strong [in defending 

Islam] on the domestic front." Like Obama after him, Bush repeatedly drew sharp distinctions between the 

extremist, violent interpretation of Islam by followers of bin Laden and its peaceful majority. (Bush has 

declined requests, including from TIME, to comment on Park51.) But by the tail end of his Administration, 

some Republican groups were already breaking away from the White House line. One unexpected 

watershed moment was the 2007 release of the Pew Research Center report Muslim Americans, still the 

most comprehensive survey of the community, which estimated the Muslim-American population at 2.35 

million. It was the first definitive number and was much smaller than previous estimates, which ranged from 

6 million to 8 million. One consequence of the reduced estimate, says Wayne State's Khan, was that it 

made the community much more vulnerable to political attack. "It put the metaphorical chum in the water," 

he says. "It signaled to people that Muslims were a very small group and didn't need to be taken seriously."

Then came the attempt to portray Obama as a closet Muslim during the 2008 presidential campaign, 

which brought anti-Islamic rhetoric onto the political stage, marking a break from the Bush years. 

(Remarkably, according to TIME's poll, nearly a quarter of Americans still think Obama is a Muslim.) Since 

becoming President, Obama has made it a priority to improve the country's image in the eyes of the 

Islamic world.

His outreach to American Muslims has been much quieter. Unlike Bush, Obama has not yet visited a 

mosque in the U.S. Attitudes toward Islam have worsened perceptibly in the past two years, perhaps 

because of a string of terrorism-related incidents involving American Muslims like the accused Fort Hood 

shooter Major Nidal Hasan and the would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. Sami, the Iraqi 

immigrant in Dearborn, says he noticed a change in his neighbors' attitude after the Times Square 

incident. "Two days later, I was loading some bags in my car, and one guy comes over and looks over my 

shoulder," he recalls. "I saw the look in his eyes, and I knew what he was thinking."

The concern now is that the mosque protests and the attention they have drawn from politicians may have 

brought Islamophobia firmly into the mainstream. "It may have become a permanent political wedge 

issue," says Iftikhar. So far, the Muslim-American community's response has gone little beyond 

hand-wringing. It has historically had trouble presenting a united front: divisions abound along both racial 

and linguistic lines, and the community has no obvious leaders.

In the meantime, some worry that growing resentment against Islam will discourage Muslims, especially 

young ones, from assimilating into the wider society. "When you have a leading politician equating Islam to 

Nazism, you can imagine that a 17-year-old Muslim in Virginia is thinking, Oh, my God, these people are 

totally against my religion," says Duke's Moosa.

For Iftikhar, the community's best chance now is to appeal to Americans' sense of justice and fair play. And 

such appeals can work. In Wilson, the town's executive council eventually ruled in Mirza's favor, and the 

Islamic Society of Sheboygan has converted a building on his property into a mosque. The Muslim 

community has already elected an imam, Mohammed Hamad. But it took a tragedy to bring Muslims and 

non-Muslims closer together. In June, Sofia Khan, a Muslim girl from Chicago, disappeared in Lake 

Michigan near Oostburg while on vacation with her family. Rita Harmeling, a local woman from a church 

that had opposed the mosque, called the imam and asked him to minister to the grieving Khan family. 

Later Harmeling helped volunteers and rescue workers who tried to find the girl. Soon, other residents 

opened their homes to the Khans. A neighbor of the mosque offered the use of his front yard for the girl's 

family to gather.

In Sheboygan County, the good old-fashioned American sense of community came through for Mirza, 

Hamad and the Khans. But when it comes to Muslims and Islam, America's better angels are not always 

so accommodating.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2011936,00.html#ixzz2Zx4mTEje