And during the same weeks and months, some Americans often religiously motivated Christians and Jewsrallied to protect Muslims and their mosques. Some stood guard to prevent attacks, some created vigils, some brought together Jews, Christians, and Muslims under " The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah."
Step 3: The Wars with Islam
Soon after, the government of the United States began wars against two Muslim-majority nations. It quickly became clear that what began under the banner of "liberation" actually became conquest and occupation. Yet the wars dragged on, bringing death to thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians. And meanwhile, there were deadly US military attacks on Pakistanis, threats of war against Iran, and a continuing close alliance with the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
There is a process that researchers in psychology have uncovered and call "cognitive dissonance." People who begin with one opinion but act in a way contrary to that opinion change their ideas more than their behavior. After almost a decade of American wars against a number of Muslim-majority societies, and several actual murderous attacks by self-proclaimed Muslims against civilians in various countries allied to America, some Americans who had begun with few opinions about Islam in general began to view it with anger and disgust:
"If we are killing lots of them and they are killing some of us, there must be something evil about them."
Step 4: The Great Slump
Meanwhile, Americans experienced a disastrous economic slump. The last time that rates of disemployment and of home foreclosure had been this high, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, one of the reactions was a great wave of anti-Semitism across America. Father Coughlin on radio, Henry Ford through the Dearborn Independent, were reaching millions of Americans with fear and hatred of the Jews.
So now, in another time of economic trauma -- and now also of unwinnable wars and a deep sense of cultural dislocation -- there was seething not quite visible below the surface of American culture and society a current of xenophobia. Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, became suspect. And Muslims.
Step 5: Crystals of Bigotry
And then into this hyper-saturated solution of fear, suspicion, and hatred came some who chose deliberately to drop the poisonous crystals of bigotry .
In December 2009, the New York Timesa liberal leader of opinionand Laura Ingrahama conservative leader of opinion carried articles and interviews about plans of American Muslims to establish Cordoba House, a community cultural center in Lower Manhattan. There was no fuss, no fury.
Not till May 2010 did the ultra-right-wing anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller and organs of Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing publisher who later gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, begin to carry inflammatory stories about what they call the "Ground Zero Mega-Mosque."
And then, step-by-step, the crystal they sowed precipitated the super-saturated solution into a noxious brew. Right-wing blogs and talk-radio programs described the Cordova House as an insult to the dead of 9/11, a triumphal celebration by Islam of its victory in the attacks on the World Trade Center's, anything to arouse fear and hatred of Islam.
Even Jewish organizations that claimed their mission was to prevent "defamation" not only of Jews but of all religious and ethnic groups, or claimed their mission was to promote "tolerance," spoke out against the planning for Cordova House. "Yes," they said, "Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan have every constitutional right to place their mosque or cultural center two long long New York City blocks from Ground Zero, but it is not ethically right or spiritually wise to do so. It would offend the sensibilities of the survivors of the 9/11 dead."
These assertions ignored both an important fact and a crucial principle. The fact was that hundreds of 9/11 survivors, in the organization called September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, had endorsed the placement of CÃ ³rdoba House. The principle was that the constitutional right of freedom of religion has no reality if a wave of hostility from "private" citizens, sparked by great media empires and backed up by public officials, can prevent the fully legal placement of a house of worship.
Why then did the right wing media and right-wing politicians like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich decide to light this conflagration? The spark would not have lit a fire if that there had not been gallons of gasoline beneath the surface, but why light the spark?
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