Daniel Luban, writing in Tablet: A New Read On Jewish Life, has an excellent essay about the raging fear of the entire religion of Islam cloaked as “anti-jihadism,” and calls it the new Anti-Semitism in America. He makes his case well, although there are two problems that are instantly troubling about this analysis that make it almost guaranteed to go unread by people who need to read it.
The first problem is that you can hardly talk about anti-semitism anymore without bringing up the holocaust. It’s just reality: you say “Jew” and everyone immediately thinks “Hitler” and “holocaust.” You practically can’t stop yourself; it’s almost universally embedded in the American psyche, tumbling like unstoppable dominoes:
Jews->Hitler->Holocaust
The fact that this association is so ubiquitous is probably, on the whole, a good thing–we really don’t need any more holocausts, thank you very much–but it makes using Jews as a comparison group for anyone else facing prejudice troubling. Indeed, it cuts two ways:
First, it’s troubling for Americans who have concerns about Muslims and want to ask questions; they don’t need to be tainted as Hitlerian just for having questions or doubts. While I am quite certain that if I worked really hard, I could find some right wing cranks somewhere who actually do want to exterminate Muslims, it would be insane to think that any significant portion of the American right, or the American populace in general, would support such a thing.
I am equally certain that if I looked hard enough I could find some Muslims in America who fear they’re one election cycle away from gas chambers. I’m even more certain I could find political leftists who feverishly believed that with all their hearts (especially during the Bush years). But I don’t think most people could take such an assertion seriously, no matter what their politics or religion.
Just by putting the Jews on the table (so to speak), you’ve invited a whole host of comparisons that just aren’t necessary and only confuse things.
It’s also a troubling comparison–not invalid, just troubling–because frankly, I think most Jews get tired of being the automatic comparison group. American blacks go through a similar annoyance: being in the Designated Victim Group Yardstick just gets old. (Or so some of my black friends tell me, anyway.)
So how about this for a comparison? Muslims are America’s new Catholics.
Having seen fiercely anti-Catholic prejudice my entire life, and how it is still alive and well in many parts of the country, I am often shocked by how many people don’t notice that it still exists. The fact that it’s faded is rather gratifying, but it has never gone away.
People on America’s political left often fearlessly savage the Catholic Church whenever they get a chance, without a second’s hesitation. On the other hand, Fundamentalist Christians, who espouse an enormous range of theological positions, seem at times to have as their only common doctrines that Jesus is the Messiah, the Bible is inerrant, and Catholicism Is Wrong. The worst in that segment of Christianity even liken the Church to the Whore of Babylon and indict it in a range of conspiracies (my particular favorite being that the Catholic Church created the religion of Islam).
The story of (inexcusable) pedophile priests has been rocking the Church, to the glee of its critics, for some time now–never mind that Catholic priests are no more likely to molest children than public schoolteachers are, and there’s not much evidence that they’re more likely to do such things than Protestant ministers either. While there is much reason to blame the church leadership for trying to keep that problem quiet, there is no reason to believe the actual practice is more prevalent in Catholic circles than anywhere else–yet it is such an accepted viewpoint that people of all stripes feel completely feel free to make jokes about Catholics and their “pedophile priests” without the least fear of raising offense in polite company. And woe betide the Catholic who says anything in defense of her Church, lest she be dismissed as either helping cover up the problem or just being an “apologist” or “in denial.”
It doesn’t stop there. Virulently anti-Catholic conspiracy books and movies like The DaVinci Code show that all over the country, there’s not much worry about having another good old round of fun bashing the Catholic Church.
Historically, it’s worse; look at virtually any White Supremacist group in America, from the KKK to the skinheads to the Neo-Nazis, and you’ll find that their virulent hatred of blacks and Jews is matched by their virulent hatred of Catholics; the modern KKK was fiercely anti-Catholic from its founding in 1915, with their hatred of Jews and blacks quite matched with their hatred for Catholics, who to them were no more “real Americans” than those others. Indeed, Catholic hatred goes back hundreds of years in this country, and it has always shared one trait: the beleif that the sinister papists and the Bishops of the Church are in secret collusion to destroy freedom in America.
This did not go away with the 19th century; despite a Catholic presence in America for hundreds of years, the first serious Presidential candidate in America to be a Catholic was Al Smith in 1928 and his Catholicism was used against him; the only Catholic ever to be elected as President, to date, was John F. Kennedy, who had to take pains to make it clear his Catholicism would not interfere with his duties as President, amid fears of a papist takeover of America.
As a former Protestant (with both mainline and Fundamentalist roots) and former atheist-turned-Catholic, perhaps my own prickliness when seeing anti-Muslim prejudice stems from this: I’ve always seen how a minority religious group can face persecution and gross stereotyping. And as I’ve aged, I’ve grown less tolerant of such things when I’ve seen them. Disagreeing with a religious group is one thing; tainting them with guilt by association (as we’ve seen most recently in the sickening protests against Park 51, and the even more sickening rationalizations about it), and even outright lies about who they are and what they believe, is simply not tolerable.
All religious groups face some form of mistrust and misunderstanding. I’ve got Mormon friends who face it, Hindu friends who face it, Fundamentalist Christian friends who’ve faced it (why yes, there is such a thing as being bigoted toward Fundamentalists, in case you were wondering) and more. Yet anti-Catholicism is a string you can find that has never been broken, from the founding of this country right through to today.
I have on occasion been accused of bending over backwards to be “tolerant.” I find this interesting, because I have no tolerance for Islamophobia whatsoever. In fact, I continue to see it as a subtle form of treason: American troops are abroad now, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Muslims, and trying to help Muslims, while so-called patriotic “conservatives” in America hamstring those efforts and backstab our allies with grossly irresponsible generalizations.
You may accuse me of just about anything you want, but an excess of “tolerance” is probably the most laughable. I have no tolerance for Islamophobia whatsoever, I think it’s unAmerican and even treasonous, and I don’t care who doesn’t like me saying so. I don’t care if it loses me friends, I don’t care if it loses me popularity, I don’t care who it makes angry.
Mark Massa calls anti-Catholicism the last acceptable prejudice in America, but I think he’s wrong. I think we’re seeing a whole new one, in the conspiracy-mongering and guilty-by-association of our totally innocent Muslim brethren.
And I have no use for aggressive ignorance. I simply do not.
