IS AMERICA ISLAMOPHOBIC?

This question on the cover of Time magazine* seems irrelevant to me. The question really is: IS AMERICA FOR FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR NOT?

Thomas Jefferson said, "If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, then and only then will truth, prevail over fanaticism.” 

Phobias and -isms in all their human forms have been a part of America since Europeans landed. Thomas Jefferson surely knew it. That we still have them several hundred years later is sad, but not surprising.

But is anyone else the least bit surprised that there is any question that Americans should be able to build an American religious building of any kind in America? and that there is vehement protest against this?  

Yet, even some of the most liberal among us have said, "Yes, but it's ground zero, sacred ground."

No, it's really not about ground zero. If it was just about ground zero, then protests and attempted blocking of religious building wouldn't be happening all over the country in places like Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, and they are.

Is there someway we can help the debate get real? The thinly disguised opposition to Islam needs to be exposed for the real issue, which is constitutional. It's just one of those quirky little things in the constitution that does not allow one group a freedom that another is denied. The question is, "Are Americans going to follow the Constitution or not?"

That people say they believe in the right to build a religious structure, just not a Muslim one, is a thinly disguised way of arguing against the Constitution, whether they understand that or not.

Why should we care--has the building of any UU structure ever been blocked? No, but religious freedom denied anywhere diminishes freedom everywhere (excuse my butchering of Dr. King's quote).

Now, debate is a good thing, it's repression that is not. This particular debate about the rights of American Muslims has the potential to strengthen America's dedication to religious freedom, and perhaps even unite the seemingly least unite-able of us behind one of the most basic American values.


In our own history, the foundation of Unitarian principles did not happen without struggle and vehement debate. Dissenters of orthodox Calvinists were thought to be hypocrites and and not Christian, about the worst thing one could be named in 18th - 19th century America.**

Then William Ellery Channing happened. (Many claim Channing as the father of UU even though he refused to align with any organized religion, even Unitarianism) That debate served to help religious liberals better define what they felt liberal about. But Channing shaped the debate into something more. Instead of arguing against the argument against liberal religious principles, he espoused a different strategy.

The most effectual method of expelling error is not to meet it sword in hand, but gradually to instil great truths with which it cannot easily coexist, and by which the mind outgrows it.

Is there a lesson for us here for today?   


Sources:

*Is American Islamophobic?  Time magazine, vol. 176, no. 9, August 30, 2010

**The Channing centenary in America, Great Britain, and Ireland: A report of meetings held in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of William Ellery Channing, 1881