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Marc Ambinder:
38 percent of Americans in 2006 said they would never vote for a Muslim for president, just about the number who said they would never vote for a gay person. In December of 2004, Cornell released a survey showing that half of Americans consciously told a pollster that they would favor a curtailment of civil rights for Muslims. About 40 percent of Republicans had explicitly anti-Muslim views in the survey.
What’s fascinating — and disturbing — about prejudice against Muslims is that it is not driven by the same factors that have marginalized immigrants and minorities in the past. There are no economic incentives to push Muslims to the outside; there is an instinctive mistrust of Islam within evangelical Christianity and a very persistent post 9/11 ideological gulf between average and elite Americans. As of 2010, 43 percent of Americans admitted feeling bias against Muslims.
What’s driving rabid passions against Muslims in this country? Is there truth somewhere embedded in Ambinder’s thinking? Is mistrust rooting out all of our worst tendencies, causing us to fear the perception instead of the reality? We can’t seem to engage in lucid, fruitful debate anymore. It devolves into madness–misplaced anger that’s used to find scapegoats for our inadequacies. The boundaries of tolerance are gone, and you have nothing left but a scary amalgamation of confusion, hatred, and lunacy. America the beautiful indeed.
Obviously, something is working to warp opinions in the face of fact. Obama the Muslim, even if there is evidence to the contrary. Labeling the president a Muslim is the new badge of dishonor. Muslim is now used as an adjective–more specifically, a bigoted slur upon those who cannot possibly American. They must be subversive agents of destruction, hellbent on introducing barbarism to pristine American culture.
Hate is fueling ignorance, ignorance is fueling hate, and no one can tell the difference. Muslims face the full fury of American xenophobia, and it’s disintegrating our inclusive society.
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