Making Muslims Into the New Negroes

Talk radio is to nuance what an atomic bomb is to a fly swatter.  I state this from a position of mild authority, having been a talk radio host for the past 15 years.  

Any host who throws large quantities of red meat to his audience will quickly find that it is very simple to generate an emotional feeding frenzy that lights up the telephone lines.  As commentator Joseph Sobran noted some years ago, one curious quality of many talk radio listeners is that they tend to adore the person who gives them demons to wrestle with.  This mindset coupled with imbuing the audience with a false sense of being a part of the only group that "really understands what's going on" creates a fertile environment for Identity Politics (where one's rights depend upon one's group identity) at its worst.

I are a "great American"

There is a definite formula for generating an approving and loyal audience in this medium and I speak from first-hand experience when I say that it works like a charm.

The formula itself is fairly straightforward:

•  Identify a particular group or people.  
•  Ascribe only the most evil intentions and near superhuman powers to them.  
•  Claim that they seek to destroy our way of life.  
•  Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

This phenomenon, of course, predates talk radio by many millennia but it's an interesting quirk of human nature that we tend to embrace those who make us most comfortable with our fears.

Hannitized

A current example of this tactic is found in the wild-eyed hysteria over the so-called "Ground Zero Victory Mosque" that has been proposed to be built in New York City.  For days now, talk radio has been ablaze with righteous indignation over the construction of an Islamic community center known as the Cordoba House.  Those who are "really in the know" are fanning the flames of outrage among their listeners that Muslims are building a shrine to celebrate success of the 9/11 attacks and are naming it after a city in Spain that was once conquered by a Muslim army 1300 years ago.

Can't you see?

"They're sticking their finger in our eye and laughing at us!"


"Next thing you know, they'll install Sharia Law in the place of our Constitution and force us to either convert or die."


"They're  turning the whole planet into a worldwide caliphate!"


"It's impossible to be a good Muslim and a good American!"

Lest the reader think I'm simply resorting to hyperbole to make a point, I plucked each of the above lines from e-mails I've received in the past week.

The sad thing is that all that hysteria is being stirred up over a non-issue.

The Cordoba House would be the equivalent of a Muslim YMCA located 4 (New York City) blocks from ground zero.   The property has been legally purchased and the developers are jumping through all the necessary bureaucratic hoops to make the project a reality.  But these facts haven't stopped the angry mob from demanding that the project be deep-sixed even if it requires the City of New York to exercise eminent domain to seize the property.  Ironically, this is from the same self-identified conservatives who regularly decry the abuse of government power but are more than willing to make an exception if that power is being directed at someone else.

In fact, let's politicize it

The imperative for government to deny the Muslim community center is supposedly out of sensitivity for what happened on 9/11.  But hold on a second. Was it Muslims in general that attacked the World Trade Center?

As Justin Raimondo from antiwar.com points out:

...it wasn’t Islam that attacked and demolished the World Trade Center, but a marginal group of fanatics who used religion as a cover for their blood lust...    

Raimondo points out that it would have been equally outrageous to seek a ban on synagogues near Arlington National Cemetery following the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty out of sensitivity for the U.S. servicemen who lost their lives in that attack.  Reasonable people would call such a reaction ridiculous and rightly so.  So why the disconnect when Muslims are being painted with collective guilt?

Should we blame all Jews?

This is where talk radio has proven remarkably successful in persuading its audience that Muslims are murderous, deceptive religious fanatics with worldwide conquest in mind.  Fear is the prime mover in promoting this concept; fear of what may happen, fear of the unknown, fear of those who are different.  Let's face it, fear works when it comes to shaping public perceptions and it is the coin of the realm in talk radio.  It's worth considering a quote on fear from George Gerbner of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania:

"Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures . . . . They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities."

The global war on terror has served as proof for many talk radio listeners that our own government's attempts to project imperial power globally is the only thing currently preventing Islam from ruling the world.  Islam is viewed as a monolithic religion with a singular purpose of reducing the world to either converts or slaves.

Another dangerous fanatic?

Well, not to be dramatic, but years ago when I wore the uniform of God's Army, we had the tacit understanding that our mission was, in fact, to overthrow the world and replace it with the kingdom of God.  Believe me, we encountered plenty of opposition that was fueled by lies and misinformation repeated without benefit of fact-checking.  In fact, much of the anti-Islamic information we hear today bears a striking resemblance to the out-of-context scriptural quotes, distortion of beliefs, and broad-brush tarring of all Mormons that was the hallmark of our anti-Mormon crusaders.

There was a time when my Mormon forebears were disenfranchised due to fear and hysteria on the part of their fellow Americans.  It's happened to other groups including, but not limited to, Native Americans, Japanese Americans, and Blacks, just to name a few.

I'm not real keen on the idea of it happening to Muslims either.  Because what we're willing to allow government to do to others can just as easily be done to us when someone else is calling the shots.

[In interest of full disclosure I must confess that I currently have a Saudi Arabian Muslim living under my roof.  Saleh hasn't tried to convert me at sword point or to reduce me to dhimmitude, but he is a very devout young man whom my family loves dearly.  Please understand that this may have swayed my view of Muslims somewhat.]