Anti-Muslim Hysteria in America Hinders Fight Against Radical Islamists

A disturbing trend of anti-Muslim hysteria seems to be sweeping the United States, with protests over the construction of mosques or Islamic community centers from New York City to the middle of Tennessee. Many groups are now protesting the existence of mosques that have been operating for years. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the moderate Muslim cleric behind the project and a very decent man, has been subjected to a vicious smear campaign which attempts to falsely portray him as a terrorist sympathizer. In the spring, someone set off a pipe bomb at a mosque in Florida (an event which received almost no coverage in the national media). Influential political personalities and right-wing talk radio hosts are getting in on the act, whipping up anti-Muslim fever in much the same way that the Nazis whipped up anti-Semitism in the days before they seized power in Germany.

All of this is very disquieting for Global Citizens, who believe that the spirit of religious tolerance must prevail over religious bigotry. We must be united and brought together by our human commonality rather than be set against one another by whatever our religious differences may be. Unless seduced by the darker forces that lurk within the human soul, there is nothing to prevent people who hold profoundly different religious perspectives from living together in peace and cooperating for mutual benefit.

But the Islamophobia gaining steam in the United States is not disturbing only because it violates our perspective as Global Citizens. There are also more direct and immediate dangers associated with it, specifically the fact that anti-Islamic anger in the United States is certain to be harnessed by Islamist extremists around the world in order to fuel their own sinister cause.

Al Qaeda and their allies have always asserted that the West and the Islamic world are at war with one another. Their propaganda often includes references to historical events going back to the Crusades, the Reconquista, and other examples of Muslim-Christian strife. The more they are able to persuade ordinary Muslims that the United States is an enemy of Islam, the more recruits and funding they obtain, and the more their strength grows.

Radical Islam can not be defeated on the battlefield, because for every terrorist we kill, there are two more to take its place. Al Qaeda and its allies can only be defeated if they lose the battle of ideas, and if the people of the Muslim world become convinced that their lives will be better if they reject the extremism of the radical Islamists. This can only be done if the West, and America in particular, is able to persuade the Muslim world that it is not their enemy, but their friend.

The controversy about the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" is receiving extensive coverage in the Muslim world, and the opponents of the project simply reinforce the radical Islamist propaganda that America is a country that hates Muslims. The extremists feed on this perception, which draws additional recruits and funding to their cause. In other words, all the protesters holding up bigoted anti-Muslim signs at the mosque protests are the best friends Al Qaeda could ever ask for.