Over at his new perch with the Daily Dish, Conor Friedersdorf takes Jonah Goldberg to task for suggesting that there was no substantial anti-Muslim backlash in America post-9/11,
In my estimation, the American people have behaved better to its Muslim minority than the citizens of a lot of countries would’ve after an attack like what we suffered on September 11, 2001, but it is demonstrably inaccurate to say that there has been “no backlash.”Several reports have found an increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes post 9/11. Here’s a 2002 brief from the New York Times, reporting from California:
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Here’s a longer piece from the San Francisco Chronicle that reports a similar conclusion, citing an FBI report.
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I happen to think that there are many opponents of the Burlington Coat Factory mosque who aren’t bigots. But all be damned if I’m going to apologize for being overcautious in warning against — and trying to prevent — further backlash against Muslims because some conservatives are aggrieved by the very idea that it is a possibility.
An often found rejoinder to Conor’s argument I’ve encountered is a sort of, “that was then, this is now,” argument. Namely, a majority of people (Goldberg excluded, apparently) are prepared to acknowledge that in the wake of 9/11 there was indeed an anti-Muslim backlash. And while that fact is regrettable, it was also wholly predictable given the nature of the attacks against the US.
But with time, tempers have settles and grudges have been relinquished. Pointing to the backlash against Muslim and Arab Americans immediately following the horrific events of September 11, 2001 in regards to our discussion about things like Park51 is unhelpful because… that was then, this is now.
But a 2007 report from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee reveals that this argument isn’t all its cracked up to be either,
During the late 1990s, hate crime reports received by ADC numbered between 80 to 90 per year. In the period covered by this Report, the rate has been between 120 to 130 per year, a significant increase from the pre-9/11 period. Therefore, during the period 2003-2007, the rate of violent hate crimes continued to decline from the immediate post 9/11 surge, still remaining a higher rate than that seen in the five years leading up to the 2001 attacks. (p. 11)
Looking at those numbers, plus the misconception about the President to which Jason pointed earlier, plus the numbers that Marc Ambinder dug up about Americans’ admitted bias towards Muslims, plus the kind of natvist zeal that many vocal Park51 opponents have demonstrated, plus the broad opposition that Time reported to what really should be a non-issue in a country of property rights and religious freedom and I think its fair to say that concern about a fairly disturbing trend has a decent likelihood of starting to settle in the pit of your stomach.
Will Truman 
Patrick Cahalan 
Cornelius 
wardsmith 
Tod Kelly 
Tom Van Dyke 
Murali 
James Hanley 
Borat: “I do a picture, only small, of the Tishnik Masacre. Where many Uzbeks…crushed!”
Kindly Gray Hippie: “How did you feel when you drew this?”
Borat: “Very proud!”.
KGH: “I’m just listening with sadness…a little sadness for your people…?”
Borat: “Yes…no, it is not sad. It is us who do the kill!”
When in doubt,
{ 31 comments }
Well, a friend of ours got beat up not long after 9/11. He had the supreme misfortune of being in a logging town out west right after 9/11 with the name Osama. On the other hand, that was in Canada. Tolerant Canada.
Again, I’ve got a handful of friends who are Muslim or middle eastern and their views and experiences around this subject tend to differ greatly from my own. But, it seems like it’s heated up lately to me. I find it a bit weird. You’d think with the last combat troops pulling out of Iraq, the topic would recede in the public mind. But maybe it’s easier to score a victory against a rec center than against bin Laden.
@Rufus, I should have put “combat troops have left Iraq” in quotes there, but you know.
Bush was a clown in many respects but he was pretty much spot on to my ear with his endless insistence that Islam was not the enemy.
@North, I’ve been saying for years that there are at least *certain* aspects of GWB that would be missed by his critics and that this was one of them. It’s nice to be vindicated in those few instances where I am actually right about something…
@Trumwill, Saying that we now miss GWB because he was less crazy/ nasty regarding Islam reminds me of the phrase “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Does that mean i miss GWB?
@gregiank, not saying that you (should) miss the guy. “Certain aspects” is critical to what I’m saying. I guess I’m a believer in finding something to appreciate in people you really wish were not in office. Sure, oppose them, donate money to their opponents, and call them out when they’re wrong, but also recognize the limits to their wrongness.
I think I’m a bit weary that every president in my lifetime except GHB (spared, I think, because he was relatively ineffectual and served only one term) has been The Worst President Ever to a large segment of the population.
“Soft bigotry of low expectations” is not an inaccurate portrayal, though. Candidates that manage to get the nomination of a party you (collective second person) vigorously oppose are always going to be pretty bad by your standards. {shrug}
@Trumwill, i was mostly being snarky. The soft bigotry line was, however, pointed at how pathetic the R’s are on race in general and at muslims at the current time. Even GWB appears good just for being a decent person. I will admit he mostly did a good job with his rhetoric after one bobble when he call invading Iraq a crusade.
“I think I’m a bit weary that every president in my lifetime except GHB (spared, I think, because he was relatively ineffectual and served only one term) has been The Worst President Ever to a large segment of the population.”
I agree completely. GHB was a decent ( in the best sense) man
@North, it’s a shame he’s not speaking out now, though.
My take on the whole anti-Muslim backlash was based, in part, on the movie The Siege (1998).
Remember that one? Muslim terrorists start terrorizing the US and so we put Muslims (hell, Arabs!) into camps. As official government policy.
As it was, there were a handful of hate crimes against Arabs and an additional spate of hate crimes against foreigners who, sigh, were Sikhs… but I’d like to compare to, say, France deporting the Roma. Today, a bunch of Roma are being shipped away to Romania. This is the first of several batches… and this is official government policy.
There were calls for “profiling” from the people… but there was never an official policy where Arabs/Muslims were profiled. Indeed, official policy was that profiling would be racist.
There are a number of things that could be pointed out as the US going out of its way to make sure that there was no anti-Muslim backlash as part of official policy.
Pointing out that a person of East Indian descent got shot behind the counter of a 7-11 as evidence of an anti-Muslim backlash seems as unfair as pointing out that Canada had more Mosques burned in the aftermath of 9/11 than the US did… or demanding that Christians be a lot more forthcoming in condemnation of those who shoot abortion doctors in the wake of such.
We’ve not had an official government policy of discrimination. Indeed, when it comes to the so-called “ground zero mosque”, we have an official government policy that says that the guys who want to build it have every right to build it *AND* people have every right to protest it *AND* people have every right to call the protesters bigots who are anti-muslim *AND* people have every right to scream “THANKS FOR PLAYING THE BIGOTRY CARD” in response to that *AND* people using a sotto voice and explaining how hurtful bigotry is in practice and what about the children *AND* responses to that and responses to that and responses to that.
A government policy of discrimination is something that, seriously, people thought was likely to happen (watch The Siege again). That’s what people knew would happen if we got attacked.
It didn’t. Not even close.
@Jaybird, this pretty much encapsulates everything I was going to say, right down to the reference of The Siege. A goodly portion of the last two seasons was devoted to the subject as well. Where we were headed. Who we really are. Liberal lawyers being the first and last line of defense against a new Jim Crow-like legal order where Muslims are systematically discriminated against and harassed and juries become sympathetic to ideas like “Post-9/11 Traumatic Syndrome” where killing Muslims is considered okay.
Is it true that there was no substantial backlash? Define substantial backlash. Any backlash is substantial to the people being backlashed against. My sister-in-law couldn’t change her name from Ahmed fast enough. But compared to what a lot of people were expecting and compared to what could have happened and would have happened in many (though certainly far from all) countries? I feel pretty good about how well we did. I am disinclined to lash ourselves because some backwards folks didn’t get the memo. People are problematic.
@Trumwill, at the time, I thought it was a good movie and provided an excellent cautionary example. If I recall correctly, Muslim groups complained at how Muslims were portrayed.
What can you do?
@Jaybird,
*****SPOILER*******
I thought the liberal activist being a double-secret terrorist was kind of hokey. I am also uncertain as to the degree Willis’s character should have been accountable seeing as how he was carrying out orders that (IIRC) he warned against. Arianna Huffington’s cameo in support of the mistreatment of Muslims is a bit of a headscratcher from a PR standpoint (did she not get what the movie was going to be about??).
But as a cautionary tale I think it was great. It was certainly what was going through my mind when I first started thinking about the potential backlash.
This is the way it has always been. My GreatGrandfather came to the US as a 1 year old (germany), but never took out the second citizenship papers. As a result in 1917 his door was painted yellow, after a list of all non citizens in the town was published in the local paper. Another example in a graveyard in Darmstadt,In a husband died in 1914 his stone is in german, the wife died in 1921 her stone is in english (actually different sides of the same stone).
Likewise the Japanese in WWII.
Zenophobia is and always will be present at some level, threaten society and it comes back to the surface.
Our reactions are nothing compared to what would happen under Islamic rule. Ever poet, hippy musician, gay person, feminist, free-thinking journalist, wealthy business person, Christian, Jew, Zen Buddhist, etc would be jailed, stoned, converted or beheaded. But that’s just with the ones who believe in the real Islam as written — the moderates would try to persuade the leaders from beheading, at least. And, believe me, the leaders would be true believers, because moderates don’t make good rulers. I think we’ve been pretty tolerant considering we’re not a nation of saints — more tolerant than the Muslims.
@Mike Farmer, Is there any evidence whatsoever that we are under a credible threat of Islamic rule?
And this:
“Ever poet, hippy musician, gay person, feminist, free-thinking journalist, wealthy business person, Christian, Jew, Zen Buddhist, etc would be jailed, stoned, converted or beheaded. that’s just with the ones who believe in the real Islam as written….”
Really? Why, then, in the 1300 years of history in which there have been explicitly Islamic governments, has this happened so rarely? If your assertion were true, there wouldn’t be a single Christian in the Balkan peninsula after the centuries of Ottoman rule there (this is not to defend the behavior of the Ottomans in the Balkans, btw, just to point out that it never remotely approached what you’re describing). Yet it was the Christians who, just a decade and a half ago, engaged in religious-based ethnic cleansing of Muslims.
Crikey, bad as they are, not even the modern Wahhabists go as far as you’re suggesting here.
Also, too: why is it that you are so willing to accept the notion that Islamic fundamentalism/literalism is the only “real Islam” when I assume you would (correctly) never accept the notion that ultra-orthodox (ie, fundametalist/literalist) Jews and Christians represent the only “real Judaism or Christianity”? Sure, the fundies love to claim that they are the only “real Islam,” but why buy into that, why accept that narrative as true?
@Mark Thompson, None of which is to say that I’d be remotely welcoming of Islamic rule, or that I think it’s unimportant that we act against or criticize Islamic extremism, particularly where it targets Americans or Westerners. It’s just to say that it’s wrong to so deeply exagerrate what “Islamic rule” means and wrong to think that “Islamic rule” has even the slightest possibility of coming to fruition in the United States or almost any other Western nation for as long as is foreseeable, and thus incredibly wrong to demand that people focus their attentions on the supposed “threat” of Islamic rule. The influence of Tony Perkins on the American system of government will continue to be about 1000 times more of a threat than the influence of Ibrahim Hooper for as long as I shall remain on this earth.
@Mark Thompson,
I haven’t asked anyone to focus on the possibility of Islamic rule in America, have I? I don’t remember doing that, anyway. If people follow Islam, just as if they follow the pure Christian message in the Bible, it’s much different than the sanitized version. You must be thinking about the new and improved Islam, like our new and improved Christianity. Yes, the new style is much hipper.
@Mike Farmer,
Let’s hope Iran gets the new version soon. But in the meantime, let’s focus our attention on the real threat — conservatives taking over and making us listen to country music.
@Mike Farmer, Yes but who cares what it would be like under Islamic rule? Unless you’re considering moving to a mostly Muslim country…
The measure of a man, a person, a nation is not taken by comparison to others and saying “we’re better than that”, it’s taken by one’s own actions. Period. What Muslims do has nothing to do with our moral standing.
@LauraNo,
That’s a noble thought, and I’m very proud of you. Yes, who cares what real Islam is like — let’s just be tolerant and loving and let the women in other countries worry about it. No one is stoning anyone here, so all is well.
@Mike Farmer, Are you suggesting we invade other countries with crappy human rights records?
@Mark Thompson,
Mark, no. But thanks for asking. Are you really this dense, are or you faking it? Is it not rather obvious that I was making a comparison between real intolerance and the phony concern over a few Americans bad-mouthing Islam –Dear sweet Jeebus, this place is imploding.
@Mike Farmer, Except this is much more than “a few Americans bad-mouthing Islam”:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/08/islamic_cultural_centre_sorta_near_ground_zero
and also:
http://media.economist.com/images/pdf/TabReport08192010.pdf
In particular look at the answer to the second question. A sizable majority of Republicans and a plurality of conservatives now believe that Muslims do not have the same constitutional rights as other religious groups.
Whether that is as bad as the intolerance of fundamentalist regimes in the Middle East is irrelevant – a majority belief amongst one of our only two political parties that Muslims do not and should not have the same rights as other religious groups is pretty much the definition of intolerance.
But, hey, we should definitely be more concerned about intolerance on the other side of the world over which we have little power than a rising tide of intolerance amongst a political party that is a few months away from controlling the House of Representatives and that has reached a point where a majority of that party now actually believes that Muslims are second-class citizens.
@Mike Farmer,
Mark, do you really rely on polling from the Economist to do your thinking? What do you think they are looking for? I’m concrned about the intellectual health among modern liberals.
I just heard an NPR report from Tennessee in which an engineering professor with 30 years in the local Muslim community said that the anti-Muslim sentiment (hundreds of people rallying against a new center being built saying things like “Islam isn’t a real religion!”) is unlike anything he’s seen in that time, including after 9/11. He said it “suddenly” spiked up recently (before or after the Cordoba story got big was unclear), and he thinks it’s because people think they can get votes out of it. Just some data.
@Michael Drew, Yep. Blame Saint Sarah and His Holiness Gingrich. Amazing what the sheeple will respond to – anything – so predictably.
@LauraNo, see, for example, “hope”.
Also, “change”.
@Jaybird, Could you respond to my point, please? Would you admit this anti-Muslim sentiment is being ginned up for political reasons? Would you agree there was no problem with this before Gingrich and Palin started demagoguing the issue? For which I bet Hispanics are thankful? And also teh gays.
@LauraNo, I disagree that it’s being “ginned up”.
I’m pretty sure it was there beforehand but there was never a culturally acceptable way to express it.
We now have the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” providing a culturally acceptable way to express it.
Katie, bar the door.
@Jaybird, Oh, and my ‘hope’ has gotten me quite a bit of ‘change’ so far which is probably why the conservatives have gone batshit.
@LauraNo, That wasn’t my point.
My point was that “The Mandate Given By The American People” quickly becomes “jingoistic opinion of the sheeple ginned up by evil politicians” at the drop of a hat, don’t it?
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