Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Suspicion of outsiders an element of the human condition

'Suspicion of outsiders, of people who behave or worship differently, may be an ingrained element of the human condition, a survival instinct from our cave-man days. But we should also recognize that historically this distrust has led us to burn witches, intern Japanese-Americans, and turn away Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.

Perhaps the closest parallel to today’s hysteria about Islam is the 19th-century fear spread by the Know Nothing movement about “the Catholic menace.” One book warned that Catholicism was “the primary source” of all of America’s misfortunes, and there were whispering campaigns that presidents including Martin Van Buren and William McKinley were secretly working with the pope. Does that sound familiar?

Critics warned that the pope was plotting to snatch the Mississippi Valley and secretly conspiring to overthrow American democracy. “Rome looks with wistful eye to domination of this broad land, a magnificent seat for a sovereign pontiff,” one writer cautioned.

Historically, unreal suspicions were sometimes rooted in genuine and significant differences. Many new Catholic immigrants lacked experience in democracy. Mormons were engaged in polygamy. And today some extremist Muslims do plot to blow up planes, and Islam has real problems to work out about the rights of women. The pattern has been for demagogues to take real abuses and exaggerate them, portraying, for example, the most venal wing of the Catholic Church as representative of all Catholicism — just as fundamentalist Wahabis today are caricatured as more representative of Islam than the incomparably more numerous moderate Muslims of Indonesia (who have elected a woman as president before Americans have).'

5 comments :

Bruno said...

Good move in posting a new post, Mojo.

All the better to distract from the beating Maury, Aton et all are getting on the previous thread.

;)

Don Cox said...

I think some Muslims are over-reacting to this crazy pastor. There are at least a billion copies of the Koran on the planet, so the loss of a couple of hundred is hardly significant, unless they are burning particularly rare and valuable copies, which I doubt.

Ascribing magical or sacred properties to material objects such as books or buildings is a form of idolatry.

C.H. said...

This Pastor has about 50 followers...enough said. He's like the Westboro Baptist Church...they have even fewer followers yet they get international attention for doing stupid things.

Toady said...

So how do Muslims dispose of old or worn-out Korans? Is it more respectable to chuck them into the trash?

A serious question, btw

Iraqi Mojo said...

Iraq Pundit: "Burning the Koran is only respectful way of disposing of the Holy book. For example, if a studnet is learning calligraphy and copies pages from the Koran, he is not allwoed to throw away the paprs. He must burn them out of respect for the Koran."