Texas politicos’ Islamophobic rhetoric may win with the base, but it harms us all

Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.

Six days after the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil, then-President George W. Bush stood with Muslim clergy at the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., and urged Americans not to blame their Muslim neighbors for the 9/11 attack. 

“When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. … America counts millions of Muslims among our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country,” he said. “Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. … Women who

cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must not be intimidated in America. That’s not the America I know. That’s not the America I value. … That should not and that will not stand in America. … And it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way I do. They’re outraged, they’re sad. They love America just as much as I do.”

Whether the Bush administration’s rounding up of thousands of Muslims after 9/11, or its civilian-decimating invasions of two Muslim-majority countries rose to the ideals described above is worth contesting. 

Still, I’m confident every president of my lifetime, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, would’ve felt comfortable giving some version of that speech to begin the process of national healing. 

But can you ever imagine Donald Trump saying those words if a similar attack were to occur today?

I’m also old enough to recall when, in 2010, a mosque was set to be built two blocks from Ground Zero. My first reaction was, “What a defiant symbol of our commitment to religious pluralism. Just let the terrorists try and topple that!” 

But those plans were never completed, since Fox News and right-wing media went ballistic, arguing the mosque was insensitive to the victims of 9/11. As if hundreds of Muslims weren’t working at the World Trade Center that day.

Lately, that kind of anti-Muslim prejudice continues to snowball. 

“In Texas, candidates running for office during the primaries have made Muslims and what they call ‘the Islamification of Texas’ the center of their campaigns,” PBS Newshour and anchor Amna Nawaz, herself a Muslim, reported last Wednesday.

Texans searching Google with the term “Sharia law” spiked higher than ever last summer, when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill to prohibit neighborhoods from creating so-called “Sharia compounds.”

Web interest in the term reached a new peak in early February when Republican Congressman Chip Roy, who represents parts of San Antonio, and is running for Texas Attorney General, held hearings on the exigent topic of a “Sharia-Free America.”

Perhaps Congress will waste precious time discussing kosher laws next.

“When I say Sharia to the average American Muslim, they would literally think, ‘OK, I need to be kind to my mother, I need to be a good person’,” Yasir Qadhi, resident theologian at the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), told PBS. Certain GOP politicians’ “interpretation of  Sharia is not one that the Muslims of this country even understand. It’s a  personal set of rituals and ethical conduct. That’s literally the association that we have of Sharia.”

Yet even the comparatively moderate candidate in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate, incumbent John Cornyn, has put out campaign ads proclaiming, “Sharia law has no place in American courts or communities.”

Sadly, there appears to be no political downside to the demagoguery, as Rice University political scientist Mark Jones told KXAN News in February.

“While this issue doesn’t resonate with all Republican primary voters, it resonates positively with some and neutral with virtually all the others,” Jones said, “meaning you’re gaining some votes by raising the issue but you’re not really losing any.” 

So, until conservatives proactively turn away from Islamophobia, bashing Muslims will represent easy pickings.

A recent report from the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), found “rhetoric from public officials” continues to treat Muslims “as suspicious and outside the circle of protected religious and civic life.” 

Islamophobic posts on social media and hate crimes against Muslims remain at an unprecedented high. And Trump’s National Counterterrorism Strategy, released this month, promised to “remove Jihadist sympathizers from our country” as a pretext for expanding mass surveillance and the criminalization of dissent. Given the electoral incentive to dehumanize, is it any wonder that much of Trump’s base doesn’t recoil in horror at the indiscriminate slaughter of Gazans or Iranians?

Republicans cherish religious liberty, unless that religion is Islam.

Members of the party happily siphon taxpayer dollars to religious schools, unless those schools teach the Quran. Would a planned Catholic or Mormon community find themselves subjected to the same lies and backlash as the proposed EPIC City received? And why, when a Christian commits an act of mass violence, are they treated like a deranged individual acting alone, at worst a militia member, yet when a Muslim does likewise, they’re instantly classified as an Islamic terrorist?

Contrary to the stereotypes propagated even by purported liberals such as comedian Bill Maher and neuroscientist Sam Harris, American Muslims are more tolerant of homosexuality and same-sex marriage than evangelical Christians, and overwhelming majorities of Muslims the world over oppose terrorism and desire to live in societies with free and fair elections. 

Six hundred and twenty-two years after the birth of Isa al-Masih, the Constitution of Medina served as an inspiring precursor to democracy, promoting peaceful coexistence and granting equal rights to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

“When people see the truth and how welcoming people are from the Muslim community, I think all that propaganda goes out the window, to be honest,” 27-year-old Ayesha Imran, a patron of a Yemeni coffee shop, told [Houston Public Media back in March. 

But thanks to the pressure of Abbott’s ignorance, the Islamic Games in Grapevine and an Eid al-Adha celebration at a water park in Grand Prairie both were canceled this year.

“Those kids are trying to just play ball together,” Mustafaa Carroll of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of CAIR said of the former. 

And the organizer of the latter, Aminah Knight, has since announced plans for an interfaith get-together dubbed “The Great American Cookout” on the Fourth of July. She hopes the gathering will bring together people of different backgrounds so they can “truly get to know one another as fellow Americans.”

Knight added: “Although this experience has been painful, my faith teaches me that within every difficulty there is ease. And I believe something beautiful can still come from this.”

She may as well have been talking about the post-9/11 era in general, the denouement of which we have yet to write.

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